A partnership between the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) and AFD was established in 2020 to identify and implement a series of impact evaluations of interventions supported by AFD. The IRD provides the expertise, networks, and operational capacity to carry out these evaluations with partners in the Global South. The partnership was extended in October 2024, allowing new projects to be selected for evaluation.

Impact evaluations aim to provide information on the effectiveness of projects in producing concrete development results. The objective is to estimate whether the effect observed following an intervention is actually attributable to that intervention, and to what extent. To do this, assessments rigorously measure the effects of interventions using quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods.

The IRD is recognized for its scientific excellence, its multidisciplinary approach, its experience in conducting impact evaluations, and its local presence, which enables it to develop close ties with university teams and national statistical institutes in the South with which it can collaborate. This collaboration is also part of a shared research agenda and is covered by an institutional partnership between AFD and the IRD.

The PAIRES program funds impact evaluations of development projects financed by AFD Group, with three objectives:

1. To enrich dialogue with public authorities and stakeholders on development projects and their results;
2. To strengthen the role, skills, and practice of research in the South in the field of impact evaluation;
3. To foster academic debate on key development issues.

Impact evaluations use methods derived from social science research to identify and measure the effects that are strictly attributable to an intervention. Quantitative methods generally involve comparing changes in the situation of the population benefiting from the intervention with those of a population that has not been exposed to the intervention but is comparable to the beneficiary population. Impact evaluation, generally using counterfactuals, therefore makes it possible to isolate the causal effect of an intervention on a variable of interest and to quantify that effect.

Beyond promoting impact evaluations, the PAIRES partnership promotes multidisciplinary evaluations, combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies in order to strengthen the lessons learned about the mechanisms underlying change (or the absence of change).

In addition, the PAIRES program involves researchers from the countries of intervention in all its studies to ensure that the specificities of each context are taken into account and with a view to capacity building.

The ongoing impact evaluations cover 11 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and span a range of sectors (health, energy, biodiversity, infrastructure, education, gender equality). They have enabled collaboration with several academic, public, and civil-society institutions in France and in Global South countries. Other evaluations are currently being identified.

In terms of capacity building, PAIRES has notably supported two summer schools and four training courses in geospatial impact evaluation in Madagascar. The program has also funded two joint doctoral contracts between the University of Antananarivo and Paris Saclay University.

Find below the publications and blog articles related to the impact assessments funded under the PAIRES partnership.

• Flore Gubert, IRD Scientific Coordinator
• Ingrid Dallmann, AFD Project Manager
• Alice Lebreuilly, IRD PAIRES Project Coordinator

Latin America is the second most urbanized region in the world, with 81% of its population concentrated there. This strong urbanization, its rapid growth and the weakness of urban planning policies affect areas of high ecological and environmental value. However, natural ecosystems can be a source of solutions for those involved in urban design and development, in particular to respond to the risks generated or exacerbated by climate change.

Understanding nature-based solutions (NBS), studying their implementation conditions and analyzing their integration into public policies is therefore necessary to ensure the livability of cities in the long term. While NBS and green infrastructure are still recent in the urban landscape, initiatives have been deployed for several years and are a privileged source of data to exploit. 

The ENSLAC (Enabling Nature based solutions Scale-up in Latin American Cities) project aims to analyse the mechanisms that enable the scale-up of nature-based solutions implementation in Latin American cities, drawing on 15 case studies in Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. This research approach aims to: 

• Analyze the challenges of ecological restoration for the management of risks related to the impacts of climate change in urban areas;
• Understand the levers for using NBS as a tool for urban planning and development;
• Identify the temporal, technical, cultural, political, social, financial and cooperative processes that have enabled large-scale NBS-based projects;
• Assess the influence of national or supranational strategies and policies on NBS development;
• Disseminate the knowledge produced by focusing on formats and channels that can be used for the training of urban development actors. 

To explore these issues, Yes Innovation, based in Quito, works with the Humboldt Institute for Biological Resources Research, an institution linked to the Ministry of the Environment of Colombia, and Periferia Territorios Vivos, a Peruvian organization specialized in urban planning with an ecological approach. 

This research project uses two analytical tools (depending on the case study and the available field data):

1. Temporal and spatial analysis (known as BA/CI, which refers to a Before/After and Conservation/Intervention analysis);
2. Comparative analysis between case studies on NBS and reference cases of comparable characteristics but without implementation of NBS. 

The ENSLAC research project aims to: 

• Understand mechanisms that enable scale-up of nature-based solutions as a tool for urban and peri-urban planning;
• Identify replicability levers of these NBS for Latin American cities;
• Produce training materials for urban development actors. 

The research team presented its findings during a webinar from the Research Conversations series. The replay is available below (in French and Spanish).