The Myth of the Good Project

Climate finance tends to divide projects into two categories: those that succeed and those that fail.

The distinction is clean and reassuring.

A project is approved. Funds are disbursed. Activities are completed. Outputs are delivered. Indicators are reported. A final evaluation records progress against the stated objectives.

Success.

Or implementation stalls. Procurement breaks down. Funds remain undisbursed. Targets are missed. The project is restructured, extended, or cancelled.

Failure.

In practice, the boundary is rarely so clear.

A project may complete every formal stage of its cycle and still fail to reach the communities it was designed to serve. It may deliver physical infrastructure while raising serious questions about procurement, value for money, or conflicts of interest. It may report impressive results that rest on weak baselines, incomplete data, or verification conducted by the same actors responsible for delivery.

At the heart of the myth of the good project lies a simple assumption: that a project which performs well against its reported indicators has necessarily earned public confidence.

It has not.

When delivery is not the whole story

Imagine a renewable energy program that installs every planned solar panel on schedule.

The funds are fully disbursed. Procurement is complete. The installations are operational. Reporting milestones are met, and the project closes with encouraging figures on energy generation and emissions avoided.

By conventional measures, it is a successful project.

Now ask a different set of questions.

• What if the procurement process, while formally compliant, was structured in a way that discouraged genuine competition and concentrated value among a small group of connected firms?
• What if some equipment had effectively been sourced before the competitive process began?
• What if community consultations were recorded as completed but held in locations that many affected residents could not reasonably access?
• What if the reported emissions reductions relied on baseline assumptions that were established, measured, and verified by the same organization responsible for implementation?

The panels may still generate electricity.

The project may still contribute to climate mitigation.

But the fact that something useful was delivered does not settle whether public resources were awarded fairly, whether value for money was achieved, or whether the evidence supporting the claimed results merits confidence.

These questions are not merely hypothetical.

In March 2026, the European Public Prosecutor's Office announced an investigation into suspected fraud involving European Union funding for small solar power plants in Slovenia. According to EPPO, the company under investigation allegedly submitted applications stating that solar panels would be supplied by an independent third party, although the equipment was provided by the applicant itself. Four applications resulted in payments totaling approximately €955,000. The investigation remains ongoing, and all persons concerned are presumed innocent.

The case is instructive because the existence of solar installations does not, by itself, answer the integrity question. Renewable energy infrastructure may have been delivered, while legitimate questions remained about how the funding was obtained and whether the tender conditions had been respected.

A desirable output does not cure a compromised process.

When completion is not achievement

Imagine a climate resilience program intended to protect communities most exposed to flooding.

The project reports that it reached its target number of beneficiaries. Activities are completed within budget. Financial audits identify no material irregularities, and the program is formally closed.

On paper, it has succeeded.

• But suppose the beneficiary list relied on administrative records that were two census cycles out of date.
• Suppose recently displaced households were absent from those records.
• Suppose the implementing partner had little presence in the most remote communities.
• Suppose verification of beneficiary reach depended largely on information collected by the same organization responsible for delivery.

The reported numbers may be technically accurate. They may still provide an incomplete picture of who was reached, who was excluded, and whether resilience was strengthened where vulnerability was greatest.

Here too, experience shows that a project can move through implementation, disburse its funding, and reach formal closure without achieving the purpose for which it was established.

A UNDP project financed by the Global Environment Facility was designed to strengthen energy efficiency standards in Russia and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The project ran from 2010 to 2017 with approximately €8 million in funding. Transparency International's account of the case reports that the project's final evaluation concluded it had delivered no emissions reductions, despite concerns raised during implementation. A later independent review found that senior UNDP management had repeatedly failed to act on warning signs and concluded that corruption on the project was highly likely.

The money moved. Activities were undertaken. Reports were produced. The project reached the end of its formal life.

Its central climate objective was not achieved.

That is not a minor implementation shortcoming. It is the difference between completing a project and fulfilling its purpose.

A more demanding definition of success

Climate finance projects operate through long and often fragmented delivery chains. Funds may pass through international institutions, national authorities, implementing entities, contractors, consultants, community organizations, and financial intermediaries before producing an outcome on the ground.

At each stage, decisions are made.

• Who qualifies?
• Who receives a contract?
• Which communities are consulted?
• How are costs assessed?
• Who verifies delivery?
• What evidence is accepted?
• Which concerns are escalated, and which are explained away?

A final report can summarize outputs. It cannot, by itself, answer all of these questions.

Nor can an audit designed primarily to confirm that expenditure was authorized and documented establish whether beneficiaries were selected fairly, whether procurement delivered genuine value, or whether claimed climate outcomes were independently substantiated.

This does not make conventional project indicators unimportant. Outputs, budgets, timelines, and results frameworks remain essential.

They are simply not sufficient.

A more credible assessment of success must consider at least three dimensions:

• Delivery: Was the promised activity or asset produced?
• Purpose: Did the project achieve the climate or resilience objective for which it was funded?
• Integrity: Were the resources, decisions, and evidence managed in a manner that merits confidence?

A project may perform well in one dimension and poorly in another.

A solar installation may be operational, while the process used to secure public financing remains under investigation.

A program may close administratively, while its final evaluation finds that it achieved no measurable emissions reductions.

A resilience intervention may reach its numerical target, while systematically overlooking the communities most exposed to harm.

Calling each of these projects simply successful or unsuccessful conceals more than it reveals.

A more honest standard

Climate finance should celebrate projects that deliver real mitigation, adaptation, and resilience benefits. But celebration should rest on more than completion, expenditure, or reported outputs.

The better question is not simply:

Did the project succeed?

It is:

What exactly succeeded, according to whose evidence, through what process, and with what degree of confidence?

That question changes how projects are designed. It changes what institutions supervise, what evaluators investigate, and what funders choose to verify. It also changes what the climate finance community learns from projects that appear, at first glance, to have gone well.

The purpose of climate finance integrity is not to turn every project into a suspected scandal.

It is to ensure that the label "successful" carries enough substance to mean something.

A good project is not simply one that completes its activities or reports its results.

It is one whose processes, outcomes, and evidence merit confidence.