Team of Consultant-Independent Mid-Term Evaluation of (BRDR) Program

About Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC)

The Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) is an independent inter-governmental organization that works to build the resilience of people and institutions to disasters and climate change impacts in Asia and the Pacific. Established in 1986 as a technical capacity building centre, ADPC has grown and diversified its expertise across social and physical sciences to support sustainable solutions for risk reduction and risk management across a broad range of specialist areas. ADPC have been implementing disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate resilience (CR) programs in Asia-Pacific for over 30 years, and have a wide network and portfolio of past experiences with national partners. ADPC also serves as the Secretariat of the Regional Consultative Committee on Disaster Management (RCC) that brings National Disaster Management Offices (NDMOs) together for policy dialogues, advocacy and regional knowledge sharing and explore regional collaboration on disaster and climate risk management interventions.ADPC has completed the implementation of the first three years of a five-year program on Building Resilience through inclusive and climate-adaptive disaster risk reduction in Asia-Pacific (BRDR, 2018-2022) implemented in partnership with the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute (RWI). The BRDR program is supported by Sida through the Regional Development Cooperation Section of the Embassy of Sweden in Bangkok. Sida is contributing SEK 54 million to BRDR, and it is the sole funder of the program. Sida support is aligned with the Strategy for Swedenäs regional development cooperation in Asia and the Pacific region (2016-2021).

About the BRDR Program

The program is guided by the goal of Strengthened regional cooperation to protect development gains and build resilience of people in Asia-Pacific to disaster and climate risks through inclusive and gender-responsive risk reduction measures, with 3 Outcomes:

• Outcome 1: Strengthened capacity for regional cooperation
• Outcome 2: Increased uptake of risk-informed approaches to development and social protection to reduce disaster and climate risk and vulnerability
• Outcome 3: Enhanced gender equality and rights-based approaches in disaster risk management and climate change adaptation in the region.

Evaluation purpose and scope

The main purpose of this evaluation is to evaluate the BRDR program’s progress towards achieving its main objective(s), and which strategies are working and which are not satisfactorily contributing to achieving its objective(s). The MTE is expected to cover the period starting from the BRDR inception in early2018 until the end of 2020. The MTE is also expected to cover the Asia-Pacific region and pilot countries through:

• BRDR Regional focus, in Asia-Pacific region: Regional level intervention is a key focus of the program which leverages participation and contribution from page 6 of 22a wide range of technical partners, and country partners including UNWomen, regional bodies/regional mechanisms (RCC/APP), and women-ledDRR agencies;
• BRDR national focus, in the pilot countries of Nepal and the Philippines: National and sub-national level interventions include engagement of national, provincial, and local government offices as well as relevant DRR/CCAagencies, and local stakeholders;
• Thematic thrusts on GE&RBA and DRR&CR. While the scope of the program is complex and broad consisting of multi-subdisciplines under DRR such as integrated risk assessment, mainstreaming DRR and CCA into sub-national development, preparedness and response, and disaster-related data and statistics, the focus of the evaluation should look into the gender equality and rights-based approaches.

Adopting a participative methodology, the MTE is intended to facilitate interactions and learnings to enhance the promotion of gender-equal and rights-based approaches to DRR, which complements the future design of the program, and its relevance to the stakeholders. The expected outcomes of the MTE will:

1. Provide recommendations to ADPC and BRDR consortium members on:
   • Assessing the effectiveness of the conceptual framework on gender equality and rights-based approach that is being utilized to guide the implementation of the BRDR program and its current translation into practices in relation to the program objectives;
   • Identifying ways to improve the promotion and uptake of the program's/RBA in Nepal and the Philippines and in Asia;
   • Evaluate the relevance of the BRDR program’s gender equality and rights-based approaches in DRR in Nepal and the Philippines and in Asia;
   • Identifying strategies to enhance the likeliness of the uptake of GE/RBA in the project countries and in the region;e. Assessing the progress of the BRDR program implementation with reference to achieving the outcomes identified in the Theory of Change, and recommend ways to ensure the achievement of the outcomes;
   • Identifying, assessing, and providing recommendations on operational challenges such as assessment of the consortium’s efficiency on achieving objectives in the project countries and providing recommendations to enhance the implementation mechanism.
2. Provide inputs for Sida’s consideration on:
   • Progress of BRDR program and highlighting significant outputs;
   • In-depth understanding of how the program can adapt to changing contexts and conditions especially under COVID-19 which poses extensive challenges for the program implementation and recommend adjustments on the approach to implementation for the remaining years;
   • Potential for scaling up/out for the second phase of BRDR.