Why monitoring and evaluation matter (online)

Why monitoring and evaluation matters for Transition

 What role does measuring and evaluating impact have in Transition initiatives?  How important is it, and how straightforward is it in a group that is already busy "doing stuff"?  This project, from Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, is developing a project called Monitoring and Evaluation for Sustainable Communities (MESC) to develop and trial a range of tools to enable groups to self monitor and evaluate their work.

 

 

A critique of eco-cities (#journal)

Eco-urbanism and the Eco-city, or, Denying the Right to the City?

This paper critically analyses the construction of eco-cities as technological fixes to concerns over climate change, Peak Oil, and other scenarios in the transition towards “green capitalism”. It argues for a critical engagement with new-build eco-city projects, first by highlighting the inequalities which mean that eco-cities will not benefit those who will be most impacted by climate change. Second, the paper investigates the foundation of eco-city projects on notions of crisis and scarcity. Third, there is a need to critically interrogate the mechanisms through which new eco-cities are built, including the land market, reclamation, dispossession and “green grabbing”. Lastly, a sustained focus is needed on workers geographies in and around these “emerald cities”, especially the temporary settlements housing the millions of workers who move from one new project to another.

Success factors in transition communities (#journal)

Learning from success—Toward evidence-informed sustainability transitions in communities

People around the world initiate transitions toward sustainability on various levels of society. Each initiative presents learning opportunities to build robust transitions. Little empirical research has been conducted on how the transition context and process lead to particular outcomes. This article presents an analytical-evaluative framework for appraising the sustainability of transition outcomes and reconstructing transition pathways in order to identify critical success factors. Ashton Hayes in the U.K. serves as an illustrative case study. The ultimate goal is to derive, accumulated over many studies, evidence-informed guidelines to improve the effectiveness of transitions.