Albania National Adaptation Planning evaluation

UNDP Albania is a key development partner supporting national institutions, local governments, and development stakeholders in areas such as climate resilience, environmental governance, public sector reform, social inclusion, and sustainable development.

Through this assignment, UNDP Albania required an independent terminal evaluation of its National Adaptation Planning project (NAP). The project was designed to strengthen Albania’s institutional, technical, and strategic capacities for medium- and long-term climate adaptation planning. It supported the integration of climate risks into national and sectoral planning, alignment with Albania’s Nationally Determined Contributions and EU accession framework, and the development of financing pathways for adaptation investments.

The NAP project was implemented together with the Ministry of Tourism and Environment and financed by the Green Climate Fund. It covered the period from 17 August 2020 to a planned end date of 15 December 2025, with a total committed budget of USD 2,997,907. At the time of evaluation, expenditure had reached USD 2,842,210.4. The terminal evaluation was conducted between May and August 2025 by Civitta.

Albania is highly vulnerable to climate change, particularly in sectors such as agriculture, water resources, tourism, infrastructure, and coastal areas. The country faces increasing risks from floods, droughts, coastal erosion, and extreme weather events. At the same time, Albania is an EU candidate country and is working to align its environmental and climate policies with EU requirements, including Chapter 27 of the EU acquis.

The client’s key challenge was to understand whether the NAP project had successfully strengthened Albania’s institutional and technical capacities for climate adaptation planning. The evaluation needed to assess whether the project’s outputs were relevant, effective, efficient, sustainable, and useful for future climate adaptation action.

The assignment was important because the NAP process aimed to move Albania from fragmented climate initiatives toward a more systematic and mainstreamed adaptation agenda. The evaluation therefore needed to determine whether the project had created the right foundations for long-term adaptation planning, municipal implementation, climate finance mobilization, and integration of adaptation into national and local development planning.

The evaluation had to answer several strategic questions:

• Which project outputs had been delivered, and how effectively had they contributed to Albania’s adaptation planning system?
• How well had the project strengthened institutional coordination and technical capacity?
• To what extent had climate adaptation been integrated into national, sectoral, and local planning?
• How useful were the Local Adaptation Plans and related tools for municipal-level implementation?
• What lessons should inform future UNDP, GCF, and government-supported adaptation programming?

The challenge was also complex because Albania’s climate governance system involves multiple national institutions, municipalities, technical agencies, development partners, and civil society stakeholders. The evaluation had to address data gaps, institutional turnover at municipal level, limited disaggregated information, COVID-19-related delays, procurement bottlenecks, and staffing gaps, while still meeting UNDP, GCF, OECD-DAC, and UNEG evaluation standards.

Civitta conducted an independent, theory-based, participatory, and utilization-focused terminal evaluation. The evaluation was guided by UNDP-GCF requirements and assessed the project according to OECD-DAC criteria, including relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, and impact.

The evaluation also integrated cross-cutting considerations such as gender equality, human rights, country ownership, innovation, knowledge management, contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals, and the potential for replication and scaling.

Civitta applied a mixed-method approach that combined desk research, stakeholder consultation, field-level validation, and comparative benchmarking. The team reviewed national strategic frameworks and more than 80 project documents, conducted key informant interviews with 17 stakeholders, organized focus group discussions with 20 participants, carried out direct observations during a field mission in 4 project sites in Albania, and benchmarked the project against other GCF-funded NAP projects.

Key elements of the approach included:

• Desk review and document analysis

Civitta reviewed project documentation, strategic frameworks, legal and institutional materials, monitoring files, financial records, training materials, implementation reports, and project outputs. This allowed the team to validate reported activities, assess alignment with Albania’s policy landscape and EU accession agenda, and cross-check outputs against the project’s results framework.

• Theory of Change and contribution analysis

The project’s Theory of Change served as the analytical backbone of the evaluation. Civitta used contribution analysis to examine how project activities contributed to observed institutional, policy, technical, and capacity-building changes. This was especially important because Albania’s climate governance landscape includes multiple actors, parallel initiatives, and evolving institutional arrangements.

• Stakeholder interviews and focus group discussions

The team gathered perspectives from UNDP, the Ministry of Tourism and Environment, national institutions, municipalities, civil society, technical agencies, and other stakeholders. This allowed the evaluation to capture both national-level strategic perspectives and local-level implementation realities.

• Field observations

Direct observations in selected Albanian municipalities helped validate the practical relevance of Local Adaptation Plans and understand how adaptation planning was being translated into local action.

• Gender and human rights-based approach

Civitta applied a gender-responsive and human rights-based lens throughout the evaluation. This included attention to participation, inclusion, Leave No One Behind principles, gender equality, vulnerable groups, and the availability of disaggregated data. The evaluation also reviewed the project’s Gender Action Plan and assessed the extent to which gender and social inclusion considerations were embedded in adaptation planning.

• Triangulation and validation

Where data gaps existed, Civitta triangulated interviews, focus group findings, field observations, administrative records, and project documents. This strengthened the credibility of the findings and allowed the team to qualify conclusions where evidence was incomplete.

• Practical recommendations

The evaluation was designed to support learning and future programming. Civitta therefore developed recommendations focused on institutionalizing adaptation coordination, improving private sector and municipal engagement, strengthening monitoring and data systems, supporting climate finance mobilization, and ensuring continued implementation of the NAP process.

The evaluation found that the NAP project was a strong performer among GCF readiness projects. It met its intended outcomes with minor shortcomings and received an overall project performance rating of 5. The project was rated highly across several criteria, including relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, and cross-cutting areas such as gender equality, human rights, and monitoring and evaluation.

• Strong delivery of project outputs

The project successfully delivered nearly all planned outputs, with more than 98% of outputs completed. These included the NAP Strategy and Implementation Plan, Gender Action Plan, Implementation Plan, monitoring and evaluation framework, and eight Local Adaptation Plans. The eight Local Adaptation Plans exceeded the original targets, and six of them were formally adopted by municipal councils.

• Improved institutional coordination

The project supported the strengthening of coordination structures, including the Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Climate Change. It helped formalize adaptation planning processes and provided technical guidance, risk analysis, and practical tools for climate finance and monitoring. These outputs contributed to stronger coordination across ministries and municipalities.

• Integration of climate adaptation into planning and budgeting

The evaluation found that the NAP project helped move adaptation beyond the environmental sector and into broader economic planning, infrastructure, agriculture, energy, tourism, and medium-term budgeting processes. This represented a shift from isolated climate initiatives toward a more mainstreamed, system-wide adaptation agenda in Albania.

• Efficient use of resources

The project was assessed as highly efficient. By July 2025, 94.8% of the USD 2.998 million budget had been executed. The project operated with a lean management structure and used adaptive management to reallocate resources toward additional outputs, including the eight Local Adaptation Plans and subnational training.

• Strengthened climate finance readiness

The project improved Albania’s readiness to mobilize adaptation finance. It produced a NAP implementation plan, concept notes for international climate finance, and a pipeline of 66 pre-concept notes aligned with Local Adaptation Plans, monitoring, evaluation and learning design, and coordination structures. This created clearer pathways for future funding from sources such as the GCF, Adaptation Fund, GEF, EU, and donor-supported programmes.

• Improved local adaptation planning

At municipal level, the project gave local governments practical tools to identify climate risks, prioritize adaptation measures, integrate actions into local and medium-term plans, and advocate for financing. The Local Adaptation Plans helped decentralize climate action and translate national adaptation priorities into local implementation pathways.

• Gender equality and social inclusion benefits

The project advanced gender-responsive planning through the Gender Action Plan and broader participation of women’s groups, civil society, academia, and local stakeholders. The evaluation also identified remaining gaps in disaggregated data and intersectional analysis, recommending stronger systems to track gender equality and Leave No One Behind outcomes during implementation.

• Long-term impact

The long-term impact of the project lies in the institutional and technical foundation it created for Albania’s adaptation agenda. The project produced planning tools, coordination mechanisms, monitoring instruments, and financing pathways that can support climate resilience beyond the project period. However, the evaluation also noted that full long-term impact depends on continued financing, stronger institutional mandates, municipal ownership, and regular use of the monitoring, evaluation and learning framework in government workflows.

The evaluation showed that climate adaptation planning requires strong coordination between national and local levels. Municipalities often prioritize immediate and practical needs such as flooding, erosion, and water scarcity, while national institutions focus on long-term strategies, budget systems, EU alignment, and international climate commitments. Civitta’s evaluation demonstrated that structured vertical coordination, joint planning, and iterative consultations can link immediate local needs with long-term national resilience objectives.

A second key lesson was that data gaps can limit the full appraisal of adaptation options, especially for cost-benefit analysis. The project addressed these gaps through standardized templates, GIS-based spatial analysis, expert validation, and desk review, although some infrastructure-related measures still require more detailed field-level feasibility studies.

A third key lesson was that assigning responsible institutions to each adaptation action improves accountability, ownership, and cross-sectoral coordination. Clear responsibility allocation helped reduce ambiguity and made it easier to follow up on implementation.

Civitta’s expertise made a difference by combining evaluation expertise, climate adaptation knowledge, institutional analysis, gender-responsive evaluation, and practical experience with donor-funded programming. This combination allowed the team to assess the project at several levels, including strategic relevance, institutional change, technical quality, municipal usefulness, financial readiness, and sustainability.

The evaluation did not only assess whether outputs were delivered. It also examined whether those outputs created the conditions for long-term adaptation planning, financing, and implementation. Civitta’s use of mixed methods, contribution analysis, OECD-DAC criteria, and GCF-aligned evaluation standards helped ensure that the findings were evidence-based, credible, and useful for future programming.

The methodology is relevant for other governments, UN agencies, international development partners, climate finance institutions, and public sector clients working on climate adaptation, resilience, environmental governance, institutional reform, municipal planning, monitoring and evaluation, and climate finance readiness.