Environmental consequences of development interventions

AVERTING A ‘TRAIN WRECK’:

Taking stock of environmental consequences of development interventions

Nanthikesan, PhD, Lead Evaluation Officer, Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD [First published on EarthEval.org]

It is widely recognised that urgent action is needed to minimise and reverse the damage that human actions, including development activities, have caused to the environment. Across the UN system, efforts are under way to develop common programming safeguards to prevent environmental harm. Parallel efforts among evaluation units to assess the environmental consequences of development actions are very much needed.

IFAD is one of the few exceptions. Over the past 10 years, IOE has gradually institutionalised environmental and social considerations in all its evaluations. Today, its reports are required to assess the performance of projects along a prescribed set of evaluation criteria. These include how well the interventions promoted environmental and natural resources management and strengthened adaptation to climate change.

How did IFAD get there?

Motivation: On the one hand, environmental agencies, such as the Global Environment Facility, and donors, such as the United Kingdom, provided grants for IFAD to test how best to integrate environmental considerations in its projects and, eventually, how to mainstream the practice. On the other, the leadership in IOE shared this recognition, and began to mainstream environmental consequences as an evaluand in all its evaluations.

The system: While the specific pathways may vary from one organization to another, three key guiding principles become evident. First, the mainstreaming the evaluation of environmental consequences should be systemic, not an ad hoc choice of individual evaluation managers. Second, a system does not magically appear in one swoop, but evolves over time to best address organizational needs. Third, this system is likely to be robust and sustained if accounting for environmental consequences is a shared concern among management, programming units, evaluation units and governing bodies.

In IOE, this system that ensures integration of environmental consequences has five interlocking elements:

1. Mainstreaming environmental (and social) considerations in programmes was declared a corporate priority. 2. This corporate priority is mirrored in the evaluation policy, which stipulates that IOE would prepare an evaluation manual. The manual integrates environmental consequences into its evaluation criteria. 3. Capacity and resources are allocated to assess environmental effects. 4. Internal peer reviews are carried out to assess the quality of all evaluations, including by focusing on the coverage of environmental consequences. 5. The responses of IFAD senior management to evaluation recommendations are tracked, including those related to environmental consequences, and progress in implementation is reported to IFAD’s Executive Board.

Challenges and Way Forward

IFAD and IOE have institutionalized all these elements, which are expected to reinforce each other, and thereby offer resilience to organizational changes. Clearly, no system is perfect. IOE continues to face a number of challenges in its path-breaking effort to mainstream evaluation of environmental consequences of IFAD interventions. For instance, the depth of coverage of environmental effects varies across evaluations. As pointed out earlier, not all evaluations can afford the capacities and time required to accomplish the task. Another challenge is the proliferation of mandatory evaluation criteria, which considerably adds to the workload of the small office.

The elements of this ‘system’ continue to evolve in IFAD and IOE. For instance, IFAD’s commitments continue to ratchet up the importance assigned to mainstreaming environmental considerations in its interventions; and the evaluation policy and manual are in the process of being updated with the understanding that the criteria will remain the same and guidance on assessing environmental consequences be strengthened. These changes are expected to strengthen the existing efforts to mainstream evaluating environmental consequences of IFAD interventions.

The elements of IOE’s system may not always be applicable to other organizations. The specifics associated with each element may vary across organizations – for instance, mechanisms for quality assurance, or platforms for learning and accountability. In short, there is no blueprint, no one-size-fits-all path to follow. The hope is that IFAD’s experience can serve as a compass to point to possible pathways for others who are embarking on this important endeavour.