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FOCUS: Tracking impact
Identifying cause and effect in a complex world is a well-known challenge. However daunting, we have no choice but to enter the methodological maze, as policymakers, consumers, donors and tax payers demand to know whether interventions supported by them really produce worthwhile change.
The global forest community also has a strong interest in conveying the value of initiatives such as sustainable forest management certification, stepped-up forest research or governance reforms. Communicating a credible story of change can help combat fatalism regarding the future of the world's forests and embolden a new set of actors to invest in initiatives such as landscape restoration, climate-smart landscape planning and multi-functional protected areas. But how do we know what works? And with what level of certainty can we claim that certain interventions are responsible for associated impacts? Gathering the facts and establishing a theory of change is not straight-forward.
In the area of forest management certification for example, a recent stock-taking supported by PROFOR suggests that while many benefits of certification are undisputed, a lot more research needs to be done to provide quantitative information on environmental impacts. Advances in information and communications technology could help ease the burden of collecting data in the monitoring and evaluation of forest projects in the field -- PROFOR is currently looking at that topic, building on previous work on ICTs and forest governance. Aditionally, many forest projects are one step removed from the woods and deal with institutional reform and policy change. Mapping the influence of knowledge in this area is tricky but essential to ensure the accountability of global and national efforts to reduce poverty, increase resilience and combat climate change. Partnerships across forest research and policy institutions could help produce pragmatic approaches in this field at a reasonable cost.
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