3. Demand side approaches
• Need to rebalance the emphasis between
supply and demand – greater focus on the
user demand side.
• Joining forces - developing effective and
purposeful multi-stakeholder partnerships
are key to impact.
• Developing shared value propositions/ and
a common understanding
4. Politics
• Drivers of change – deeper understanding
the political economy of the environments
we work in – incentives, disincentives,
power plays
• Engaging policy-makers and government
officials at all levels
5. Windows of opportunity
• Change comes not only from government
but also civil society and social
movements
• Finding champions of change and working
with “connectors” .
• Being alert to windows of opportunity and
adopting a flexible and responsive
approach
6. Communication
• Communication and adopting different
ways of dissemination
• Keeping it simple - reporting results in a
way that is accessible, understandable
and useable
• We are not rational actors – we need to
engage hearts and minds
7. Assessing Impact
• Impact takes a long time – tracking impact
beyond the time frame of the project
• Re-thinking our metrics for measuring
change
• Lesson learning – we can learn from
‘failures’
9. Group work
• Break up into your respective projects and
appoint a rapporteur who will report back
in the plenary.
• Non- ESPA grantees please join project
groups.
• In this session we would like each group to
discuss their impact strategies and impact
pathways, addressing the questions in the
guidance note provided.
10. Impact Pathways
• Revisit project objectives and impact
statement – highlighting what the project
seeks to ultimately achieve and how this
leads to a change in the lives of poor
people
• Review project inputs, activities, outputs
and outcomes designed to enhance the
impact of your project. Identifying gaps
and opportunities.
11. Stakeholder analysis
• Using the guidance note as an aid, while
doing this exercise think about the key
stakeholders the project will be seeking to
partner with to enhance research uptake,
use or impact.
• Assessing the individuals or organisations
in terms of their degree of influence,
alignment, and readiness to engage. To
identify those best placed for impact.
Editor's Notes
My name is Bouchra Chakroune, I work with the Impact team at the ESPA Directorate. I’m based in the Edinburgh office with Becky Murray.
I will quickly review some key points and lesson from yesterdays rich and thought-provoking discussions and then I will provide you more details on todays activities before handing over to Becky to recap ESPA’s theory of change and explain how that relates to what we are doing today
We heard yesterday that the UK governments is increasingly recognising the importance of research for poverty alleviation. But to provide justifications to support increased investment in research to ministers and the tax payers alike we need to improve what we know on the demand side, where the need is and how our research is being used.
Recognising this is difficult, but necessary to achieve impact in the complex environments where we work and where our research is likely to be only one part of a bigger puzzle.
With our stakeholders that we work with. Ensuring we use a co-production approach and that there is ownership of the research.
We need to understand what is driving change and the political economy of the environments we work – this means confronting notions of ‘neutrality’ and assessing whether evidence is ever an apolitical exercise – whose evidence matters. But keeping eyes wide open about how research could be used and the incentive structures around operating in these spaces.
Policy is not one man’s job – Engaging at lower levels can be strategic. And providing actionable but not prescriptive recommendations – providing a menu of options is preferable.
which in itself is critical for sustainability.
Finding champions of change, who will support and work with us, recognising the bias in this approach, but that it may lead to a greater likelihood of success. But also working with “connectors” – those who are familiar with both the academic and practitioner fields and can act as effective communicators.
Potentially being willing to publicise research and finding that have not yet been finalised
Communicating and translating research findings and different ways of dissemination- not just academic forums but finding ways to engage policy-makers and communities, as well reaching out to journalists – making full use of mass media and social media. Participating in key forums and events where we can communicate our research findings.
Keep it simple - reporting results in a way that is accessible, understandable and useable
The need to be creative in how we communicate – using stories, films etc We are not rational actors – we need to engage hearts and minds – be creative (storytelling)
Impact takes a long time – building in mechanisms to track impact beyond the time frame of the project – develop relationships and partnerships with institutions that have greater permanence in the countries we are working in. Can the RIU strategy be delegated, how can it be carried forward beyond the lifetime of the project
Re-think our metrics for measuring impact – not just numbers of publications and citations etc. e.g looking for incremental changes in policy or development programmes benefitting from our outputs and delivering better impact, or enhanced user involvement or true indicators of co-production.
Question of attributions – change can happen through informal and undocumented ways – how do we address this – ensuring we gather feedback from stakeholders throughout the project and establish an M&E framework.
Had some examples of what has worked but also examples where lessons have been learnt from projects where impact has not been achieved. Embedding a culture where we are allowed to fail and use what we have learnt to better inform programming.
We will ask you to break up into your respective projects.There are 4 projects.
For those who are not involved in an ESPA project, please feel free to join any project you wish. If you didn’t pick up a briefing note about the projects yesterday please come and see and I can give you an overview.
PI Fiona Marshall’s project – Risks and Responses to Urban Futures looking at the peri-urban, looking at poverty and environmental degradation in peri-urban zones
PI Manoj Roy’s project – Institutions for Urban Poor’s Access to Ecosystem Services – looking at the access of the urban poor to Ecosystem services and their exposure to disservices in Bangladesh and Tanzania
We also have ESPA partners from the Mountain Evo project (the PI is not here today) – which is looking at the value of environmental virtual observatories and citizen science in monitoring Ecosystem Services in mountainous regions and influencing decision-making
Finally we have ESPA partners from the project the Political Economy of Water Security (the PI again is not here to day) – which is looking at water security in hill and mountainous regions in south asia and the trade-offs and decision making process involved in such contexts.
The ESPA team will be available to guide you through this process. So please feel free to grab one of us at any point. Also Becky will go into this in a bit more detail.
Myself, Becky, Raj and Sam will be floating around and will help you.