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The three-year Parliamentary Action on Renewable Energy (PARE) project, co-facilitated by the Climate Parliament and UNDP, has been responsible for more than $1 billion USD in new government spending on renewable energy and clean technology since 2012.
That's the headline finding of an independent assessment report, commissioned by project donors EuropeAid, to evaluate the outcomes and impact of the PARE project, which ran from January 2012 to December 2014:
"During the past three years, PARE has been instrumental in instigating or influencing government decisions and legislation that has increased funding available for renewable energy by more than USD 1 billion across the target countries, there providing excellent value for money at the results and impact level. This figure also understates the total amount, as some of the increased funding will be repeated in increased annual budgetary allocations, while downstream knock-on effects (such as increased investment interest from other renewable energy financiers) are not considered."
The report found that project targets have already been surpassed, even before results from 2014 are taken into account - and that PARE has had "particularly impressive results" in Tunisia, India and Bangladesh:
"...the PARE project has proved itself to be an effective approach in promoting the take-up of renewable energy in many of the project countries. In a considerable number of the target (project) countries the project has achieved its objectives, and considerable momentum has been created in terms of preparing the legislative and regulatory framework necessary for promoting increased uptake of renewable energy. Similarly, PARE has achieved significant results in increasing national government budget funding for renewable energy, or the acceleration in the creation or deployment of new renewable energy funds or programmes."
We at the Climate Parliament are immensely proud that the work we've undertaken together with our colleagues at UNDP has been recognised so favourably by our project donors. None of this would have been possible, however, without the tireless work and dedication shown by the MPs and legislators with whom it's been our pleasure to work with over the last three years.
Yet our work is not complete. The PARE project will continue to work with legislators in both the Middle East and North Africa and South Asia for another six months, to further our aims of strengthened climate legislation and new funding for renewables. We're also working on a PARE Phase II proposal, designed to continue the partnership between the Climate Parliament, UNDP and our project donors at the European Commission and the Danish Foreign Ministry, for another three year period. As the report found:
"When one considers these results against the fact that PARE’s experience and results also suggest that there is significant potential to achieve much more, in particular if management and implementation practices are strengthened, the future potential of a PARE-type initiative can only be described as very significant."