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Evaluating Participatory Research for Sustainable Agriculture
Anna Maria [email protected]
Regional Symposium on Agroecology for
Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems in Europe and Central Asia
Budapest, 23-25 Nov 2016
• Research for sustainable agriculture
• Multi-Actor Approach (MAA)
• Challenges of evaluation
AGRICULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY
Credits: FAO
• Grand challenge: feeding growing population with finite
resources
• Complexity: systems and nexus thinking, synergies and
trade-offs
• Science / research has a role to play
RESEARCH RESPONDING TO AGROECOLOGICAL CHALLENGES
• Participatory turn in agricultural research
• Paradigm revival (inspired by Lewin, Freire, Fals-Borda…)
• Innovating with ICTs (video, GIS, WhatsApp…)
• Transdisciplinary communities of inquiry
• Action, learning and empowerment• Transforming agricultural systems
and the academia – it’s about curiosity!
MULTI-ACTOR APPROACH (MAA) • Research and action projects oriented on fostering sustainable agriculture /
agroecology• Targeting needs of end users, esp. farmers• Cross-fertilisation of ideas between different actors (farmers and farmers’ groups, advisers, enterprises, researchers and others) • Project results to feed into the EIP-AGRI• Significant funding volume at the EU level: €371 million in 2016-2017• 38 topics of the calls in 2016-2017
EVALUATOR’S DILEMMAS
• Research performance evaluation (journal impact factor, patents…)• Agricultural research within a broader discipline context• Evaluation of programme intervention / investment• Immediate results / effects vs. long-term impacts• Tangible vs. intangible impacts• Localised effects or impacts of grand scale• Measurement of sustainability and SDGs contribution
Do actually these projects make agriculture more sustainable?
EVALUATION APPROACHES• Participatory evaluation • Outcome mapping / harvesting• Portfolio analysis• Theory of change• Impact pathway• Altmetrics• Social media analysis• Self-evaluation• Capacity building
Challenge: the time lag between the project and observation of the impacts
Credits: IMPRESS project, CIRAD http://impress-impact-recherche.cirad.fr/impress/principles-and-tools
