In recent years, theories of change (ToCs) have increasingly been recognised as valuable tools for project design, adaptive management and evaluation of impacts.
This report seeks to answer a number of key questions about biodiversity mainstreaming — particularly focusing on the ToCs that have been used, and the causal pathways within them, across a sample of GEF projects.
It concludes that is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to mainstreaming, and this context- and problem-specificity means that there is also no singular theory of change that can be applied to mainstreaming projects. However, the process of thinking through a ToC has helped some projects better articulate their mainstreaming goals, recognise where additional effort and intervention might be needed, and better understand the process by which mainstreaming occurs.
