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Evaluation at the nexus: Evaluating sustainable development in the 2020s
Evaluating Environment in International Development ; : 46-60, 2021.
Article in English | Scopus | ID: covidwho-1215592
ABSTRACT
Evaluation is finally starting to recognise that humans, and our goals for human development, rights and security rest on our extraction from the natural system. Evaluators have until recently ignored the natural system, which has created a systematic positive and silo reinforcing bias in evaluation and risks rendering evaluation irrelevant for the major issues of the day - extinction and the climate crisis. As evaluation recognises and addresses its responsibilities to contribute to forestalling extinction it will need to mainstream sustainability, meaning that all evaluation will need to start from the nexus with connected human and natural systems. This requires an evaluation capacity and functions that are ready for sustainability. The pathway to evaluation that is sustainability-ready requires that all evaluation undertakings value the natural system and immediately recognise and address important differences between human and natural systems, scale, units of account and connectivity. The knowledge and methods exist in evaluation, social and biophysical sciences. The challenge is therefore not technical but political. It is political because the origins of evaluation and the social sciences on which evaluation rests are in the values and structures that are strongly founded on a claim that humans have dominion over all other things and that all value rests upon human effort. This claim of dominion extends to other, that is, non-European, humans and underpins colonialism and racism. Mainstreaming sustainability will prove challenging and for evaluation to progress it will have to elevate the importance of pursuit of use. The premise of this chapter is that evaluation has an important role in assisting sustainable development efforts get closer to a sustainable and productive nexus where we can make gains in poverty reduction and improve the environment in the present, thereby contributing to a sustainable and better future. Much has changed in the six years since the first edition of this volume was published. The inextricable connection between human and natural systems has been demonstrated with increasing intensity and frequency;wildfires, drought, flooding, cyclones and most recently the Covid-19 pandemic are translating the repeated forecasts and warnings of impending climate and sustainability crises into indisputable realities. What was termed climate change five years ago is now framed as climate crisis or extinction. We are clearly reaching the limits to extraction from the natural system, limits beyond which there does not appear to be a return. We also appear to be reaching new limits to the ability of capital to increase exploitation through increasing technology, destruction of labour and social protections, globalisation and state capture. © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Juha I. Uitto;individual chapters, the contributors.

Full text: Available Collection: Databases of international organizations Database: Scopus Type of study: Experimental Studies Language: English Journal: Evaluating Environment in International Development Year: 2021 Document Type: Article

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Full text: Available Collection: Databases of international organizations Database: Scopus Type of study: Experimental Studies Language: English Journal: Evaluating Environment in International Development Year: 2021 Document Type: Article