Evaluation in the time of pandemic

On a gondola ride up to a biodiversity rich mountain area in Sichuan, China (photo by the author).

The year 2020 has been defined by the COVID-19 pandemic that has disrupted lives and livelihoods everywhere around the world. The way we work has been interrupted and altered. This is true for those working to advance and manage international environmental projects and programs – it is also true for the professionals working to evaluate for effectiveness and impact of those initiatives. At the GEF Independent Evaluation Office (IEO), the body I lead, we have had to innovate in our data collection and analysis to counter the travel and other limitations posed by the situation. The fact that the coronavirus causing the pandemic is zoonotic, and thus directly linked to how humanity exploits and abuses the natural environment, places it at the center of the Global Environment Facility’s work. For independent evaluators, equally, understanding the connections between the human and natural systems, between environmental health and human health has become essential.

The pandemic struck at a critical time for the IEO, as we are in the midst of the Seventh Comprehensive Evaluation of the GEF, known as OPS7. These periodic evaluations are an important part of the GEF’s four-year replenishment cycle, providing evidence of the multilateral funding body’s impact and performance and informing the preparations of new policies and programs. In the IEO, we rely on solid data and information from multiple sources as the basis of our evaluations, using both quantitative and qualitative methods for analysis.

While analysis of portfolio data and the use of project-level evaluation reports are building blocks of our evaluations, being able to collect information from the field in the countries where GEF-supported projects and programs take place is usually essential to our work. After all, while the GEF’s purpose is to tackle pressing global environmental problems, and support global environmental benefits, its projects and programs are also intended to benefit the countries and the people in those countries where they operate. It is important for our evaluators to be able to observe what happens on the ground in all the places and all the areas where the GEF operates. We need the perspectives of the government and civil society representatives, as well as the agencies that implement and execute the projects. Crucially, we must understand the needs and concerns of the people whose lives are affected by GEF-supported interventions. Therefore, data collection in the field is a regular part of our evaluations. When the seriousness of the pandemic hit home in early March, IEO colleagues were conducting field visits in far-flung places, from Samoa to Ecuador, and had to be called home on short notice.

Our pre-pandemic strategy of expanding the use of national consultants for country expertise and broader country coverage over time helped us in this time of crisis, and we were quickly able to leverage experts in the field around the world to continue our work. In the evaluations that have continued to progress this year, we were able to engage local in-country consultants to collect data and information about GEF programs and projects, based on agreed protocols. These included country studies in Mozambique and Costa Rica for the Evaluation of the Role of Medium Size Projects in the GEF Partnership, and project cases in Peru and the Philippines for the Evaluation of GEF Interventions in the Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining Sector. There still were some limitations, as we did not want to expose our consultants or stakeholders to any health risk, but the national consultants were in a much better position to interact with and hear from local actors than we would have otherwise been able to glean.

Several evaluations contributing directly to OPS7 were already well underway before COVID-19, with field work completed before the pandemic made travel impossible. But there were also earlier studies that could be mined for the purposes of current evaluations. The datasets and information collected had been utilized for other purposes but could be used also to dig deeper into present evaluation questions.

It is worth noting that the IEO is not facing these challenges alone. The networks in which we participate, including the United Nations Evaluation Group and the Evaluation Cooperation Group of the international financial institutions, have been actively finding solutions in similar circumstances. We have been able to work together with our partners, such as the independent evaluation bodies of the World Bank, UNDP, and IFAD, in coordinating and honing robust approaches to data collection under these extraordinary circumstances. In some areas, we have been recognized as leaders. One such area pertains to the use of geospatial tools, including remotely sensed data. Those familiar with IEO’s work know that we have pioneered such techniques since OPS5, and our work has become increasingly sophisticated in recent years. We have expanded our analysis to factors beyond land cover change and vegetation productivity to also now include value-for-money and socioeconomic analyses. In a recent Uganda case study, the IEO team overlaid data on GEF-supported sustainable forest management projects with World Bank socioeconomic household survey data, which also was geocoded, and was able to demonstrate a positive correlation between the GEF interventions and household wellbeing.

Our role as independent evaluators is not only to verify whether each project or program has achieved the goals set for it. Evaluation goes far beyond performance auditing in that respect. To be truly useful, evaluation must not only look at what was achieved in the past but also take a perspective towards the future. Such a perspective must be based on an analysis of what has worked, under what circumstances, and why. We must also look for missed opportunities and unintended consequences. To be able to do this, evaluation must tap into cutting-edge knowledge on the topic being evaluated, especially in areas that are novel in the context of the GEF. In the evaluations of GEF Support in Fragile and Conflict-affected Situations and gold mining, the IEO worked closely with leading external experts who could bring to the table state-of-the-art thinking that would help the GEF move forward in these critical areas.

The ongoing pandemic has forced us to think creatively about evaluating the GEF. In light of the above, I am personally confident that the IEO will be able to continue delivering quality evaluations that our partners have come to expect from us. Equally, the Seventh Comprehensive Evaluation of the GEF will provide timely and reliable insights into the next replenishment process, along with lessons learned from this novel experience that will feed into future evaluations processes as well.

[Originally published at the Global Environment Facility website at https://www.thegef.org/blog/evaluation-time-pandemic]

Towards evaluation for a sustainable and just future

Transporting logs on Rio Tapajos in Amazonia (photo by author).

Over the past eight months, the novel coronavirus pandemic has infected some 20 million people and killed more than 700,000, sparing virtually no country. The economic and social consequences have been devastating. The virus SARS-CoV-2 that caused COVID-19 crossed over from its non-human host, probably a bat, directly or more likely through an intermediate host like a pangolin, to a human in or around the city of Wuhan in China in late 2019. The exact transmission mechanism is still not known but the root causes are clear. The spill-over of zoonotic viruses like SARS-CoV-2 is becoming more common as we come into ever closer contacts with animals, both domesticated and wild.  As human activities extend deeper into undisturbed ecosystems, undiscovered pathogens are released. The destruction is driven by the expansion of agriculture and cattle ranching, logging and deforestation, road construction, mining, new settlements and urban sprawl, making space for the growing human population and its ever increasing demands for raw materials, food stuffs and consumer goods.

Although COVID-19 in itself was not known, the coming pandemic was widely predicted by scientists and there were even government taskforces set out to prepare us for its eventuality. There were precedents—SARS, MERS, H1N1, Zika, Ebola and others—although their impacts were much more modest. COVID-19 spread like a wildfire in a globalized world—there were 3 billion airline trips taken in 2019—due to its characteristics of being airborne and contagious before infected persons become symptomatic.

What does any of this have to do with evaluation, you might ask. In my view, everything. And if not, what is the relevance of evaluation to the real problems of the world? The pandemic is an illustration of the kind of challenges we face today, how interconnected the world is, and how events in one place have global consequences. It also shows how economic development and environmental degradation are intimately intertwined. As we cut down trees, not only do we come into contact with lethal pathogens, but we also undermine the forest’s ability to sequester carbon thereby speeding up global warming. As people get richer, their diets tend to become more meat-based. There are now half a billion cows and 23 billion chicken on the planet. There is a patch the size of Denmark in the Amazon, which has been cleared to grow soy beans to feed pigs in Denmark. Another consequence of the increased meat consumption is higher rates of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases even in countries that previously didn’t experience them. A recent study by Harvard University provided strongest evidence yet linking air pollution directly to higher mortality. Human health and ecosystem health are inseparable.

The pandemic has affected different groups and communities differently. In the USA, Black, Indigenous and other People of Colour (BIPOC) have been disproportionately hit because they are more likely to be employed in essential jobs that cannot be done remotely, and their living conditions are more cramped. They may also have more pre-existing medical conditions rendering them more vulnerable to the virus. Climate change affects the poor and vulnerable communities hardest, whether it is those living on the low-lying coast of Bangladesh pummelled by more frequent cyclones and sea-level rise or small farmers in African drylands suffering during prolonged droughts.

Many evaluators write about these global challenges, using terms like ‘complex’ and ‘wicked,’ but I am not sure that the practice of evaluation has kept up with the theory. Evaluation as a profession has its roots in social inquiry, where we test the effectiveness of interventions on a well-defined treatment population against a control group. We may use experimental or quasi-experimental tools, or we may lean more towards more participatory and qualitative approaches, but either way the focus is on a single intervention and its effects. Our evaluations test the effectiveness of the intervention in terms of its pre-determined objectives. The desire is to be able to attribute any changes in the outcome to the intervention—or, recognizing the complexity and presence of multiple actors, at least the specific contributions of the intervention.

Apart from being narrowly project-focused, evaluations are still driven by donor concerns for accountability and ‘value for money.’ This treats the central question as a matter of simple accounting instead of a choice between types of intervention or organization that can, say, lift the largest number of people out of poverty with the least amount of money. To make things worse, the accounting in development cooperation is for the purposes of the donors and their priorities, not for the benefit of the claim-holders that the project is intended to benefit. This accounting mentality in evaluation tends to miss the big picture and may end up doing more harm than good.

Seldom do evaluations look at the big picture: Are we actually doing the right thing? Is the intervention that we are promoting meaningful in the larger whole? Is it something that the intended beneficiaries want and need? Is it fixing one part of the problem but creating others elsewhere? Is it having unintended consequences for the environment, for disadvantaged groups, for indigenous peoples, for power relations, etc.?

We must incorporate the environment into our evaluations. Sustainable development lies on social, economic and environmental foundations, yet evaluation—like national accounting—is almost exclusively concerned with the economic and, to a lesser degree, social capital, while natural capital and its depreciation are considered external to the system. According to the World Bank, low-income countries get 47% of their wealth from natural capital. This figure certainly underestimates the value of ecosystem services, in terms of clean water and air, health benefits, recreation, protection against natural hazards, etc. Evaluators must learn how to operate at the nexus of environment and development, which means understanding the interplay between human and natural systems.

Some of these lessons come out clearly in the evaluation of the GEF Global Wildlife Program, which is directly relevant to warding off pandemics such as the current one. The evaluation revealed the need to address the root causes of illegal wildlife trade on multiple fronts while also protecting endangered species in situ. Working with local communities to provide sustainable livelihoods is important, but not sufficient. It is essential to address political will, corruption and demand for wildlife products in the market countries of Asia, Europe and North America. Such interventions—and evaluating them—require holistic perspectives and a broad understanding of the dynamic systems.

For evaluation to remain relevant, it must rise above its project mentality and start looking beyond the internal logic of the interventions that are evaluated. It must systematically search for unintended consequences that may lie outside of the immediate scope of the evaluation. It must expand its vision to encompass the coupled human and natural systems and how they interact. And it must resist focusing on accountability for donors and instead make sure that it contributes to learning, for the wellbeing of the beneficiaries and nature in an equitable manner. If we achieve this, evaluation will be better positioned to contribute to more sustainable and just development in an interconnected world.

[Originally published on the website of the European Evaluation Society (https://europeanevaluation.org/2020/08/17/towards-evaluation-for-a-sustainable-and-just-future/)]

It's a matter of cultural standards

How the Japanese deal with the pandemic is illustrative of what’s wrong in America.

The US just set a new record: more than 40,000 new cases of COVID-19 infections in one day. This is the end of June 2020 when many states have been reopening their economies and people around the country have breathed a big sigh of relief: The pandemic is over and we survived it! Except that it is not over and many did not survive. So far there have been more than 125,000 deaths confirmed to have been caused by the virus in the US. This is a quarter of all deaths globally (Americans stand for just over 4% of the world population).

Meanwhile in Japan, there is growing concern that a second wave of the pandemic is about to hit the country. This widespread fear among the general population and politicians alike has been caused by the fact that over the past three weeks or so there has been an increase in the number of new cases detected daily, mostly in the capital city. It is important to note, however, that these infection figures causing the panic are entirely in a different range than those in America. On Saturday, June 27, Tokyo discovered 57 new infections. The day before that, the figure was 54 and the day before that 55. That is 55, not 55,000.

Now, your reaction may be that, well, Japan is a small country. It is indeed much smaller that the United States, just 377,975 km² (147,937 sq. miles), as compared with the 9,833,520 km2 (3,796,742 square miles) of the USA. The US thus has many times the land area of Japan, but Japan’s population of 126 million is well over a third of America’s 328 million. Japan’s population density is therefore many times higher than that of the United States. Pandemics thrive in densely populated places. Tokyo is one of the largest cities in the world—probably the largest if you count the surrounding areas the form the contiguous metropolitan area. Just the area falling under the administrative unit of Tokyo proper houses 14 million people, one-third more than New York City.

Despite this enormous population concentration, Japan has so far only had just over 18,000 corona cases, as compared with America’s almost 2.5 million. Japan also sits next to China, where the pandemic started at the end of last year, and is a major destination for Chinese tourists: 9.6 million Chinese visited Japan in 2019, some of them bringing the virus with them, especially to the northern island of Hokkaido that experienced an early surge in infections.

So what might explain these striking differences? Japan’s Finance Minister Taro Aso, as reported by The Japan Times, had a short and clear answer: Cultural standards. Aso was criticized for his insensitivity, including by some of his fellow politicians in Japan (this is not the first time that he is taking flak for blunt comments that can be seen as culturally chauvinistic), but it would be impossible to dismiss his observation offhand. Unlike in the USA where efforts to (belatedly) control the spread of the virus through lockdowns and social distancing have been met with armed protests, the Japanese never implemented any draconian closings. Sure, there were many common sense changes—restaurants would stop serving alcohol early in the evening encouraging people to return home, train service was significantly reduced—but much of It was done voluntarily.

There are different forces at play. One is that the Japanese tend to be on the average a well-educated populace with a high science literacy. This naturally comes with a respect for scientific authority. People would heed the advice that epidemiologists and medical professionals would give them. This is the first obvious contrast to the US where an anti-science bias has long and deep roots, as documented by the historian Richard Hofstadter in his 1963 classic Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Many people simply reject scientifically proven facts. Even during the COVID-19 crisis, there have been people claiming that the pandemic is just a liberal ploy to destroy the American way of life.

Secondly, Japan is ethnically and socially a very homogenous country with very low numbers of foreigners and relatively small differences between the rich and the poor. This homogeneity has maintained centuries old social structures and hierarchies. It is also a society with generally a high level of trust: between people and between people and the government. Needless to say, nothing could be further from truth when it comes to the American society today where divisions run deep between different groups and where distrust of the government has in recent years risen to feverish levels.

The Japanese homogeneity is of course not pure idyll. Its downside is that people who are different are often frowned upon, even ostracized. During the pandemic earlier in the spring, “virus vigilantes” would harass those seen as breaking the social rules and putting other people at risk. There were also reports of discrimination against people who would be—rightly or falsely—suspected of carrying the virus, including quite unreasonably health care workers.

Respect for rules and other people’s safety and comfort, however, runs very deep in the Japanese culture. This would be part of the “high cultural standards” that Taro Aso was referring to as helping ward off the spread of the virus. Having lived in Japan for almost a decade and visiting frequently since then, I can attest to the extreme politeness and considerateness that people show to others. Wearing surgical masks has for decades been par for the course during the flu and pollen allergy seasons, not to protect oneself but out of consideration to others. Inconveniencing other people is highly embarrassing. So when the pandemic started, everyone naturally started wearing a mask. Cleanliness overall is at a remarkably high level in Japan, so again few adjustments had to be made in terms of hygiene.

No formal travel limitations had to be put in place as people censored themselves. My wife hails from Iwate, an area between the central mountains and the Pacific Ocean in the northern part of the main island, Honshu. Iwate has been the only prefecture in the country where no COVID cases have been recorded throughout the pandemic (they may well be there, but no-one has got sick enough to require hospitalization). This fact is thanks to health checks of people entering the prefecture that were not mandated by the central government and, notably, by self-regulation by travelers. Like my wife has pointed out: Being the person who gets to be known as the one who brought the virus to a hitherto uncontaminated place would bring unbearable shame to the person and her/his family, so people would rather not risk acting as the vector.

So, now there is a resurgence of the virus in Japan, which has led to quick action by both the authorities and regular people. Scientists have been able to trace the infection clusters that have emerged in the past few weeks since Japan started getting back to normal after new cases almost disappeared towards the end of May. These new clusters are almost all traceable to entertainment areas in Tokyo—karaoke bars, clubs and gyms, “associated with heavy breathing in close proximity,” as a new scientific paper put it.

This same pattern is, of course, visible in the States. Partying over the Memorial Day weekend resulted in a new spread of infections. The pandemic has now moved south, to places like Florida, Arizona and Texas that opened up their economies prematurely, crowding beaches and bars as the weather warmed. On Friday, June 26, the governors of Texas and Florida were again forced to close down bars as new COVID-19 cases shot through the roof. Florida alone reported 8,942 new cases in one day alone.

The question now is, what will happen next. There may be a second wave hitting Japan but it is bound to be a very small one that will again be curbed in a few weeks, as people refrain from behaviors that put themselves and others at risk. It is hard to see the pandemic contained as easily in the US. The rudderless and reactive government response, self-centered instant gratification-seeking behavior of individuals, hugely divided society, and distrust of authority will guarantee that.

The renowned political scientist Francis Fukuyama recently wrote in Foreign Affairs that the factors that have determined successful response to the pandemic across countries are state capacity, social trust, and leadership. The United States has failed in all three. Others have observed that Americans seem to have simply given up on the pandemic, focusing on different things instead. Some are serious—like the Black Lives Matter and police brutality—but many people just want to get their lives back, whether it’s getting on with work and making money or simply enjoying the summer. Now it’s coming back to bite us—and the world watches in stunned bafflement as the country that used to lead the way in so many ways now only leads the way to a downward spiral. In the meantime, the European Union (EU) mulls a travel ban for American visitors and countries like Japan require a 14-day quarantine for anyone arriving there, leaving people like us spinning our wheels at our homes and watching as every new day brings more and more misery that could have been avoided.

Published in Medium.

Coping with the Post-Pandemic Commute

The US Centers for Disease Control, CDC, has issued interim guidance for businesses and employers as employees start returning to work while the COVID-19 crisis is still ongoing. Some of these guidelines are outright environmentally detrimental, which is both ironic and shortsighted given that it is clearly established that the pandemic is a direct result of environmental abuse and degradation. It is a clear indication of the challenges we face if a high-level scientific body like CDC is unable to think more holistically and only focuses narrowly on its immediate mandate.

Most of the measures recommended by CDC are necessary. These include hazards assessments and improving ventilation systems at work places, as well as requiring workers to wear protective masks and enforcing social distancing. These are needed because in the US—unlike in some other countries (notably in East Asia) where government action was early and decisive and the public responses were disciplined—the pandemic is nowhere near its end. In fact, despite the upbeat atmosphere and hopeful calls for a summer of freedom, we still see thousands of new infections and hundreds of deaths on a daily basis. It is great that there are responsible and sober-minded adults, like those at the CDC, who keep realism in the picture. I have nothing but respect for that.

What I am talking about pertains to the parts of the guidelines that state:

"If feasible, offer employees incentives to use forms of transportation that minimize close contact with others (e.g., biking, walking, driving or riding by car either alone or with household members)."

None of us is clamoring to get on a crowded subway or bus during peak rush hour, but encouraging people to ride alone in their private cars should not be the default solution. That would serve to turn back time by several decades. We know that for many Americans driving is virtually the only transport option. Effective public transportation is available only in a limited number of large cities, mostly on the East Coast. It has taken decades to build up the infrastructure, which still is far from perfect even in the best places.

Take New York City. The Second Avenue subway line, that was initially proposed in the 1920s, has been under construction since 1972. The first three stations uptown only opened in 2017. The project has faced many headwinds over the decades, from fiscal crises to political and resident opposition, reflecting generally how hard it is to promote public transportation (or any other public service, for that matter) in the United States. Contrast that with how Beijing expanded its subway system by 40% (at a cost of $3.3 billion) in just about 3 years during the build-up to the 2008 Summer Olympics.  This would be possible even in the States, if the political will were there.

Encouraging employers to subsidize private car use for commuting would be a further blow to the development of sensible transport policies. Note further that the CDC guidance calls for people to drive either alone or with household members, so even carpooling is off the books. Incentives would presumably include free or subsidized parking and perhaps gas money (currently, in Washington, DC, where I live, many employers subsidize employees’ metro and bus fares). This would inevitably lead to increased congestion, not only in the city but on the roads towards it (again in DC, the surrounding Beltway is already notorious for its hellish traffic).

Apart from congestion, the increased car traffic would reverse all the benefits that we’ve gained in terms of reduced air pollution, which in itself is a huge factor in human health. In fact, the lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 crisis have had a significant positive effect on global air pollution levels as traffic and industrial production have been suppressed. Research reported in the Lancet detected measurable mortality reductions in China in response to the reduced air pollution levels. In this case, CDC is thus sacrificing the long-term health of citizens for short-term control of the pandemic.

To be fair, the CDC guidance first mentions walking and biking as preferred modes of commuting, as they should be. The problem of course is that these are challenging options for many people who either live too far from work or who live in places where safe infrastructure—such as sidewalks or biking lanes—are missing. And there are so many such places in the USA, while Europe in particular is way ahead in this respect.

Much depends on urban planning and city design. And transportation is key: how can people move where they have to go—and equally importantly, how far do they have to go. Public transportation should and will remain important but it needs to be made safer through improving health and hygiene measures. Rides on crowded subways have been understandably reduced everywhere but there are things that can be done to make them safer and more pleasant. The peak morning rush hour ridership in Tokyo’s famously packed subway system decreased by nearly 60% between the end of January and end of May 2020. In Seoul, South Korea, one of the most successful places to curb the pandemic early on, crews disinfect the stations after the last train of the night has gone. While New York City has recently restored its subway and bus services during daytime, the MTA has suspended overnight service indefinitely. On June 10, 2020, the New York Times reported that the subway has never been as clean as it is now.

A key to a safe mass transit seems to be to manage passenger numbers, especially at peak hours. This would point to the need to maintain regular schedules—and increase the number of trains and buses, rather than the opposite like has been the tendency in some places. What businesses and employers can do is to regularize telework, so that fewer people have to take the transport at the same given time. If more people can work more of the time from home and if the hours spent at the office are more flexible, then the peaks can be evened out. Of course, these solutions only apply to office workers. People in services and other essential professions will still need to keep regular schedules, but reducing the need for office workers at specific times would still make a big difference in commuter numbers.

Where private cars dominate, pedestrians are squeezed onto narrow and crowded corridors. Research has shown that widening sidewalks and reserving areas for pedestrian streets limits crowding and allows for more physical space between people. Parks provide public amenities where people can relax and which can be pleasant passages for moving from one place to another. Trees clean the air from pollutants and provide habitat for non-human animals. In continental Europe, there has long been a trend towards reserving city centers to pedestrians, from Copenhagen and Louvain to Munich and Zurich. In the US, New York again is taking some bold steps. The city has announced plans to roll out 20 miles (32 km) of new car-free bus lanes. It has also closed off some 35 miles (56 km) of streets from car traffic and created 9 miles (14 km) of protected bike lanes to allow for social distancing during the pandemic. These are a good start and one hopes they will remain permanently.

Mixed neighborhoods that combine residential and commercial uses reduce the need for transportation time and favor walking and biking.  Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo promotes the notion of a 15-minute city where citizens' needs for living, shopping, work and leisure could be met within a 15-minute radius.

Some good things have come out of the COVID-19 tragedy. Some have to do with the reduced traffic that has had a visible impact on air pollution and led to associated health benefits. We’ve also seen reports about wildlife (not only rats) reclaiming areas in urban parks and even streets. It has also led to some rethinking about how our lives and especially our urban areas could be turned into more sustainable and environmentally friendly ones. Let’s build upon these positive developments, rather than going reflexively back to our old ways.

Overall, what is good for mitigating pandemics, is also good for the environment and human health more generally. Mixed neighborhoods potentially reduce suburban sprawl. Parks provide open spaces for people, clean the air and give some room for other species. Reduced dependence on cars reduces air pollution and induces people to move more. And people will also have more leisure time with less spent commuting.

 

Summer of Hazards: Pandemic, hurricanes and other dangeers

We’re in for a wild ride this summer if the early indications are to be believed. The COVID-19 pandemic is not showing any signs of waning, irrespective of how tired people are getting to shelter in space and despite wishful thinking by politicians. Unlike in Asia and Europe where the numbers of infections are actually going down rapidly, the US pandemic is still growing. Just in one day, May 21^st, there were more than 24,000 new cases reported in the United States. Only the geographical patterns are shifting.

On top of the pandemic we are seeing other threats creeping up on us, many of them also related to the global environment. I say also, as it is a scientific fact that the root causes of this pandemic—like the ones before it and others to come after we have cleared this one—lie in how we interact with and abuse the natural environment. The virus causing COVID-19 is zoonotic, meaning it originated in animals and jumped over to humans. Such spillovers have gotten more frequent as our contacts with both domesticated and wild animals have intensified and as our activities have spread deeper into previously undisturbed environments through urban sprawl, agricultural expansion, road building, logging, mining and other disruptive actions.

While weather is notoriously hard to predict even with the highly sophisticated computer simulations using big data that today are used for the purpose, virtually all major organizations engaged in such predictions agree that the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season will be way more active than in an average year.

NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, released its annual forecast on Thursday, May 21, predicting there will be 13-19 named storms in the season from June 1 to November 30, as opposed to an average of 12 such storms. Out of these, NOAA predicts 6-10 may become hurricanes, compared with an average year’s 6 hurricanes. Three to six out of these could further develop into major hurricanes—or category 3-5 storms—with wind speeds of more than 111 miles per hour (178 km/h). Of course, we do not know how many of these will actually hit continental USA, but even one major hurricane can do terrible damage.

Tropical cyclones—types of storms that include hurricanes in the Atlantic and typhoons in the Pacific—are named in order to easily distinguish between them as in busy times more than one may be active. Names are usually given to storms that reach sustained wind speeds of at least 40 miles per hour (65 km/h). Although the season only officially starts on June 1 there already was one—Arthur—that formed as early as May 16 off the Florida coast. While Arthur veered off to the open sea having brought only moderate rain and wind to the southeastern coast, its early appearance can be seen as a harbinger of things to come.

The increased hurricane activity is inevitably linked to climate change. It is statistically impossible to link any particular hurricane or storm to climate change. However, at a larger scale and over longer timeframes scientists are able to model how the warming trends increase the likelihood of hurricanes in terms of their frequency and intensity. One of the key drivers of stronger hurricane activity is the warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the tropical parts of the Atlantic and the Caribbean. The primary reason for this is the warming of global temperatures caused first and foremost by the burning of fossil fuels for energy and transportation. Cutting down forests to make way for agriculture and human settlements, as well as methane emissions from cattle ranching are other huge culprits.

A warming climate gives a double whammy to coastal communities. It brings more frequent and larger storms, and it causes sea levels to rise as the warming water expands. Places like the Outer Banks off the North Carolina coast will bear the brunt of these changes, but in the medium term the entire Eastern Seaboard and its large cities from Miami to New York are vulnerable.

Further inland, this past week we saw two catastrophic dam failures in the Tittabawassee River basin in central Michigan, forcing the evacuation of 10,000 residents from their homes in the midst of the pandemic. This is another climate-related disaster. The dams were breached because of excessive rainfall upstream. The engineers described this as a once in a 500 years event. However, such standards are rapidly becoming obsolete with rainfall and other weather patterns changing as a result of global warming, bringing increased rains to some places and droughts to others.

A natural hazard only becomes a disaster when it meets frail infrastructure. The broken dams failed because they were in poor shape. CBS News reported on Thursday (May 21, 2020) that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, had in 2018 revoked the license from Boyce Hydro Power, the company that operated one of the failed dams, the Edenville Dam, citing the company’s “long history of non-compliance” related to the dam’s ability to cope with a major flood.

This is by no means a unique situation amongst America’s 91,000 dams. As reported by the Guardian (May 23, 2020), the federal government’s National Inventory of Dams identifies over 15,000 dams in the country that would likely result in deaths should they fail. According to the inventory, at least 2,300 of them are in poor shape. The average age of the US dams is 57 years (the Edenville Dam was built in 1924) and many are hardly maintained. Seventy percent of the nation’s dams are under the jurisdiction of state governments and another 5 percent watched over by the federal government, but one quarter have no governmental oversight at all. Even in cases where regulatory agencies point out to deficiencies, the operators often fail to follow up because of high costs associated with repairs and upgrades.

The dams, of course, are but one aspect of America’s infrastructure that has been rendered vulnerable due to decades of lacking investment in maintenance. Powerlines, bridges and other transportation infrastructure will be equally susceptible to damage and disruption from floods, storms, landslides, erosion and other events that are likely to increase as the climate changes and we continue cutting down forests and building in unsafe places.

In the highly politically polarized environment of the USA today, there is a certain irony in how these multiple hazards manifest themselves geographically. One of the reasons why it has been easy for protesters to dismiss the pandemic thus far is that it has mostly ravaged big cities like New York and San Francisco. These cities are also liberal bastions and epitomize the degenerate coastal elites in the minds of many in the heartland. This has allowed people to believe in conspiracy theories that the pandemic is really just an invention of those who want to foil President Trump’s re-election bid or force vaccinations upon people or just generally destroy the American way of life. This is now changing as the pandemic spreads to smaller cities and rural areas, when states are prematurely opening up their economies. Amongst the states with the highest increases in infection rates are now Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, North Carolina and Michigan.

Some of these are the same places that are going to suffer from the other hazards, as is indeed the case of Michigan where the dam breaches and flooding disaster added to the pandemic woes. The hurricanes, naturally, are mostly going to pound the states on the Atlantic shore. The hardest hit will be those in the south, from Florida to North Carolina—including its barrier islands—places where beach vacationing plays a central part in lifestyle and economy.

Unfortunately, too, as we’ve seen in the past, the first ones to be hit by hurricanes are the Caribbean islands whose economies are so totally dependent on tourism. In September 2017, Puerto Rico was devastated by Hurricane Maria whose effects are still acutely felt on the island. The storm caused as much as $95 billion in damages, wiped out 80 percent of the island’s agricultural crop, and has since caused more than 130,000 residents to leave the island. It has taken months to restore reliable power and water to households. This spring, the pandemic has halted tourism to Puerto Rico as well as other islands placing a further strain on the recovery and people’s lives.

It is of course not only the islands and coastal areas that are exposed to such multiple hazards. Dams and other vulnerable infrastructure exist everywhere in the country. Like always, the people who suffer most are the ones who have the least resources to fall back on when they lose their property, livelihoods or health. They also tend to be the ones living in locations most exposed to both natural and manmade hazards. COVID-19 has demonstrated clearly the inequalities at play, and many of them have a geographical dimension. But that is a story for another piece.

Now, as many states are reopening and so many people can’t wait to get their lives back, it is not an easy message to deliver that the summer that is so full of hope may end up being full of hazards instead. Medical experts and epidemiologists all seem to agree that getting back to normal, enjoying the parties, the barbecues, the beaches that go with a good summer, will almost inevitably result in second waves of the pandemic in places where it now has started to wane—and to full blooms in places that have yet to be hit by it. When at the same time we get hit by hurricanes and other natural calamities, coping only gets that much harder. We can of course get through it, if we decide to behave responsible and to support each other. We also need competent public services that can help people and communities in distress. In the longer term, we must get used to the idea that this may be the new normal.

It still isn’t too late to improve our relationship with nature, to become more mindful of how we use natural resources, where and how we build, and how we pollute the atmosphere, land and oceans. We must find ways of more sustainable development that shares the benefits more equally. These are solutions that are absolutely needed but will only start making a difference many years from now. For the immediate future, we need to find effective ways of adapting to climate change and building a society that is more resilient towards shocks, be they pandemics, storms, floods or something that we cannot even imagine at this time. It can be done, but it requires trust: in institutions, in expertise, in science and, not least, in each other.

https://medium.com/@JuhaUitto/summer-of-hazard-pandemic-hurricanes-and-other-dangers-9fc9cb6d4cf8

The Pandemic and the Global Environment: Which Way Next?

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought home the fact that humans do not exist outside of the Earth’s ecological system. The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is zoonotic, meaning it has originated in animals and crossed over to humans. The causes of the increasing occurrence in zoonotic pandemics lie in the higher frequency of encounters between humans and animals (both wild and domesticated). This is exacerbated by how we exploit and abuse the natural environment, and how human influence has become ever more pervasive in the Anthropocene.

The pandemic has revealed significant vulnerabilities even in the North, with severe economic consequences likely leading to an extended recession. Much will depend on how we respond to the crisis and how we approach the recovery. The crisis will present an opportunity to rethink what kind of development we as a society want to pursue. We should take this opportunity to reconsider how to restructure the economy towards more sustainability, respect for nature, equality and participation.

The 2030 Agenda recognises the three pillars of sustainable development, but the environment is usually relegated to a subservient role. A certain shift in attitudes is detectable, but powerful interests will push to restore growth at any cost. The slowed economic activity has in a short period resulted in measurable environmental and associated health benefits to arise. Human health and wellbeing are closely related with a healthy natural environment, including ecosystem integrity, clean air and a stable climate. Should we return to business as usual after the crisis subsides, we will pay the price and the next pandemic will be waiting in the wings.

Policy Recommendations

• Future policies and societal directions should be based on the principles of sustainable development considering the social, economic and environmental dimensions in a balanced way. Decision-making must be informed by science.
• More funding—and funding that is sustained and reliable—is needed for medical and other scientific research to help cope with future pandemic risks. This research should encompass both social and natural sciences. Strong public-private partnerships are needed.
• The sustainable development discourse must recognise the close interlinkages between human health, ecosystem health, climate change, disasters, equality and economic development. This also means that environmental concerns other than climate change, such as habitat destruction and biodiversity loss that are directly linked to pandemics must receive more attention.

 This article was published in Global Policy. The full article can be accessed here.

Blue Marble Evaluation: Premises and Principles, by Michael Quinn Patton

Blue Marble Evaluation is a call to action for all evaluators (and others) concerned with the state of planetary affairs in the new geological era of Anthropocene in which we live. What defines Anthropocene is that human impact on the Earth is so pervasive as to be the dominant force in modifying biosphere and atmosphere. Patton brings a palpable sense of urgency to the task of transforming evaluation to deal with transformative change. As an evaluator, Patton weighs the global challenges we are facing—including climate change and related phenomena, growing concentration of wealth and inequality, virulent infectious diseases and evolving super-viruses (yes, the book was written before the emergence of COVID-19), pollution, terrorism, refugee crises, etc.—against the positive trends (such as reductions in poverty and illiteracy, hunger and violence).  Striving toward a balanced assessment, he concludes that the “evidence points overwhelmingly … to a severe and growing crisis” (p. 19). 

Blue Marble Evaluation takes its name from the iconic photograph taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts on 7 December 1972, the first photograph of our home planet taken from space. This signifies the view of the whole Earth, which is fundamental to the Blue Marble Evaluation vision. Patton, a veteran evaluator and one of the most respected thinkers in the field, elaborates on the premises and principles of his vision for a renewed evaluation profession that is better able to respond to the global challenges. In the process he provides a biting critique of the narrow project mindset that dominates the evaluation practice today.

The book is organized in three parts. The first, The Blue Marble Perspective, presents four overarching blue marble principles: (1) Global thinking principle, (2) Anthropocene as context principle, (3) Transformative engagement principle, and (4) Integration principle. “The Blue Marble worldview constitutes a paradigm,” Patton writes (p. 6). Taking a holistic perspective and understanding global patterns and their implications is essential, as is thinking about all aspects of systems change at all levels from local to global. The integration principle emphasizes that transformation requires multiple interventions and actions on many fronts by multiple actors. Blue Marble principles should not only be applied to evaluation but also to design and implementation. Bringing the four initial principles together, Patton takes apart traditional project and program evaluation, as well as performance measurement and monitoring, as insufficient to addressing systems change at the global scale. He writes (p. 30): 

“Static and rigid randomized control designs—emphasis on control—are irrelevant to the uncontrollable dynamics of complex systems. Indeed, these traditional approaches to evaluation can create barriers to systems change by forcing transformational visions into narrow project boxes amenable to methods evaluators are comfortable with (e.g., logic models and specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound [SMART] goals). Innovations in evaluation include eclectic approaches created by tapping into a vast array of many-splendored, diverse, and innovative knowledge-generating and learning-oriented processes.”

Part II adds eight Operating Principles: (5) Transboundary engagement principle, (6) GLOCAL principle, (7) Cross-silos principle, (8) Time being of essence principle, (9) Yin-yang principle, (10) Bricolage methods principle, (11) World savvy principle, and (12) Skin in the game principle. Ranging from page 39 to 148, this section contains the bulk of the book. I won’t attempt to summarize it but will highlight a few points that I found essential. Patton discusses the need to think and act at the global scale and what this means. He provides a thoughtful critique of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by over 190 countries all over the world. He rightly points out that they are actually not global, given that they are based on country-level targets. He wisely notes that “simply aggregating nation-state data doesn’t generate a global picture” (p. 44). Another important insight that flies in the face of conventional evaluation (and development) thinking—and with which I couldn’t agree more—is that there are no “best practices” because the context in which any intervention takes place is so important. “Global context informs local actions. Local contexts make global understandings meaningful and actionable” (p. 50). This up and down engagement between levels is the essence of the GLOCAL principle. Patton discusses scaling up as the most common way of having global impact, i.e. that successful initiatives are scaled out, scaled up or scaled deep so that they can reach more people and places. Scaling up is also at the heart of the operational model of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) where I work and just last year my office completed an evaluation of scaling up at the GEF. 

Apart from integrating across scales and geographies, Blue Marble principles call for integrating across silos. It is worth noting, like Patton does, that the SDGs, while intended to be integrated, also easily lend themselves to new silos. Yet in real life, the SDGs are indeed all interconnected and “evaluating the interactions between the SDG targets and indicators, both actual and aspirational, positive and negative, and short term and long term, offers significant opportunities for Blue Marble thinkers, designers and evaluators to contribute to the 2030 Agenda” (p. 65). (In full transparency, in the discussion on the cross-silos principle, I was very flattered to find Patton citing my work.) 

With the time being of essence, Patton addresses another key notion in evaluation and development professions: sustainability. According to the established principles promoted by OECD’s Development Assistance Committee, sustainability refers primarily to the continuation of project benefits after the completion of the intervention. Although, OECD/DAC has recently updated the definition to incorporate more of the environmental sustainability, there has been a lively debate about a stronger articulation of the environmental dimension. Patton’s discussion is most welcome as he elaborates on adaptive sustainability and resilience, making a clear distinction between engineering resilience (a performance-related notion that focuses on stability, efficiency, control and predictability) and ecosystem resilience that focuses on persistence, adaptiveness, variability and unpredictability. Aiming for long-term resilience and sustainability forces us to concentrate on the latter, in which case evaluators, too, must focus on adaptability of the system, rather than a static endpoint after an intervention ends and the benefits remain (pp. 78-82). Patton illustrates this with concrete examples, including some in which short-term focus on accountability undermined long-term sustainability. 

The chapter on the bricolage methods principle describing the evaluator as a bricoleur, a traditional French traveling “jack-of-all-trades” who would use whatever tools were at hand to fix a problem, hit a note with me. Similarly, evaluators have to use an eclectic variety of methods to fit the evaluation situation that they need to address. The Canadian evaluator Andy Rowe has similarly made the call for All Hands on Deck for evaluators to put their methods wars behind them and join hands in combating the greatest challenges facing humankind. Claims of “gold standards” (often made by those promoting experimental methods) sound ludicrous. To be clear, Patton is no Luddite: he fully acknowledges the value of new methods that involve, i.a., geospatial tools, big data and AI, but emphasizes the importance of choosing the most appropriate methods from an eclectic toolkit. Here he elaborates on six “bricolaged Blue Marble evaluation methods lessons” (pp. 114-116).  

The chapters on the world savvy principle and skin in the game principle are highly personal. The former emphasizes the global competencies that all evaluators should possess. He notes that the “profession of evaluation is fairly obsessed with competency” (p. 122) but that the concept of competence is problematic and can lead to “exclusion, reinforcing the status quo and power of the status quo” (p. 124). These again are concerns I can easily relate to, having been involved in evaluation groups that sometimes feel like aiming to be guilds with their exclusive approaches and membership. Without getting into detail about what being world savvy means, some of the central concepts include reflexivity and ongoing learning. 

The skin in the game principle will be hard for some evaluators to swallow (and I’ve already witnessed discussions to this end), given that evaluators (most of whom are social scientists by training) have been indoctrinated to think that we need to be neutral observers of the object of evaluation, looking from the outside in, without taking sides or showing emotion. Patton challenges this by making it clear that we should not hide our values, especially in the current world situation where our common future is at stake. Independence is usually seen as one of the most important characteristics of an evaluator, but in some cases total independence can even undermine the credibility of the evaluator. This might be the case with indigenous communities where a total outsider would not carry any credence. The evaluator would still use her or his best judgment weighing the evidence (for example not assuming that the local communities would necessarily always know best). He makes a clear and useful distinction between caring and bias (pp. 139-141). His argumentation stands on the broad shoulders of two evaluation thought leaders, Robert Stake and Michael Scriven, as well as others. He also makes a strong case for evaluation as transdisciplinary science, and for science as intervention aimed at generating knowledge and solving an urgent problem. 

The final part of the book outlines three Global Systems Transformation principles: (13) Theory of transformation principle, (14) Transformation fidelity principle: evaluating transformation, and (15) Transformational alignment principle: transforming evaluation to evaluate transformation. The first of these chapters is the most theoretical in the book. In it Patton attempts to move from a theory of change to a theory of transformation, doing so by integrating multiple theories to explain transformation. The theoretical frameworks he most relies on are network theory and innovation theory. He also expounds on a hypothesis developed by Jerald Hage, director of the Center of Innovation at the University of Maryland’s Department of Sociology who also was Patton’s dissertation advisor at the University of Wisconsin decades earlier. Altogether, the theory of transformation that Patton comes up with is a plausible one. It claims that transformation flows from an “understanding that the status quo is not a viable path forward and that networked action on multiple fronts using diverse change strategies across multiple landscapes will be needed to overcome the resistance from those who benefit from the status quo” (p. 168). This will lead to critical mass tipping points and consequently transformations. Earlier in the chapter Patton reminds us of the old truth found in innovation theory that it is futile to try to convince (and despair over) the often powerful interests that benefit from the status quo and resist change; instead, focus on supporting the early adopters and spreading their message until a tipping point is reached. This is a very useful message to keep in mind when hopelessness sets in ahead of the Sisyphean task of moving towards a more environmentally benign future.

In the chapter on transformation fidelity principle, Patton starts by reminding us that transformation has become a new buzzword but not everything touted as such is in fact transformational. Of true transformations in relatively recent history he names three examples: the end of apartheid in South Africa, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the significant fall in new cases of HIV/AIDS. Transformation is difficult to define, but easy to recognize when it happens by (borrowing the term from the statistician Fred Mosteller) interocular significance (i.e., it hits you in between the eyes). Transformation can be defined as a sensitizing concept, “a way of talking about something that is not yet well understood, precisely defined, or operationally measured” (p. 174). Evaluating transformational change, however, is more challenging. Patton sets out to define an evaluation framework for evaluating transformation with the theory of transformation that he developed in the previous chapter. He reviews an influential evaluation of transformational engagement by the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group (using an approach that we adapted to evaluate transformational change at the GEF Independent Evaluation Office a few years back). While this approach was fine, it was, according to Patton, a definition-based, rather than theory-based evaluation. Interestingly, Patton concludes that “evaluating transformation must involve capturing the story, communicating the process and results, interpreting meanings, making values-based judgments about what occurred, extracting lessons, and facilitating visioning the way forward both short term ad long term. Telling the transformation story will involve mixed methods” (p. 185).

In the final chapter, Patton lays out the need to transform evaluation itself to evaluate transformation. This chapter also acts as a summary of the book and his thinking around the Blue Marble principles. He concludes that global sustainability should become a universal criterion in evaluation. The book ends with a vision of a global network of Blue Marble evaluators, a vision that is in the making to become reality.

Blue Marble Evaluation is a powerful book that transmits the sense of urgency, the very caring for the planet and the state of affairs that Michael Quinn Patton writes about. He emphasizes that while he has pulled the text together, it has been a collaborative effort with contributions from many people, including fellow Blue Marble evaluators, like Pablo Vidueira and Glenn Page (the acknowledgements run over 3.5 pages). The book is also amply illustrated, including with cartoons by Mark Rogers, Chris Lysy, Simon Kneebone and Claudius Ceccon. All of this collaboration is further proof that Michael Patton practices what he preaches. The book is also very erudite, drawing upon literature and theories of science, philosophy, sociology, astronomy and more in addition to evaluation. There are many practical examples from interventions and evaluations of different kinds, some more profound than others. All of this makes for interesting, if occasionally rambling reading as the reader is left guessing how it all comes back to the theme (spoiler alert: it usually does). And as Patton states, this is not a book about methods, but evaluators tend to be methods people so he writes quite much about methods. All of this may make the book quite a ride for a traditional evaluator versed in project performance evaluation. Those are some of the people who most should read this book. Having said that, I would recommend the book to anyone interested in evaluation and applied social science in the age of the Anthropocene.

Evaluation must rise to the challenge of pandemic in the nexus of nature and humanity

This blog was published originally in Earth-Eval (follow the link).

In her 2020 Earth Day blog the GEF CEO Naoko Ishii emphasized that the COVID-19 crisis is fundamentally an environmental crisis. I couldn’t agree more. Sure, at the face of it, this is first a health crisis, a pandemic with tragic consequences to people who get infected, especially those who perish or who see loved ones perish. Economies of families, communities, companies, states and countries are stressed, even destroyed. It’ll take months and years to recover from these effects. However short-sighted it may be, I can understand why people and businesses—and by extension politicians—clamor to get the economy re-opened as soon as possible. But fundamentally, this is an environmental crisis and if we do not change our behavior, if we do not learn from this experience, these pandemic crises will become a recurrent phenomenon. We as evaluators must also learn lessons.

The virus, SARS-CoV-2 that causes the disease COVID-19 is zoonotic, meaning it has its origins in animals. As human activities have continued to expand further into previously undisturbed natural domains and as our interactions with domestic and wild animals have become increasingly close, we have given ample new opportunities for pathogens to spill over from non-human animals to humans. The root causes are the same that drive climate change, species loss and all environmental degradation: economic growth, quest for more resources and space for humanity. There are currently 7.5 billion humans on the planet and our numbers are going to expand by 2 billion more in the coming few decades. Inequality has grown to intolerable levels, while consumption continues to grow at unsustainable rates. There is an urgent need to revisit how we define development and how we treat natural environment. The pandemic that has hit pause on economic activity has also provided us an opportunity to rethink our values and what kind of development we want when we press start again. For this we need information about possible models.

Evaluation has the specific role of bringing forth knowledge and understanding of what works under what circumstances based on past experiences. At a basic level, this is looking at past programs and projects with regard to how we have dealt with sudden outbreaks of health crises, such as SARS and Ebola, and other unexpected disasters. What strategies worked, where and why? What helped interventions adjust successfully so that they could continue supporting the people on the ground? The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) is currently looking at such experiences in the GEF context and will soon be able to bring forth some lessons for consideration.

At a higher level, evaluation must be able to provide evidence of how actions in the development sphere affect the environment and vice versa. We must be able to demonstrate the close interlinkages between social and economic development and the environment in light of evidence from the real world. In this task evaluators must base their work on scientific knowledge as well as analysis of concrete examples from the field. This is not an approach that comes easily to all evaluators who have been used to looking at discrete interventions in isolation through their internal logic. Instead, we now need to place these interventions in the broader landscape and analyze how they interact with the broader natural and human systems. We need to be on the lookout for unanticipated results and unintended consequences, not just those foreseen in the project’s or program’s own theory of change.

To remain relevant in the increasingly complex and interconnected world, it is absolutely essential for evaluation as a profession and as a practice to engage in the discourse at the nexus of human and natural systems. That is where we as a community can contribute, with our practical knowledge anchored in research, to a transformation towards a more sustainable development path.

Evaluating Environmental Peacebuilding: Difficult but Necessary

Published in Earth-Eval earlier today (please follow the link before).

When you first hear the phrase “environmental peacebuilding,” you may think that these two words are not directly linked. Think again. Many conflicts around the world affect and are affected by, at least indirectly, the environment and natural resources. For example, the extraction of minerals like cobalt, coltan, and gold in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has both decimated the natural environment and fueled ongoing conflict between the national military and various militias. On the other hand, the natural environment and its management can also serve as a mechanism for connecting conflicting parties and supporting peace. Water resource management, for instance, has been an important domain for building trust and developing a shared identity in the Middle East.

Upon reading this, your second thought may be that efforts to both manage the natural environment sustainably and to build lasting peace are elusive and difficult to measure. There you would be right. But this difficulty should not stop us from trying, as we need to know that the policies, strategies, programs and projects that we are engaged in are achieving their objectives of contributing positively to environmental peacebuilding. We also want to know that the results are sustainable in political, social, economic, and environmental terms. As these interventions by definition operate in conflict-affected situations, it is very important that we know who benefits and that the benefits accrue equitably to the various parties involved. Otherwise, the interventions may bring temporary peace but fail to address the root causes of conflict, potentially even perpetuating them. Assessing these results also provides the information we need to learn what we could do better in the future.

Good practice for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in the context of environmental peacebuilding is still emerging, and there are specific challenges that go beyond what program managers and evaluators face in more common development situations. In environmental peacebuilding, the context is always very complex, and that complexity adds to the challenges of doing good M&E. For example, we cannot rely on linear theories of change but must instead find ways to capture the dynamic and fluid interactions of an intervention and the multifaceted results it produces. Additionally, although the timelines for impact are often very long, we have immediate needs for information that will tell us whether we are doing the right things. We often do not know what the baselines are or the benchmarks against which we are measuring our performance. Institutional capacities and resources for M&E are often insufficient, and there are political challenges in conflict-affected situations. For instance, who owns the evaluation function or the data that are generated and used for reporting in these situations? How might the use of evaluation findings affect the conflict? The challenges can appear endless.

To tackle them, we must take a holistic view of the situation rather than looking narrowly at a single intervention through its internal logic. Each intervention takes place in a dynamic environment where there are multiple interests, actors, and interactions between them. Situations are ripe for unintended consequences. To develop good practice, we must develop evidence based on what works in these complex environments, and we must be open to discussing both our successes and failures.

The Environmental Peacebuilding Association, itself still a new endeavor, has recently established an M&E Interest Group. As a community of researchers and practitioners, we seek to activate learning and enhance our shared capacities to assess and document the impacts of environmental peacebuilding. This includes understanding and documenting effective practices for the future as well as the pitfalls and unintended consequences of both environmental peacebuilding and its M&E. We would like to extend an invitation to interested readers to take part in this journey and join the Interest Group. More information can be found here.

A Planet of 3 Billion: Mapping Humanity's Long History of Ecological Destruction and Finding Our Way to a Resilient Future | A Global Citizen's Guide to Saving the Planet by Christopher Kevin Tucker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a very important and sobering book that I wish everyone would read. Chrisopher Tucker, a self-described unrepentant capitalist, tackles the fundamental issue affecting the sustainability of the planet: human population. He clearly states his thesis: the Earth has a people problem.

There was a time half a century ago when ecologically-minded scientists, researchers and activists actively discussed the impossibility of unlimited population growth on a limited planet. It was inevitable that the population bomb would explode. This rational view was silenced from all sides. The conservative and often religious right was attacking it for promoting “unnatural” things, such as population control. It didn’t help that China (and earlier India) established draconian measures to curb population growth. The left saw it as blaming the victim: one should not try to interfere with poor people’s right to have children. The developing countries saw it as a white man’s ploy to keep them down, while at the same time many saw a burgeoning population as might that could help them to dominate their neighbors. And economists – those eternal optimists to whom growth of any kind is a value in itself and who see any negative aspect of growth as mere externalities that can be left out of the equation – put their money on human ingenuity and technology that would overcome any obstacle (this has so far worked to the extent that material lack has decreased, but at a huge cost to the natural environment). No-one paid any attention to the rights of non-humans on this planet, or even the quality of life or joy that nature would bring people. If you can’t measure it in money, it does not exist. Finally, Christopher Tucker has brought human overpopulation back into focus.

Tucker makes it clear that his is not a neo-Malthusian oeuvre and he recognizes the essential roles the level of per capita consumption and technology play. But his thorough and thoughtful analysis leads him to the conclusion that the Earth can sustainably support only a population of 3 billion – and that only if we cut out ecological footprint and waste significantly. He takes issue with the romantic view that pre-industrial people lived in harmony with nature. It was only because their numbers were so small that the damage they did was limited, but damage they did do by clearing land for agriculture, by cutting down forests for construction, energy and fiber, by hunting wild animals and grazing domesticated ones. Sahara once was a viable ecosystem until overuse of its fragile ecosystem turned it into a desert. Since Roman times, people fundamentally transformed Europe’s ecosystems. In ecological terms, humans are an invasive species.

The first half of the book provides a detailed overview of the Earth’s environmental history in light of human impact on it through population growth, industrialization, agriculture, development of new energy sources (notably fossil fuels whose introduction initially saved forest that were being cut down for energy, but which has later led to air pollution and climate change), infrastructure, transportation, urbanization, introduction of toxic chemicals, waste etc. He takes popular environmental theories and critiques them. A geographer by training, one of Tucker’s main contributions pertains to the insights into the geographical diversity of the world. Hardly anyone else has addressed this issue systematically. E.O. Wilson has proposed that half of the world should be set aside for nature, but Tucker reveals how challenging and complex this notion is. What do we mean by half when every geography is so different in terms of productivity, terrain, topography, climate and so forth, and when connections between regions are essential? Measuring half just by size is meaningless. And what do we mean by “protection” anyway? He suggests viewing the world through the perspective of ecoregions.

He embraces the ecological footprint thesis, but critiques it for also lacking a geographical perspective, which he convincingly inserts into it, while recognizing the enormous technical task of incorporating the geographical variables into the equation.

The book is a delightful exception to the current debate where climate change crowds out all other environmental issues (are we really only able to focus on one thing at a time?). Tucker doesn’t belittle the impacts of climate change, but hammers home the point how humanity is causing irreversible harm to the Earth’s ecosystems through so many other ways. One example is waste. We generate astronomical amounts of waste that fill the land, atmosphere and, not least, oceans – and have very few solutions to the issue. He also brings to attention forms of pollution that we seldom think of, such as noise pollution that is very hazardous to many animals from birds to whales.

The book contains some hopeful examples of how things may be changing. Circular economy where the waste of one process becomes an input to the next is one. He highlights Finland’s commitment to zero waste, including greenhouse gas emissions. Despite the acknowledgement of the need and good intentions, this is still difficult work in progress. I fully agree with Tucker that well managed cities are the only way of containing human impact on the planet, as sprawl is one of worst kinds of destruction as areas are transformed into artificial ones, roads dissect ecosystems. Lawns and parks may be green, but they are far from natural and only contain a fraction of natural biodiversity. Living densely reduces the geographic footprint and minimizes the need for movement. There are increasing examples of sustainable cities, such as Singapore (and the organization I work for, the Global Environment Facility, is one of the many that actively promotes sustainable urbanization), but too many cities, especially in the developing countries, are growing haphazardly wreaking havoc both on their human inhabitants and nature.

Agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to environmental change. Techniques such as vertical farming could significantly reduce the impact. Admittedly, it would be much harder to develop for animal husbandry. Growing meat for human consumption is extremely wasteful in terms of land, water and waste. The figures are stunning: there are 1.4 billion cattle, 2 billion domesticated pigs, 1 billion sheep, 450 million goats and 19 billion chicken on Earth (p. 229). Their only purpose is to feed people.

Through a sophisticated and convincing analysis – with transparent assumptions – Tucker concludes that the Earth’s carrying capacity of human population is around 3 billion people. This is a stark prospect, given that there currently are about 7.5 billion of us on the planet and the UN projects that the population will grow to at least 9 billion before it reaches its peak. However, it’s illustrative to remember that it was after World War II when the world population still was at that lower level. Since then, our lives and lifestyles have also changed dramatically. Today there are some 3 billion air passengers annually; more than there were people in 1950.

Tucker recognizes that bringing world’s population down to 3 billion will not be easy. He discusses the obstacles to this, including cultural and religious norms and, not least, classical economics that still believes that the alternative to eternal growth it stagnation. Even the field of environmental economics doesn’t go far enough, believing that a steady-state can be reached. We also often witness hand-wringing because of aging populations and population decline, especially in Japan and Western Europe. However, irrespective of what we wish, the world population will start shrinking at around year 2100, unless an ecological disaster catches us before that (it could also be a global pandemic – such as the current outbreak of coronavirus – that does us in). Sooner or later we will have to learn to live with a declining population. Tucker calls for a new generation of economists to focus efforts on de-growth economics. There is no law of nature that compels that our standard of living and quality of life should decline should growth stop (on the contrary, I would argue).

In the end, Tucker is cautiously optimistic, trusting that new ways of thinking and technologies will save humankind before it is too late. He rightly points out that either we start making these radical changes in society now or we will be forced to make much more unpleasant choices a bit later. He outlines an agenda – a cookbook, he calls it – for global leaders and global citizens that encompasses ten necessary areas of action to avoid catastrophe: 1) women’s empowerment that will lead to smaller families; 2) building sustainable, smart and resilient cities; 3) developing restoration and rewilding strategies for each ecoregion; 4) de-industrializing and reducing human footprint in critical ecoregions; 5) driving wastes out of capitalist supply chains; 6) demanding the design of low-impact infrastructure; 7) stopping impeding and diverting the natural flow of water; 8) stopping use of “growth” language in economic strategies and economic development planning; 9) reframing eco-engineering to focus on unwinding the most egregious ecological offenses; and 10) thinking critically about how the land rights model of capitalism has led to the denuding the planet and identifying alternatives that help strike a balance between human development and the ecological processes on which humankind depends.

Tucker discusses further each of these and how they might be advanced. Responsibility is given to governments and especially business leaders, as well as us individuals. We can influence matters globally through our actions by changing our individual behaviors (given the enormous role of cattle ranching in converting natural landscapes to pastures, depleting water resources, wasting resources as feed and producing greenhouse gases, reducing meat consumption is an obvious way to reduce one’s ecological footprint). Still, it seems to me unreasonable to expect all humans on the planet – especially as the majority are still lagging far behind the West – to bear the brunt of the responsibility, when it really is the system that is built on growth and waste and exploitation that needs to be changed.

When reading Tucker’s solutions, nevertheless, they appear doable from a technical point of view and there would be millions of people in the world who would agree to pursue these rigorously. But are they enough? It is hard to believe so, when one follows the political debate in the United States, the wealthiest and most powerful nation that also has the world’s largest ecological footprint per capita (then again, Chris Tucker is American, too, and his ideas certainly are bold). Similarly, in most developing countries getting rich is the greatest goal for everyone. Furthermore, developing countries are the place where future population growth will take place (mostly in Africa). The renowned environmentalist Gus Speth has summarized the situation succinctly: “I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy … and to deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation – and we scientists don’t know how to do that.”

Christopher Tucker ends his book with an Epilogue for Planetary Ethics, He provides a pointed critique of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as ambitious but a result of complex political compromises. He points out that there is gaping inconsistency between the socioeconomic development goals and the environmental sustainability goals (a fact that I, too, have pointed out in several of my writings and presentations) and population is entirely outside of the discussion (p. 251). In the end, he frames the need for a transformation in ethical terms. This is one of the best written and strongest chapters – and certain to offend some people. Tucker confronts head-on the issue that, if everyone recognizes the problem of overpopulation and the threats it poses to the global sustainability, the debate turns quickly to equity, because the world population and population growth are not equally distributed on the planet. “If humans, collectively, are doing harm to the planet who should have to sacrifice or undertake disproportionate effort to rectify the situation”, he asks (p. 253). One thing that Tucker does not consider adequately in the book is international migration that is already reshaping the world, driven by inequality, conflict and climate change.

It is also very refreshing that he calls a spade a spade when it comes to people’s cognitive abilities and psychologies. He recognizes that there is a minority of people who are not able to grasp the big picture. Then there are those who are ignorant, but more importantly the large portion of people – including many with a will to power – who are willfully ignorant, as they understand that acting on what they know would be against their own short-term interests. In the end, it is often difficult to differentiate the actions of the willfully ignorant (or outright evil) from those of the simply stupid.

The book also contains four open letters to arguably the most powerful individuals on the planet: the Pope, Jeff Bezos, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Xi Jinping.

The book is well illustrated with maps, data and graphs, which are also accessible through the website.

All in all, A Planet for 3 Billion is bound to annoy many people who do not (or more likely do not want to) believe the situation being that dire, who are reluctant to change their ways or who just think it all alarmist and unrealistic to achieve such a transformation. We’ll be alright as long as we don’t think about it. However, a fundamental change will be necessary one way or another (to paraphrase how kids used to threaten each other on schoolyard in my youth: you change now – or you cry and change!). Thinkers and activists such as the author are needed. But perhaps our best hope lies with visionary entrepreneurs who see not only the necessity but also opportunities for themselves in moving us towards a more sustainable future. There is also hope in young people who are increasingly aware of the destruction we place on our only home planet and who also have the most to lose.




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