Webinar

Webinar: Transforming Monitoring & Evaluation to support food systems transformation

How can M&E transform to support (food) systems transformation?

Are you interested in cutting edge Monitoring & Evaluation developments? Are you an M&E expert, or is M&E an important part of your work as a practitioner? Are you involved in (food) systems transformation in the Global South? Then this free webinar, part of the international ‘M&E on the cutting edge’ conferences series may be of interest to you. The webinar takes place on Monday May 16.

Organised by Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation
Date

Mon 16 May 2022

The conference is organised in the context of the course ‘Evaluating and managing for sustainable development impact’ and open to the public.

Background information

This is the 12th edition of the ‘Monitoring & Evaluation on the cutting edge’ conference. Previous editions of this conferences focused on various M&E related topics, an overview is available here.

Growing need for food systems transformation

The global report on food crises (2021) reported the growing severity and magnitude of (food) crises with at least 155 million acutely food-insecure people in need of urgent assistance. The compounding impacts of persistent conflict/insecurity, economic shocks, including those associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, and weather extremes call for systemic approaches.

The United Nations Food systems Summit (UNFSS) held in 2021 indicated the need for sustainable food systems, and has accelerated the need for food systems transformation:

“If the world population reaches 9 billion by 2050, as predicted, the demand for food would increase by 60%. The situation isn’t any better today - the pandemic, poverty and food insecurity have left about a tenth of the global population undernourished in 2020. Nearly 150 million children under the age of 5 were estimated to be stunted.”

Food systems transformation and M&E

Urgent changes are needed to make our food systems more inclusive, resilient and sustainable.

How can M&E transform so that it can truly support food system transformation?

Food systems are complex systems that are related to other systems like the climate, water, health, political and cultural systems. They call for engagement of stakeholders at multiple levels in multiple sectors. Therefore, food systems transformation calls for a different way of doing monitoring and evaluation. It involves moving beyond projects and programs, recognizing complexity and applying systems thinking. It involves making sense of trends and developments, developing scenarios and having foresight. And it involves understanding and monitoring transformational change (e.g. disruption of feedback loops, tipping points, etc). And ensuring that this feeds into (evidence-based) decision making at different levels. This requires different capacities, approaches and principles. Therefor our core question at the webinar is:

How can M&E transform so that it can truly support (food) system transformation?

Registration

Please fill out the registration form by clicking the orange button.

Register

Program overview webinar

Time (CET) Topic
13.30 Launch of the webinar
13.40 Short introduction Michael Quinn Patton – setting the scene on systems transformation
13.45 Keynote Jim Woodhill - How can foresight and scenario analysis support (global) food system transformation?
14.05 Keynote Michael Quinn Patton – How can M&E professionals best support food system transformation? What does this involve in terms of M&E practices, processes and the M&E profession?
14.30 BREAK
14.45 Panel discussion – with MQ Patton, Jim Woodhill, Mine Pabari, Sylvester Dickson Baguma, Natalie Kapinga and Harunur Rashid
15.30 Round off and closing

Biodata keynote speakers and panellists

Michael Quinn Patton

Michael is author of more than a dozen books on evaluation including
Utilization-focused evaluation, 5th ed (2021), Qualitative Research &
Evaluation Methods, 4th ed (2015), Blue Marble Evaluation (2020),
Principles-Focused Evaluation (2018), Facilitating Evaluation (2018) and
Developmental Evaluation (2011).

Jim Woodhill

Jim is Honorary Research Associate at University of Oxford and leads the Foresight4Food initiative. He is a specialist on inclusive agribusiness, rural development, food security and multi-stakeholder partnerships.

Mine Pabari

Mine is experienced in strategic planning, monitoring, learning and evaluation processes in sustainable development with a particular focus in the environmental and agricultural sectors in eastern and southern Africa. Independent consultancy includes evaluations, development of M&E plans and processes, MEL training and co-editing the book, ‘Using evidence in policy and practice: Lessons from Africa’. Mine also headed up IUCN’s regional programme in eastern and southern Africa.

Sylvester Dickson Baguma

Sylvester is Director of Bulindi Zonal Agricultural Research and Development Institute of National Agricultural Research Organisation in Uganda. For about 14 years, he has co-facilitated the international course ‘Evaluating and Managing for Sustainable Development Impact (WUR, the Netherlands) and has undertaken a wide variety of M&E related assignments.

Natalie Kapinga

Natalie is Deputy Head - Monitoring and Evaluation Unit at FAO South Sudan. Development Cooperation professional with extensive years of progressive and practical planning, reporting, monitoring, evaluation, and knowledge management experience in various fields.

Harunur Rashid

Harun works as Professor of Aquatic Ecology at Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU), Department of Fisheries Management & the Interdisciplinary Institute for Food Security. Dr Rashid’s research & work experiences are quite interdisciplinary, from fish ecology and aquatic ecotoxicology to climate change impacts & food security. Under his leadership BAU-IIFS (Interdisciplinary Institute for Food Security), was founded in 2013. Prof. Rashid has published more than 50 research articles, books & chapters in international peer reviewed journals and international conferences.

Webinar organisers & moderators from Wageningen University & Research (WUR)

Cecile is senior advisor Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation at WUR and lead author for 2 books: ‘Managing for Sustainable Development Impact’ and 'Making evaluations matter: a practical guide for evaluators'

Landry is Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning advisor at WUR, has evaluation experience at the UNDP independent office of evaluation and is PhD candidate with the Development Economics Groups at WUR.

For practical information about the webinar please contact: eric.wijnen@wur.nl

For content information about the webinar please contact: cecile.kusters@wur.nl