Hi and, as Silva said, thanks for prompting responses to such an important issue.
It's not the first instance of some organisations not following through - either by monitoring or evaluation - on the criteria used to approve a project by their boards or programme committees. Indeed, and a generic point here, interest in the project at this level typically wanes following approval. Few boards receive feedback as to the consequences of their decisions, for good or ill.
Moving on, and as an attempt to answer both your questions - on methods and indicators - simultaneously, in capturing and measuring climate change and enviromental impact, my reflections are about how:
Environmental (and social) safeguards should strive to be more ambitious; that is, by its rating certain metrics helping to predicting and then be used to 'proving' more than the project does no harm. What's wrong with having a balanced set of metrics being about doing good? Would this not help the latter - the doing good - being picked up in a ToC and/or a Logframe, less so an indicator more a result itself, so ensuring they are not forgotten? To what extent climate is integrated into evaluation is at least partially determined by to what extent it is an integral objective and central to the project's design. Or is this too obvious a point to make?
In agriculture related projects, there is limited interest in Indigenous knowledge systems on the culture of farming and conservation. So much so, that one gets the impression that "climate smart" agriculture is necessarily associated with the introduction of outside practice and technology. And I am not being naiive in stating this. Communities and individual farming households vary in the knowledge they have and farmers farm for many different reasons.
How do communities and farmers "monitor and evaluate" their environment, including their farms. Would not they have valid practices and signs (read indicators) to M and E the impacts and to communicate and adapt accordingly. Local cultures, territorial governance systems, sustainable livelihood traditions and the experience of sacredness are all valid issues in this regard.
Finally, when we talk about improvements or changes in the environment/climate change, as well as contributions to improved mitigation and adaptation, we sometimes forget two things. First, to be more inquisitive about how those who make the improvements and/or changes respond to the support projects offer, and the assumptions the project designers made about who will respond, how and why. These are often overlooked. We leap too quickly into "measuring" the consequences of these responses as dictated to by needy logframes and impatience. Second, as Silva pointed out, the need to understand how such improvements are inter-dependent on, not mutually exclusive to, farming and broader ecosystems - meant with its original meaning. The success of one is dependent on an improvement in the other. Take Resilience as another example. Are we saying that a household's ability to becoming more resilient is largely dependent on their acceptance of what any one project offers? In other words, capacities among households in becoming resilient is independent of what is going on and/or what is being provided with support from outside. I certainly hope not.
Apologies for the lengthy reply, yet I hope some of the above helps,
RE: How are development projects affecting the environment and how do we evaluate this impact?
Dear Yosi,
Hi and, as Silva said, thanks for prompting responses to such an important issue.
It's not the first instance of some organisations not following through - either by monitoring or evaluation - on the criteria used to approve a project by their boards or programme committees. Indeed, and a generic point here, interest in the project at this level typically wanes following approval. Few boards receive feedback as to the consequences of their decisions, for good or ill.
Moving on, and as an attempt to answer both your questions - on methods and indicators - simultaneously, in capturing and measuring climate change and enviromental impact, my reflections are about how:
Finally, when we talk about improvements or changes in the environment/climate change, as well as contributions to improved mitigation and adaptation, we sometimes forget two things. First, to be more inquisitive about how those who make the improvements and/or changes respond to the support projects offer, and the assumptions the project designers made about who will respond, how and why. These are often overlooked. We leap too quickly into "measuring" the consequences of these responses as dictated to by needy logframes and impatience. Second, as Silva pointed out, the need to understand how such improvements are inter-dependent on, not mutually exclusive to, farming and broader ecosystems - meant with its original meaning. The success of one is dependent on an improvement in the other. Take Resilience as another example. Are we saying that a household's ability to becoming more resilient is largely dependent on their acceptance of what any one project offers? In other words, capacities among households in becoming resilient is independent of what is going on and/or what is being provided with support from outside. I certainly hope not.
Apologies for the lengthy reply, yet I hope some of the above helps,
Shukrani nyingi na bahati nzuri
Daniel