Supporting Transitions to Sustainability: Evaluation for Managing Processes in the Public Interest

Abstract

Sustainability as a goal is often a major consideration in policy debates and is becoming more so in the field of evaluation. This rising profile, however, creates challenges because the contexts where sustainability is evaluated can be complex in ways that standard evaluation is less equipped to address. After addressing conditions that add to this complexity, recommendations are made to counter three problems. First, with a traditional focus on support for achieving outcomes, evaluators have tended to neglect support for managing processes. Second, with the largely accepted goal of influencing selected outcomes, evaluators have tended to neglect influencing established systems and so have been less prepared to support managing transitions from unsustainable to sustainable practices. Third, judging the value of public initiatives involves assumptions that, when applied to sustainability, can result in overly narrow and biased understandings of the public interest.

How Far Dare an Evaluator Go Toward Saving the World?: Redux, Update, and a Reflective Practice Facilitation Tool

“…The Union of Concerned Scientists has moved the Doomsday Clock to 110 seconds before midnight because of the increased threat of nuclear annihilation given the politics of our time. A recent New Directions for Evaluation centered on sustainability (Julnes, 2019). The theme of the 2016 AEA Annual Conference was Visionary Evaluation for an Equitable and Sustainable Future.…”

Evaluation Criteria for Evaluating Transformation: Implications for the Coronavirus Pandemic and the Global Climate Emergency

“…The theme of the 2014 Annual Conference of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) was visionary evaluation for a sustainable, equitable future , now a book (Parsons et al, 2020). A special issue of New Directions for Evaluation was devoted to evaluating sustainability (Julnes, 2019). The 2018 theme of the Australasian Evaluation Society was transformations while that of the European Evaluation Society was evaluation for more resilient societies.…”

“…Adaptive ecological sustainability has emerged as a priority criterion for evaluation (Julnes, 2019a; Ofir, 2018a, 2018c; Rowe, 2019; Uitto, 2019). Neither the original nor the revised DAC criteria address adaptive ecological sustainability as a priority.…”

“…George Julnes (2019b) spotlighted and affirmed the importance of evaluators supporting transitions to sustainability as a responsibility for managing processes in the public interest:…”

Evaluation for the Anthropocene: Global environmental perspectives

“…In my view, it is imperative to pay attention to the natural system and to the natural environment in every evaluation (for an in-depth discussion on this, see Julnes, 2019). Unfortunately, evaluators often do not do this.…”