You can’t afford the evaluation you need. Now what? How to build responsible investment cases from evidence synthesis and impact modelling in climate and gender
For many funders directing capital in climate and gender investment, evidence synthesis is not a shortcut — it is the only option. Primary data collection in these contexts is slow, expensive, and structurally impossible at the pace decisions require. The question is therefore not whether to build investment cases on synthesised evidence, but how to do so responsibly: how to be transparent about what the evidence does and does not warrant, how to communicate uncertainty without undermining use, and critically when to say the evidence might not yet be sufficient to support the claim being made.
29 October 2026 | 10:15 CEST to 11:45 CEST | Lille, France
Abstract
This session examines those questions through a concrete methodological case: a synthesis commissioned by a major climate foundation to understand how clean energy interventions contribute to women's economic empowerment across Africa and South Asia. The work moved through a sequence of steps — coding over 100 studies into impact archetypes and enabling conditions, building a framework for what good investment design looks like, modelling financial returns across fifteen assets under varying scenarios, and producing an investment case for philanthropic funders and climate investors. Each step was defensible. Taken together, they raise the question the evaluation community has not adequately addressed: how far can inference travel from its evidential and realist roots before the precision of the output misrepresents the uncertainty of the inputs?
The evidence base had real limitations. It was geographically concentrated, technologically skewed toward household rather than productive-use assets, and methodologically uneven favouring narrative and theory based qualitative evidence. The financial models were grounded in the evidence available, not the evidence needed. These are not confessions of failure: they are the conditions under which most synthesis-based investment cases are built. The question is how to navigate them better to guide investment decisions effectively.
This session invites the audience to work through that navigation with us. Caribou will present the methodological choices made at each step, the gaps carried forward, and what the tradeoffs between rigour and usability looked like in practice. We will also put the harder institutional question to the room: even with more methodological caution, would the systems around investment decisions be designed to hear honest uncertainty, or are they structured to receive a usable number? Small groups will then work on specific challenges, developing practical criteria and approaches that evaluators and commissioners can take back to their own contexts. Collectively the groups will tackle questions that include: What criteria should evaluators use to decide whether an evidence base is sufficient to support an investment recommendation? What does 'good enough' look like in practice? When does the chain from synthesis to model to investment case become too long, and what are the early warning signs? How do you communicate uncertainty honestly in an investment case without undermining its usefulness to the investor or commissioner who needs to act? And when the systems around investment decisions are structured to receive a confident number rather than an honest range, what can evaluators actually do about it?
Rationale and Objectives
Synthesis-based investment cases are proliferating in climate, gender, and development investment. The trend is driven by genuine urgency, limited resources, and the structural impossibility of primary evaluation at the pace decisions require. Yet the evaluation community has produced limited guidance on how to manage the inferential distance between synthesis and investment recommendation, particularly when modelling is introduced as an intermediate step. Existing discourse tends toward either methodological perfectionism, which ignores the realities commissioners face, or uncritical pragmatism, which ignores the risks of overreached evidence. This session occupies the productive middle ground: taking the constraints seriously while insisting that working within them responsibly is both possible and necessary.
Its objectives are to:
Reframe the core question from "should we build investment cases on synthesised evidence" to "how do we do so responsibly": presenting a concrete methodological case that practitioners can engage with critically. Examine the specific inferential steps involved in moving from synthesised evidence to financial modelling to investment recommendation, what each step requires, and where the risk of overreach is greatest. Develop, collaboratively with the audience, practical criteria for communicating uncertainty honestly in investment cases, and for knowing when the evidence does not yet warrant the claim being made. Surface the institutional dimension: whether the systems around investment decisions are designed to hear honest uncertainty, and what evaluators and commissioners can do when they are not Contribute to emerging evaluation practice around responsible evidence use in climate and gender investment contexts, where synthesis will remain the primary input for the foreseeable future
Lille Grand Palais
Room 16
1 Bd des Cités Unies
59800 Lille, France