by Jindra Cekan | Dec 31, 2024 | 3ie, Accountability, Adaptation Fund, blended finance, climate change, environment, ESG, European Evaluation Society (EES), European Union, Evaluation, ex post evaluation, ex-post evaluation, foreign aid, GIIN, IDEV, Impact, impact investing, international development, Localization, longtermism, Monitoring and Evaluation, OXFAM, Participants, post project evaluation, Private sector, Sustainability, Sustainable Finance
NEW YEAR, NEW SUSTAINABLE US?
Happy 2025!
(Image from: https://plumvillage.org/articles/can-the-new-year-really-be-new)
How will we be new this New Year? It may seem funny as an ex-post sustainability evaluator to write about the future rather than the past :). But ex-post learning is learning from past successes or failures for future improvements. Such learning is part of “longtermism” where “positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. It’s about taking the sheer scale of the future seriously, and how high the stakes might be in shaping it” (which for many of us means learning from the past to do better in the future). “It means thinking about the challenges we might face in our lifetimes that could impact civilisation’s whole trajectory, and taking action to benefit not just the present generation, but all generations to come…. Many social movements have fought for greater recognition for disempowered members of society. Advocates of longtermism want to extend this recognition to future people, too.”
Taking the longer view also means taking a global view and continuing to address the disparities that our economic system generates, and seems to be generating more destructively. As Oxfam’s excellent Inequality annual report tells us, “since 2020, the richest five men in the world have doubled their fortunes. During the same period, almost five billion people globally have become poorer.” At the same time, the UN cites a World Bank estimate that an additional 68 to 135 million people could be pushed into poverty by 2030 because of climate change”. Given the EU is 450 million and US is 330 million, imagine 20-30% of our populations falling into poverty due to changes we can make – but did not – in addressing inequality and a sustainable, liveable planet. I don’t know what your long-term vision for y/our world is, but I’m quite sure adding to global poverty is not on the list.
What can we do anew?
- Where life is stable: Focus on our collective communities and our planet and helping others: the NYTimes on making new year’s resolutions for collective happiness. I would add, we need to make choices from a planetary perspective – I got a plug-in electric hybrid Toyota CHR this year so I would pollute less and am a vegetarian (aspiring vegan) to decrease my tiny share of the 30% of emissions due to our food systems. Am reading the book The Logic of Sufficiency and preparing to read Less is More will help us consume less, as we need less. Remember, as we in the Global North consume less, the Global South is likely to suffer less, as they have caused so little of today’s climate crisis. Generation Climate Europe states: “In 2019, the top 10% of global emitters (771 million individuals) were responsible for about 48% of global CO2 emissions, while the bottom 50% (3.8 billion individuals) were responsible for almost 12% of all emissions.” This is a staggering statistic we all need to act to reverse.
- Take a longer view, doing ex-post evaluations, for sectors such as agriculture, even for disasters: 3ie admitted that only 4% of all impact evaluations include long-term learning about food systems interventions evaluating long-term outcomes (including climate change) and a collection of sustainability learning by IDEV’s Sustainability Matters asks us to take a holistic approach, covering the full spectrum of environmental, social and economic sustainability. Both sources tell us we need to do more evaluation and learning over the longer-term as climate shocks increase. Disaster Science also discusses the need for a longer-term view – this means putting out fires but thinking longer-term (see longtermism above :)) about how we can make our interventions more sustained. We can ‘bake-in’ or ‘hardwire” sustainability as we shared here in a VV blog about health projects. Also this includes evaluating climate adaptation ex-post as the Adaptation Fund has shared (and I spoke at the European Evaluation Society Conference) positive and negative lessons from our ex-post learning from past design/ implementation for future sustainability. Proud that the Fund has created the Adaptation Fund’s toolkit, and in 2025, look for more ex-post learning from the Climate Investment Funds and other clients!
EES Conference presentation – Rimini in 2024 (photo by the Vladislav Arnaoudov)
- Use our money to do more measurable good: pushing the private sector for more equitable investments given public funds to do good are so stretched: Dr G. Marcelle notes that we need transformative sustainable finance (which is environmental, social, and governance (ESG)) to address inequalities and address climate change harm being done. As an evaluator, we need to measure real impact as the Adaptation and Resilience Investors’ Cooperative does or the Global Impact Investor Network (GIIN) which has set up benchmarks in Agriculture, Forestry, Energy, and Finance. And we so need mandatory, transparent and comprehensive reporting which fosters trust, not greenwashing or wishful thinking. Also consider what banks you are funding, some profit from more fossil fuels.
- Appreciate and learn from what works and do more of it, patiently, especially at the community level! This BBC article celebrates 5 successes against biodiveristy loss. This Barbados conference “Sustainable Energy for Equity, Security and Prosperity” I will attend in 2025 (!) may also cover the exciting new debt for climate resilience deal which is the world’s first! IDEV reminds us conservation is most powreful at the community level, but we must learn from monitoring data, locally. IFAD reminds us sustained development takes time and resources and patience.
- What else would you add?
Happy Sustainable New Year, New Us!
by Jindra Cekan | Jun 12, 2023 | Adaptation Fund, climate change, evaluability checklist, Learning, Sustainability, sustainability ratings, Sustainable development, UNDP, Valuing Voices, WFP, World Bank
Evaluating global aid projects ex-post closure: Evaluability, and how-to via Sustainability (and Resilience) Evaluation training materials:
How do we evaluate projects ex-post, and are all projects evaluable after donors leave? How do we learn from project documents to ascertain likely markers of sustainability (hint: see materials for Theory of Sustainability and Sustainability Ratings) that we can verify? How do we design projects to make sustainability more likely (hint: implement pre-exit the drivers in the second image, below)? How to consider evaluating resilience to climate change (hint: evaluate resilience characteristics)?
In 2017, Valuing Voices created an evaluability checklist for Michael Scriven’s foundation, as many projects are not implemented long enough, or too long ago, or have such weak monitoring and evaluation (M&E) data as to be very difficult to evaluate: https://valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Valuing-Voices-Checklists.pdf. We have used it in multiple evaluations since. Now in 2023, we are sharing work we’ve done with the Adaptation Fund, where we have applied that evaluability process via a vetting evaluability process that eliminated over 90% of all projects done in their early years, which alone is sobering but typical in our field, and is leading to changes in how they monitor, retain information and learn. See page 24 – officially pg 15) of this Phase 1 report: https://www.adaptation-fund.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-09-12-AF-TERG_Ex-Post-Phase-1-Final-Report_Final.pd
Ex-post evaluability at the Adaptation Fund
The Adaptation Fund has also committed to doing two ex-post sustainability and resilience evaluations per year. and learn from remote ex-posts as well. The first two ex-post evaluations are found here: Samoa/ UNDP on resilient infrastructure (https://www.adaptation-fund.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Ex-Post-Evaluation-Samoa-final-ed-2.pdf) and Ecuador/ WFP on food security (https://www.adaptation-fund.org/document/ex-post-evaluation-summary-ecuador/). So many lessons from assumptions made to future design…
Not only are we evaluating projects ex-post, but we are also creating processes for others to follow, including this new Sustainability Framework. The left three columns project the likelihood of sustainability, which the right three columns verify. It includes the Valuing Voices ’emerging outcomes’ from local efforts to sustain results after donors leave. SO exciting:
Ex-post Sustainability Framework
Also, just today, we published our training materials which we are using in ex-posts 3 and 4 in Argentina (Ministry of the Environment and the World Bank); https://www.adaptation-fund.org/document/training-material-for-ex-post-pilots/. They include videos for those who like to listen and watch us, as well as Powerpoint slides/ PDFs and Excels of our training materials (including suggested methods) for those who like to read…
Take a look, use, and tell us what you think and what you are learning! Thanks, Jindra Cekan (Sustainability) and Meg Spearman (Resilience) and the Adaptation Fund team!
by Jindra Cekan | Oct 28, 2021 | Accountability, Adaptation Fund, Aid effectiveness, climate change, environment, foreign aid, Niger, Sustainability, Sustainable development
5 Ways to Foster Sustainability and Resilience to Climate Change
by Omar Abdou, M.A. and Jindra Cekan/ova, Ph.D
In the global climate change graphic, the blue are countries that contribute very few emissions to #climatechange. They are also those who suffer the most from climate change effects and who have most #globalaid projects which are most at risk of no longer being #sustained:
https://globalgovernanceforum.org/global-issues/climate-change/
Omar Abdou, a food security and M&E expert from Niger, lives a vulnerability to climate change there is indisputable. Sahelien production systems suffer the full brunt of the negative effects. Indeed, the essential rural activities, namely agriculture, and livestock which occupy at least 80% of the population, are becoming more and more uncertain as they rely on two pillars: rainfall and the exploitation of natural resources (soil, vegetation, other water sources). But, in recent decades, we have witnessed a drastic reduction in rainfall. In pastoral zones, this decrease is reflected in the degradation of the vegetation cover and the deficits in livestock-vital fodder. For instance, the fodder assessment from 2000 to 2020 for the Tahoua Region has been in deficit for 15 years. More and more recurrent and frequent crises seriously affect the main productive capital of households, which is the herd.
https://intraacpgccaplus.org/story/niger-centre-studies-climate-smart-agriculture-and-climate-finance/
Emergency sales of increasingly emaciated animals at a low price are growing to pay for consumer goods and to buy fodder to feed a few animals. These are kept for breeding after the crisis, but what used to be seasonal crisis (dry-season) has become chronic.
In agro-pastoral zones, agricultural production in the rainy season, which has changed its duration and strength, becomes uncertain to feed the household members. The harvest is often exhausted at most by the 6th month of the year for many households. Thus, there is no more food surplus to supply the area’s food needs where cereals are not grown. Suddenly, cereals become expensive and inaccessible for many families. Their coping strategies are diverse but not always effective. In pastoral settings, parents are forced to take their children out of school to go further south in search of food and pasture. Sometimes more sedentary agro-pastoralist farmers pledge or sell their land to pay for food. Those left behind who have nothing to sell, are forced to cut trees and sell the wood for charcoal, further degrading the environment. Unfortunately, Niger’s neighbors are now mostly at war, so these young men run the risk of being recruited by armed groups or are killed. In these conditions, there is serious instability where the means of production (natural and human) are sold for survival and overexploited natural resources decrease. Increasingly, it is practically impossible to talk about sustainability. It is, therefore, necessary to think of consistent and innovative projects to enable households to produce sustainably while preserving the ecosystem for future generations. Outlets such as migration of the able-bodied workers to neighboring countries to provide labor in the lean season work now but are unsustainable.
Jindra notes that 31 Oct the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) begins. Climate science documents life-threatening effects such as Omar and billions of others are already experiencing around the ‘developing’ world. The IPCC Working Group report shows that “the world will probably reach or exceed 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) of warming within just the next two decades. Whether we limit warming to this level and prevent the most severe climate impacts depends on actions taken this decade. Only with ambitious emissions cuts can the world keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C, the limit scientists say is necessary for preventing the worst climate impacts. Under a high-emissions scenario, the IPCC finds the world may warm by 4.4 degrees C by 2100 — with catastrophic results.” Erratic rainfall, greater heatwaves will affect 70% of all farmers and herders who rely on rain for their production and a new report on Adaptation to climate across West African shows aridity increasing, which must inform global development.
What can we do:
1- LISTEN AND ACT GLOBALLY: There are excellent resources to track demands that the Global North divest and stop subsidizing fossil fuels. For instance, “In 2017/18, the G7 collectively spent more on fossil fuel finance than on climate finance, according to analysis by Oil Change International. They allocated nearly $40bn that year.” Hypocrisy abounds as this Climate Change News article goes on to note that “Since the Paris Agreement was signed, G20 countries’ export credit agencies have provided 14 times as much support for fossil fuels as clean energy “to $64 billion a year, and investors still prioritize profit over planet & people.
2- LISTEN AND PRIORITIZE GLOBAL SOUTH VOICES: While funding demands for over $100billion to LDCs is a demand of COP26, the need to support local research and activist organizations who show measured results is mostly missing (more from Sweden here). Other resources include WRI’s Allied for Climate Transformation by 2025 podcast series among the most Climate Change vulnerable nations. “ACT2025 consortium to ensure voices from countries most exposed to climate change are heard, empowered, mobilized, and adequately supported in international climate negotiations.“ The series includes how countries such as Niger adapt to climate change. If nothing else, consider the tragedy of the loss of $1.5 billion in aid invested in Niger, not to mention the ensuing suffering global Northern consumption is unleashing on the global South.
3- DESIGN CLIMATE SMARTLY: Global Development needs to do much more climate-smart programming as 50 years of investments in foreign aid to ‘developing’ countries has already started to be threatened. What can be done? From sequestering the carbon content of soil via farming to fostering climate-smart agriculture, which, according to the UN’s FAO means “agriculture that sustainably increases productivity, enhances resilience (adaptation), reduces/removes GHGs (mitigation) where possible, and enhances achievement of national food security and development goals”. Importantly this involves productivity plus adaptation and mitigation against changes wrought by climate change.
4- MEASURE SUSTAINABILITY: Exciting measurements are beginning! Scotland is valuing its nature, and there are calls for The Rights Of Nature In Evaluation Of Environmental Sustainability. Jindra is consulting to a wonderful team at the Adaptation Fund. We are evaluating what could be sustained, and what withstood climatic changes is ex-post project sustainability and resilience evaluation. The Adaptation Fund on evaluating projects’ longer-term (3-5 year ex-post project closure) sustainability and, importantly their resilience to climate change. We are piloting these rare kinds of evaluations in six countries, starting with Samoa and Ecuador in 2021. As the Fund has funded over 100 projects in 100 countries, with almost 30 million participants, we have a rich array to choose from. Such a learning opportunity about what lasts and has withstood disturbances is vital. As the Fund notes: “Climate change is predicted to greatly affect the poorest people in the world, who are often hardest hit by weather catastrophes, desertification, and rising sea levels, but who have contributed the least to the problem of global warming. In some parts of the world, climate change has already contributed to worsening food security, reduced the predictable availability of freshwater, and exacerbated the spread of disease and other threats to human health. Helping the most vulnerable countries and communities is an increasing challenge and imperative for the international community, especially because climate adaptation requires significant resources beyond what is already needed to achieve international development objectives.”
5- TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY: For 8 years, Valuing Voices has pushed back to evaluate the ‘Sustainable Development” we have promised for 50 years. We must be accountable primarily to our participants and partners, rather than donors, and only by listening to these country nationals, we can learn what was sustained not, why or why not, and what emerged from their efforts. In 2019, we wrote all of us are accountable to improve the SDGs. It is wonderful to have climate change leading organizations invest in ex-post evaluation that adds resilience, prioritizing organizational learning and accountability. We all must increase our awareness that curb our consumption, for the sake of Niger, small island states, and many other parts of our planet can no longer stand our business-as-usual. Limiting climate change begins with us, from changing our food consumption to consumer choices to political advocacy to seeing the Earth as indivisible from us and us from the Earth. Let us start to invest in global sustainability today.
Do you see any bright spots on the horizon? Do share!
by Jindra Cekan | Apr 20, 2020 | Aid effectiveness, climate change, environment, ex-post evaluation, Impact, international development, JICA, OECD, Participants, post project evaluation, Sustainability, Sustainable development, USAID, Vietnam, water/ sanitation
Sustaining “Sustainable Development”?
As a global development industry, we have almost no evidence of how (un)sustained the outcomes or impacts of 99% of our projects because we have never returned to evaluate them. But from early indications based on the ex-posts, we have evaluated 2-20 years after donor departure it is, learning from what was and was not sustained is vital before replication and assuming sustainability. Most results taper off quite quickly, showing 20-80% decreases as early as two years post-closure and donor exit. A few cases of good news also appear, but more trajectories falter and fail than rise or remain. Sustainability, then, is not a yes-no answer, but a how much, yet too few ask… hence if they were, resilient, they are less so, or even not at all, now.
At Valuing Voices we focus on the sustainability of projects after external support ends. Still, those projects are also dependent on the viability of the environment in which they are based. As Andy Rowe, an evaluator on the GEF’s Adaptation Fund board, noted at IDEAS’ Conference in Prague late 2019 [1], a need for sustainability-ready evaluation to help us know how viable the resources are on which so many of our projects rest [2]. He states, “the evaluation we have today treats human and natural systems as unconnected and rarely considers the natural system”. He goes on to differentiate between biotic natural capital (air, water, plants, and trees) and abiotic natural capital sources (fossil fuels, minerals, and metals, wind, and solar).
How much are projects designed assuming those resources are and will remain plentiful? How often do we evaluate how much our projects drain or rely on these environmental elements? Many projects are required to do environmental compliance and safeguarding against damage at project onset [3]. Others, such as agriculture and natural resource management or water/ sanitation, often focus on improving the environment on which those activities rely, e.g., improving soil or terrain (e.g., terraces, zais), planting seedlings, and improving access to potable water for humans and animals. Still, many projects ‘assume’ inputs like rainfall, tree cover, solar power, or do not consider the sustainability of natural resources for the communities in which they intervene. Examples are both those that rely on natural systems as well as those supposedly beyond them, e.g., enterprise development, education, safety nets, etc. Yet many enterprises, schools, safety nets do rely on a. viable environment in which their participants trade, learn, and live, and all are subject to the growing climate change disruptions.
Why is this urgent? The OECD/DAC reminds us that “Natural assets represent, on average 26% of the wealth of developing countries compared to 2% in OECD economies” [4]. Unless we protect them and address the demand for natural resources, demand will far outstrip supply. “By 2030, an additional 1 billion people are expected to live in severely water-stressed areas, and global terrestrial biodiversity is expected to decline an additional 10%, leading to a loss of essential ecosystem services. By 2050, growing levels of dangerous air emissions from transport and industry will increase the global number of premature deaths linked to airborne particulate matter to 3.6 million people a year, more than doubling today’s levels. Failure to act could also lead to a 50% increase in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and global mean temperature increases of 3-6°C by the end of the century, in turn contributing to more severe and sometimes more frequent natural disasters… [so] reconciling development with environmental protection and sustainable resource management is broadly agreed as a central concern for the post-2015 development agenda.”
When we return to projects that are a mix of behavior change and environment, we find a wide range of results:
- Some projects, such as JICA Vietnam’s water supply and irrigation infrastructure reached 80% of the final results two years later [5]. And while the pilot projects were worse off (as low as 28% of irrigated hectares), longer-standing projects sustained as much as 72% of final results. While such agricultural development assumes continued water supply and access, does it evaluate it? No.
- Some can define what ex-post lessons are more narrowly as functioning mechanisms: New ex-posts of water/ sanitation showed better – but still mixed results, such as USAID Senegal’s [6]. “While a majority (63 percent) of the water points remained functional, the performance varied significantly based on the technology used. Of the different technologies, the Erobon rope pumps performed poorly (27 percent functional), while the India Mark (74 percent functional) and mechanized pumps (70 percent functional) performed the best.”
- Some projects that include environmental considerations illustrate our point by only focusing on behavior change as this sanitation/ hygiene ex-post from Madagascar did, where results fell off precipitously three years ex-post but without considering water supply or quality much [7].
[7]
- There can be useful learning when one combines an evaluation of both types of sustainability (ex-post and environmental). A JICA irrigation project in Cambodia shows that when irrigation canals were mostly sustained over the five-years ex-post, they could serve increasing needs for land coverage and rice production [7]. The area of irrigated fields at the national level in 2010 reached the target, and the irrigated field area has since continued to increase in most areas. Even the largest drop [in area irrigated] post-closure was only 11%. They reported that the unit yield of rice at the end-line survey in 2012 at 11 sites was 3.24t/ha (average) versus 3.11t/ha of unit yield of rice at the ex-post evaluation in 2017, which [almost] maintains the 2012 level. The ex-post showed that “continuous irrigation development in the said site can be considered as the main reason for the increase in land area. Securing an adequate amount of water is an important factor in continuously improving rice productivity.” The research also found that 81% of agricultural incomes as a result of the irrigation had increased, 11% stayed the same, and 8% had decreased. Again, this looks to be among the most resilient projects that, based on ex-post research, included environment which was also found to be as resilient as the livelihoods it was fostering.
- Sometimes more bad than good news is important when tracking environment and ex-post sustainability: Food for the Hungry, ADRA, and CARE Kenya found that unreliable water supply reduced the motivation to pay for water, threatening the resources to maintain the system [8]. What improved prospects of sustainability understand why communities could not sustain water and sanitation results based on willingness-to-pay models, as well as water being unavailable. Further, a lesson the organizations ideally learned was that “gradual exit, with the opportunity for project participants to operate independently prior to project closure, made it more likely that activities would be continued without project support.” So the question remains, what was learned by these organizations to avoid similar bad results and improve good, resilient results in similar circumstances?
[6]
Neither sustainability nor environmental quality can be assumed to continue nor to have positive results. Both are extensively under-evaluated, and given climate change disruptions, and this must change. Rowe concludes: “Climate change is a major threat to the long-term sustainability both attacking the natural systems (e.g. lower rainfall or higher floods, worse soil quality, increasing pests attacking crops, disappearing fish stocks, microplastics in our air and water, increasing sea levels from melting glaciers, worsening public health etc.) and destabilizining our Earth’s regenerative capacity. Fortunately, technical barriers do not prevent us from starting to infuse sustainability into evaluation; the barriers are social and associated with the worldview and vision of evaluation.”
Sources:
[1] IDEAS 2019 Global Assembly. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://2019.global-assembly.org/
[2] Rowe, A. (2019). Sustainability‐Ready Evaluation: A Call to Action. New Directions for Evaluation, 162, 29-48. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333616139_Sustainability-Ready_Evaluation_A_Call_to_Action
[3] USAID. (2013, October 31). Environmental Compliance Procedures. Retrieved from https://www.usaid.gov/our_work/environment/compliance/pdf/216
[4] OECD. (2015). Element 4, Paper 1: Global and local environmental sustainability, development and growth. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/dac/environment-development/FINAL%20POST-2015%20global%20and%20local%20environmental%20sustainability.pdf
[5] Haraguchi, T. (2017). Socialist Republic of Viet Nam: FY 2017 Ex-Post Evaluation of Japanese ODA Loan Project “Small-Scale Pro Poor Infrastructure Development Project (III)”. Retrieved from https://www2.jica.go.jp/en/evaluation/pdf/2017_VNXVII-5_4.pdf
[6] Coates, J., Kegode, E., Galante, T., & Blau, A. (2016, February). Sustaining Development: Results from a Study of Sustainability and Exit Strategies among Development Food Assistance Projects: Kenya Country Study. USAID. Retrieved from https://www.globalwaters.org/resources/assets/ex-post-evaluation-senegal-pepam
[7] Madagascar Rural Access To New Opportunities For Health And Prosperity (RANO-HP) Ex-Post Evaluation. (2017, June 1). USAID. Retrieved from https://www.globalwaters.org/resources/assets/madagascar-rural-access-new-opportunities-health-and-prosperity-rano-hp-ex-post-0
[8] Kobayashi, N. (2017). Kingdom of Cambodia: FY2017 Ex-Post Evaluation of Technical Cooperation Project: “Technical Service Center for Irrigation System Project – Phase 2 / The Improvement of Agricultural River Basin Management and Development Project (TSC3)”. Retrieved from https://www2.jica.go.jp/en/evaluation/pdf/2017_0900388_4.pdf
by Jindra Cekan | Jan 8, 2018 | foreign aid, GIIN, impact investing, Impact Investors, international development, post project evaluation, Return on Investment (ROI), stakeholders, Sustainable development, Valuing Voices
Impact Investing – International Development’s New Holy Grail?
There are so many things I love about the private sector such as Forbes 18 Dec Quote of the Day: “You’re going to be wrong a fair amount of times. So the issue is, how do you be wrong well?” asked Ray Dalio, Founder of Bridgewater Associate. This is a key issue for impact investors and international ‘developers’ alike.
International development suffers from the myth that failure must be downplayed. Too often only success is highlighted, whereas project shortcomings are framed as: “less successful” “numerous issues affected a less optimal…” Yet by downplaying the less great (Aka awful) results we miss vital learning that private sector expects, learns from and integrates toward the greater success. Why? Many in foreign aid believe (rightly?) such admissions might endanger winning more funding for more projects. Even as recently as 2014, U.S. foreign aid industry websites such as DevEx are still posting: “One can be forgiven for forming the impression that our development efforts are nearly perfect if typical annual reports, scientific conferences and event social media content are the basis for information. Successes are proudly packaged in glossy formats and heavily disseminated, whereas any objectives not achieved are relegated to the obligatory, and typically short, lessons learned section. This practice does not accurately represent an important reality: development efforts do in fact fail” [1].
Admitting failure, posting failure reports are awfully rare in international development, but how bad is it? The Asian Development Bank wrote in a large overview of the sustainability of post-project results, “Some early evidence suggests that as many as 40% of all new activities are not sustained beyond the first few years after disbursement of external funding” [2]. A 2017 Cambridge University study found that “using an original database of over 14,000 small development projects in Ghana, I estimate that one-third of projects that start are never completed, consuming nearly one-fifth of all local government investment” [3]. Even when they do start, complete, and even have salutary results at the end of the project, Valuing Voices research shows quick declines toward failures in as little as two years post exit, such as these post-project results at the AEA 2017 conference. The foreign aid industry is so focused on showing results while conditions are (relatively) conducive, that far fewer than 1% of all projects are evaluated for what was still standing in as little as two years after project closeout, and those are mostly those projects expected to be successful. Sustainable, long-term results suffer from what CGDev researchers are concerned “that pressure to demonstrate results in the short term may undermine efforts to ensure any impact is sustainable….Unfortunately, the pressure to show immediate results can encourage pursuit of agricultural investments unlikely to be sustained” [4]. Luckily there’s a place to go. DevEx reminds us that “Venture capitalists and corporate investors understand that less than 20 percent of new businesses will succeed,” hence my love of the private sector’s admitting, learning and improving that ‘aid’ needs [1].
As a former investment banker (Solomon Brothers) and management consultant (Price Waterhouse & Coopers and Lybrand), I know that the corporates care for results, and do not shy away from pulling money from where things don’t work and put it where they do. 30 years in international development showed me that rigid bureaucracies and fixed ‘project cycles’ and an industry focused on ‘getting money out the door’ lead to a focus on accounting for all funds, but not for changing lives over the long term. Virtually no one calculates return on (our) investment compared to the cost of projects, especially including the value of what projects generate and participants can sustain.
I am quite fervently hoping Impact Investors focused on financial ROI to firms and investors as well as Social Return on Investment will step in, fund gathering and learning from the whole range of ‘returns’. Will they share both financial profits/ losses and feedback from the whole social ‘value chain’ of stakeholders of those involved on what succeeds and fails? Will investors learn from national partners and participants on what should be done better? If yes, all of us will win. I am heartened by cautiously optimistic statements such as Next Billion’s “a core characteristic and challenge of impact investing is the measurement and management of social and environmental impacts alongside financial returns. Development cooperation and impact investing communities can build on their respective experience in results measurement and learn from and with each other” [5]. We can IF we are going to the same place.
From my early look at impact investing, it is a ‘game changer’ with $250 billion in assets looking for a profitable home [6]. UBS Asset Manager Baldinger says “In the past you sold products to your client, now you empower your client to create a desired impact. As an industry, we’ve had to rethink everything we do — impact and sustainability is the Silicon Valley of finance and we want to be the Google” [6]. These are happy words to someone focused on sustained (and emerging) impacts but among impact investors, so far, ‘impact’ seems to be thrown about as specifically as ‘results’, and GIIN ‘sustainability’ metrics are so wide ranging as to illuminate less quality than quantity. So far, much of their metrics look more like outputs relevant to companies (‘clients served’, ‘new investment capital’) that results of SROI. While there is something to be said about measures of ‘organizations trained’, ‘poverty assessments’ done, at least as a start, yet does ‘gross profit’ indicate that corner of the world is better off (and does this measure the investment into the enterprise, or is this of the investment fund itself)? Does ‘communities served’ and ‘social impact objectives’ illuminate the quality of the impact on lives changed? Is anyone asking how long-lasting, and sustained these investments, measuring what I call SUStained Return on Investment (SUSROI), will be after these investors leave (which is what I suspect most investment participants and millennial investors think they’re buying)?
This is the start of a series of blogs exploring how we who care about generating and evaluating sustained impacts can learn from, inform, (gasp) shape impact investing’s gargantuan footprint in international development. Powerhouses such as the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation and Soros are looking, teaching, investing, and all public and private equity as well as a whole range of other investors now invest in this new hybrid [7][8]. Who else is? What can we learn to make the world better? What do you think: Is impact investing development’s holy grail?
Sources:
[1] Petruney, T. (2014, December 12). Facing global development’s fear of failure. Retrieved from https://www.devex.com/news/facing-global-development-s-fear-of-failure-85078
[2] Asian Development Bank. (2010, October 31). Post-Completion Sustainability of Asian Development Bank-Assisted Projects. Retrieved from https://www.adb.org/documents/post-completion-sustainability-asian-development-bank-assisted-projects
[3] Williams, M. J. (2017). The Political Economy of Unfinished Development Projects: Corruption, Clientelism, or Collective Choice? American Political Science Review, 111(4). Retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/political-economy-of-unfinished-development-projects-corruption-clientelism-or-collective-choice/1351C9A6EB64B39B0D3A2B0A2D748412
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