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Monitoring and evaluation

Update

Together with the World Bank and the Council of Europe Development Bank, ProVention organized a two-day workshop on M&E for disaster risk management which took place at the IDRC conference in Davos on August 26-27, 2008. The workshop was a follow up to a first conference organized by the WB, CEB and IDB on the topic in Paris in 2006. At the 2006 meeting, it was agreed to come back together again in 2-3 years time to continue the dialogue, assess progress, and identify further areas for action. In Davos, about 70 evaluators, practitioners and policy makers from IFIs, governments, NGOs, universities and community groups gathered to discuss lessons from recent evaluations and monitoring efforts, and the role of M&E for advancing the risk management agenda.

Through a very interactive discussion, participants identified ways forward in three critical areas, including (i) developing guidance on how to characterize DRR so that it can be adequately measured; (ii) addressing a number of specific M&E gaps related to DRR such as developing longitudinal data on recovery and risk reduction, undertaking more inter-agency evaluations, and developing more baseline scenarios; (iii) and looking at how to improve communications and targeting of lessons emerging from M&E efforts to improve the application of learning. The recommendations on areas to develop will be incorporated into ProVention’s future work plan.

Description

ProVention has initiated several activities to look more specifically at measuring progress in the reduction of disaster risks.

In addition to the set of guidance notes for the Tools for mainstreaming risk reduction project, that project also developed a DRM Monitoring & Evaluation Sourcebook as a resource for methods and tools for evaluating the socio-economic benefits of disaster risk management initiatives. The sourcebook includes guidance on planning and implementing evaluations, the application and value of different assessment approaches and methods, and choice and validity of different indicators. It also contains case studies in evaluation and case evidence on the net benefits of risk reduction.

In November 2006 the World Bank, the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) held a conference on Disaster Risk Management: Taking Lessons from Evaluation and an Evaluator’s Roundtable in Paris to discuss recent disaster operations of multilateral and bilateral development aid institutions and NGOs, highlighting aspects that would facilitate institutional change and improve practices. The conference and roundtable discussion were the first time ever that evaluators joined together to discuss the evaluation of natural disaster risk management. The Evaluator’s Roundtable focused on developing key messages for policymakers to ensure that recommendations emerging from evaluation are adopted, and identified future areas of cooperation for conference participants.

One recommended action from the Evaluator’s Roundtable was to organize a follow-up workshop in two to three years time to continue the dialogue on evaluation results and disaster risk management.

As mentioned in the Update above, this follow-up workshop was recently held during the IDRC 2008 conference in Davos, Switzerland. Bringing together more than 70 evaluators and DRR practitioners, the workshop offered a tremendous opportunity to share lessons from recent evaluations and monitoring efforts and discuss the role of M&E for advancing the risk management agenda.

This workshop covered the following topics:

• Overview of Paris conference and developments since 2006: Evaluator Roundtable
  • Ron Parker, IEG, World Bank – Workshop on Monitoring and Evaluation of Disaster Risk Reduction
  • Bastiaan de Laat, CEB - ‘From Paris to Davos’ Improvements in DRM since 2006
  • Claudio Volonté, GEF – Lessons from the Alexandria conference on evaluating climate change and development
• Applying Evaluation Learning
  • Ron Parker, World Bank – Applying Evaluation Learning: Gap Areas Identified in Paris
  • Karen Proudlock, ALNAP – Utilization of humanitarian evaluation
  • Ian O’Donnell, ProVention Consortium – Sharing insights in M&E for DRR
• Lessons from Recent Evaluations
  • Ian Cristoplos, independent – Learning From Recovery After Hurricane Mitch
  • Silke Heuser, IEG, World Bank – Development Actions and the Rising Incidence of Disasters
  • Manish Gangal, American Red Cross – Evaluations-Informing DRR Program Design
• The Power of Information for Effective Monitoring
  • Markus Goldstein / Samia Amin, UN/World Bank – Data Against Natural Disasters: Establishing Effective Systems for Relief, Recovery and Reconstruction
  • Amin Subekti, Deputy for Finance and Planning (BRR) – Managing and using information for Aceh reconstruction: A Government perspective [Additional background paper]
  • Wolfgang Fengler / Jock McKeon, World Bank – Aceh Tsunami and Myanmar Cyclone: Estimating Damage & Losses and tracking the impact of the reconstruction progress
• Monitoring National and Global Progress
  • Casimiro Abreu, National Institute of Disaster Management, Mozambique – Hyogo Framework Implementation Strategy in Mozambique
  • Jock Baker, CARE International – Good Enough approach to evaluating DRR
  • John Cosgrave, independent – Trends in evaluation of DRR in the broader context of humanitarian development and response

Outputs & events

Key outputs from this set of related activities have included the following:

• Creation of the M&E Sourcebook
• Publication of the proceeding from the 2006 conference and evaluator’s round table – “Disaster Risk Management: Taking Lessons from Evaluation”

These activities have provided a critical complement to ProVention's Tools for mainstreaming risk reduction project as well as additional opportunities to share the lessons from the Learning Lessons from Disaster Recovery project and other related ProVention activities. The ongoing dialogue on improving M&E for DRR is also helping ProVention to improve its own M&E systems.

Next Steps

• Publishing of report from workshop on M&E for disaster risk management held at the IDRC 2008 conference.
• Development of further activities to strengthen tools and approaches for M&E for DRR within the new ProVention work plan for 2009-2011.