Incorporating Climate Change adaptation in Development Cooperation: A Framework for assessing Climate Mainstreaming efforts in EU Development Cooperation

Within international development cooperation, climate change has been acknowledged as an issue that should be integrated into aid activities. This is also the case for the European Union (EU), which tries to live up to its reputation as a climate leader as well as a leading ODA donor by emphasizing the need to integrate climate change into its aid policies. Although there is already an extensive amount of policy prescriptive literature on how donors should mainstream climate change in their activities, there are very few empirical accounts of how this is being implemented by donor agencies in developing countries in practice. This lack of empirical knowledge is striking as climate change mainstreaming has been on the development agenda for quite some time. For the EU, the few reports that do exist have hinted at problems in implementing mainstreaming within delegations. Yet, existing accounts are scarce, shallow and outdated. Moreover, these reports also identify variations in mainstreaming efforts throughout different countries, but fail to provide a real explanation for this variation. Building on the scarce evidence available, this paper aims to provide a detailed empirical account of mainstreaming efforts by the EU in two Sub-Saharan African countries: Rwanda and Ghana. The case selection is based on a Most Similar System Design, in which variation in mainstreaming efforts in these two countries is expected. By introducing a comparative perspective on the issue, we aim to contribute to the explanation of variations in EU mainstreaming efforts. The analysis is based on EU policy documents, as well as semi-structured interviews conducted in Brussels, Accra and Kigali. Respondents include EU officials within DG DEVCO and DG CLIMA and the respective EU Delegations, as well as representatives from the partner country and non-governmental organizations.