Technical design

Each element of the project framework (environmental problem, barriers, baseline, Indicative Project Description Summary, activities, Theory of Change) should be developed based on a tight and logical storyline. A strong storyline will (a) show how all the elements of technical design are linked together, and (b) create flow, consistency, and focus across the project design and in the CEO Endorsement Request itself.

The project framework describes:

• The environmental problem
• The project objective
• The key barriers to that objective being achieved
• The business-as-usual scenario (or what would happen without the GEF project funding). This is known as the project baseline.
• Gaps in those baseline initiatives.
• And the project strategy (or what would happen with the GEF project funding), consisting of:
  • The Indicative Project Overview table: The components, outcomes, and outputs of the project
  • The activities (or what the project is financing) to achieve those outputs and outcomes
  • And the Theory of Change, or how the project interventions will ultimately achieve the project objective and subsequent global environmental benefits.

This storyline will then inform each element of technical design (barriers, baseline, activities). Below is detailed guidance on each of these elements. The methods presented in each section builds on or references other technical design elements to facilitate a strong storyline throughout.

Please note that technical design must ensure buy-in from the Executing Agency and Partners. The project design will be shared with key stakeholders during stakeholder engagement.

It may be useful for the planning team to review the project conceptual model, which visually describes the problem situation (including barriers) to be addressed by the project, and reflect on how the results chains lay out the strategies which will modify that situation to achieve the projects intended results. See figure below. From there, project teams may write a high-level summary of what the project is about, the barriers to the project from being achieved, and the proposed solution (project objective).

The project objective developed at PIF stage should be reiterated during CEO Endorsement Request Document - General Project Information. A good project objective describes what the project aims to achieve. Examples of good project objectives are provided below.

The Environmental Problem is a brief description of two things:

• The specific environmental issue that the project aims to address
• The Global Environmental Benefits that will be impacted if the problem is not solved

The Environmental Problem should link to the relevant GEF focal areas/global environmental benefits.

One example of a GEF environmental problem includes:

• Tropical forests and savannahs host the majority of terrestrial biodiversity, represent important carbon sinks, and provide numerous ecosystem services. However, these ecosystems are being increasingly deforested for commercial agriculture. Demand for a few key commodities is a root cause of this deforestation from agricultural production, with an estimated 70% of tropical deforestation alone coming from commercial agriculture for palm, soy, and beef (plus timber and pulp)

The environmental problem provides the foundation for the project objective, and justifies the importance of GEF funding.

Barriers can be defined as the underlying causes that are contributing to the environmental problem.

During CEO Endorsement Request, the Project Development Team should both (1) reassess the barriers identified at PIF stage (based on changes to the Indicative Project Description Summary, project strategy) and (2) deepen their analysis of those barriers.

Barriers represent a key part of the project design and storyline. The project should show what barriers are preventing the project objective from being achieved, and then demonstrate how the project strategy will address those barriers to achieve global environmental benefits.

How to identify and detail barriers

1. Conceptual Model. A conceptual model is a diagram that illustrates the environmental problem the project wishes to address and shows the relationships among key factors that are related to the conservation issue at hand. Barriers and other contributing factors should be identified.
2. Matrix. The matrix below may be used to map barriers to the project strategy. A column on “baseline” may also be added to complete the project storyline.

The baseline is a detailed account of the ongoing and planned activities/policies/initiatives taking place during the project period (e.g., the business-as-usual scenario, taking place without GEF funding) that contribute to: the project objective, solving the environmental problem, and/or the project strategies.

A baseline activity/initiative is one that:

• Will be leveraged to meet project outcomes and outputs.
  • Relevant activities by the Executing Agency and project partners are included in the baseline.
  • Co-financing is the financing associated with the project baseline. Therefore, co-financing sources should be reflected in the baseline (and the baseline should indicate who to approach for potential co-financing).
• Creates a foundation on which GEF financing is built to generate global environmental benefits. Therefore, gaps in the baseline can be briefly identified to foreshadow the project strategy.
  • If the project is not directly building off of or coordinated in tandem with the proposed baseline activity/strategy, it is not considered baseline.
• Quantified when appropriate and possible (e.g., the baseline initiative contributes to xx hectares of improved management).
• Please note that the baseline cannot include other GEF projects.

The identified project baseline should closely fit the project storyline. The matrix below is one way of ensuring the barriers, baseline, and project interventions are closely linked. Once the baseline is identified, it should then be fleshed out in greater detail in consultation with relevant partners and stakeholders.

PPMS: The Conceptual Model exercise, which describes the context surrounding the environmental problem, may identify baseline activities as opportunities. The baseline will also play a role during the results chain exercise in order to show how existing initiatives can be leveraged by the project. There may be additional brainstorming exercises to ensure the baseline is thoroughly understood.

A Theory of Change is a narrative and/ or diagram that explains the underlying theory that links what the project will do (strategies) to what the project desires to achieve (outcomes and project objective). The Theory of Change drafted at PIF Stage should be validated and refined during the ProDoc Detailed Design Phase based on: conversations with project stakeholders, and a clearer analysis of the baseline and project context (ideally doing a situation analysis/model).  A detailed theory of change (particularly via results chains) is just as much about the process as it is about the product. In other words, it is a means to an end to improving and validating the project intervention strategy. 

Given the importance of a Theory of Change, it is recommended that the CER include: (1) detailed Results Chains (broken down by component or landscape) in the annex, (2) a high-level supporting diagram in the body of the document accompanied by (3) a narrative that describes the Theory of Change in more detail. See the GEF STAP Primer for guidance. 

Principles of a good Theory of Change 

• Process was iterative --started early and informed the project activities, outputs and outcome selection and language. Not the reverse. 
• Process was collaborative - engaged with /consulted with the right stakeholders 
• Based in a solid understanding of the situation at hand (e.g. evidence, situation model) This connects to feasibility of the theory of change. 
• Explicit about assumptions in causal pathways. There should be no big leaps of faith. This ties to plausibility that the interventions are necessary and sufficient. 
• Specific about the actors involved in the strategy 
• Risks and opportunities identified 
• Measurable with indicators 

Some guiding questions to develop the theory of change include: 

1. What is the desired result of the project (objective + environmental benefits)? 
2. How will the strategies work together to achieve this?  
3. How will the barriers and root causes be influenced by the project interventions? 
4. What are the incentives for behavior change? And/or who are the actors who are being targeted and what is in it for them? 
5. Are the interventions supported by evidence and grounded in reality? 
6. Are the interventions feasible? Are they plausible? 
7. Is the Theory of Change achievable in the project time period? Are there any assumptions/risks that may impact the project success? 
8. Where are the opportunities to engage with different stakeholder groups, mainstream gender, empowerment of marginalized groups? 
9. What activities may pose risks or trigger safeguards implications? 

Theory of Change in Practice 

Tips as you prepare the Theory of Change: 

• The TOC should explicitly state or illustrate the causal pathways in a series of if-then statements (e.g., if we do this intervention, then this will result) showing how project strategies will achieve the intermediate results, outcomes, project objective, and contribute to Global Environmental Benefits. As such, the Theory of Change should be, to some extent, sequential. 
• The Theory of Change is results-oriented, rather than a sequence of activities (e.g., how will your project interventions work versus what activities are planned).  
• The Theory of Change for a GEF project should stay within the project scope (what GEF is funding + baseline) but may also indicate the long-term goals of the project (please be explicit about what is within the lifetime and scope of the project and what is not). 
• If the project is part of a larger program, (1) a broader, program-level Theory of Change should show how each Child Project contributes to the overall program objective, and (2) the project-level Theory of Change should describe key links to the program, to demonstrate overall impact and cohesion. 
• Try to use different lenses and anticipate where activities might have safeguards implications, gender implications and/or needs to mitigate particular risks. 

(1) Results Chain(s) / Diagram. Diagrams are a popular way to visually demonstrate a project’s Theory of Change (see examples attached) and should reflect major strategies and desired results.  

If Results Chains have been developed at PIF stage using PPMS, then the project team has a strong foundation. Both the detailed results chains and overarching results chain should be validated and further detailed to the activity level, including sites and stakeholders. Together, these visually illustrate the logic behind how the project interventions will lead to the project desired results.  

(2) Narrative description. The narrative theory of change is a written form of the intervention logic and should be explicit about the rationale for the project strategies and activities. It should also briefly describe how barriers and enablers (reference the situation analysis) will be influenced and/or how targeted actors will be convinced or incentivized for the expected behavior changes.  It may be helpful to use the Results Chain diagrams to inform this statement. 

To develop a narrative Theory of Change, the Project Development Team should use if-then statements which address how the barriers will be removed and enabling factors influenced or leveraged to obtain the project’s expected results. Teams may start with their interventions, and how those will lead to the project outputs and/or intermediate results. Then additional if-then statements to describe how those lower-level results should lead to higher level results explicitly mentioning the outcomes of the project and being careful to not just link outputs to outcomes, but also include the logic behind those causal pathways.  Finally, the team should mention how the outcomes being achieved result in the achievement of the project objective and contribution to Global Environmental Benefits.  

If helpful, you can use the following proforma text: 

• [First If statement, here – should start at interventions of the project] 
• [Next If statement here – should summarize the immediate results of the project interventions and how they influence enabling conditions, reduce barriers, etc.] 
• [Next If statement here....... Should summarize higher level results that are influenced by lower level results] 
• [Then barriers to [project objective here] will be removed and [result here] will improve/be scaled up, with the [highest level results identified] 

Example of a simple chain from a diagram theory of change with activities  

(yellow circles), outputs and outcomes identified. It also contains opportunities for gender mainstreaming (G) and potential implications for Safeguards (S): 

Example of an overall project theory of change:

Definitions

An Outcome is the medium-term effects achieved by an intervention’s outputs.

An Output is a tangible deliverable (e.g., workshop, report, etc.) and often leads to project outcomes/results.

Activities are the actions or tasks being undertaken by project staff or partners to achieve project outputs.

The purpose of this section is to describe in more detail the project components (interventions and activities) identified in the theory of change. Provide brief information on each intervention, the main thrust and basis (including scientific) of the proposed solutions, how they address the problem, and the critical assumptions and risks to achieving them.  If the detailed project strategy, including the project activities listed to achieve each output, exceeds 6 pages in length, summarize the information in the CEO Endorsement Request and provide the detailed description in the “Detailed Project Strategy” annex. 

During CEO Endorsement Request development, the Project Development Team should develop the activities needed to achieve project outputs, outcomes, and the project objective. For project activities, the Project Development Team should determine what activities are needed to get to the desired result (output), who will be responsible for its completion, when the activity needs to take place (sequencing), and what resources will be needed for each activity (i.e., what the project needs to pay for to deliver on an output). The Gender Action Plan should be considered as activities are developed, with a gender responsive lens applied when possible.

Activities will be described in the CEO Endorsement Request Document, and are also essential for starting safeguards processes, for completing the budget, for finding entry points to ensure a gender responsive project design, and as a discussion point for stakeholder engagement.

Please note that activities should be determined in consultation with key partners and refined through stakeholder engagement. Project strategies and supporting activities must be justified in the project strategy section (i.e., why a certain method/approach was utilized? How was this arrived at – science-based, requested by beneficiaries, etc.).

Project activities are often determined in two ways:

Results Chains: Activity level

The project Results Chains previously drafted at the PIF stage, should be developed at the CEO Endorsement Request stage with detailed supporting activities. If not, the Results Chains should be re-examined and activities inserted where relevant. Consider what activities are needed to successfully meet the project’s intended results (project outcomes and the project objective).

Example of promoting best practices

Activity-Level Matrices. In addition to identifying activities through the Results Chains, Project Development Teams can use a matrix (see below) to cross check there are sufficient activities per output, and that these activities adequately support the project outputs and outcomes.

Sample project activities. Examples of project activities may include:

• Hosting meetings
• Convening workshops
• Developing reports
• Publishing media material
• Conducting a "needs assessment"

Incremental Cost is defined as “the increment or additional costs associated with transforming a project with national/local benefits into one with global environmental benefits as well.”

The Incremental Cost of a project can be developed using the below matrix. The matrix shows:

1. The “business-as-usual” scenario (baseline) that would take place without GEF intervention .
2. The “GEF Alternative” (project interventions) that explains how the project will address key barriers and build on the baseline.
3. What global environmental benefits will be derived as a result of the GEF funding and project interventions. These Global Environmental Benefits should be linked to the project’s focal areas.

The three matrix pieces above form the incremental cost reasoning—it shows how GEF “incremental” funds will be used to transform an existing baseline into a project that yields Global Environmental Benefits. The rationale for GEF funding rests on how GEF financing for the project is incremental, and how the project uses this funding to achieve GEF Global Environmental Benefits.