The GEF Independent Evaluation Office organized a webinar on Rapid Impact Evaluation (RIE). Andy Rowe, from ARCeconomics presented at the webinar. The event was moderated by Juha I Uitto, GEF Independent Evaluation Office.
RIE offers the potential to evaluate impacts in both ex ante and ex post settings providing utility for developmental and formative evaluation as well as summative settings. RIE triangulates judgments of three separate groups of experts to assess the incremental change in effects attributable to the intervention. Two methodological innovations are central to the method; the scenario-based counterfactual and a simplified approach to measuring change. In evaluations to date RIE has required less than two months, costs about 25,000 USD, and does not intrude on design or implementation of the intervention.
About Andy Rowe
Andy Rowe has worked for over thirty years as an economist and evaluation consultant in North America, Europe, South Asia, Africa, the Western Pacific and the Caribbean. His work focuses on evaluation in sustainable development, natural resource and dispute resolution settings. He has a PhD from the London School of Economics and is a 2013 Fellow and former President of the Canadian Evaluation Society.
He is currently team leader on evaluations of the UNEP GEO-5 program and of a philanthropic donor funded sustainable fisheries program in the Pacific. He is also undertaking the survey functions of a major review and assessment of Conservation Impact Investing. He continues to work in the US with federal, state and philanthropic organizations and recently completed a project to identify sustainable funding options for a First Nation Provincial government coastal marine partnership in British Columbia.
Recent publications include a foundational paper on evaluating natural resource interventions in the American Journal of Evaluation, book chapters on performance management and development, and on evaluation of sustainable development and a critical comment on the Canadian Credentialed Evaluator designation. He has developed two evaluation methodologies that are finding welcome audiences for evaluation of sustainable development and natural resource interventions: Rapid Impact Evaluation and the Negotiated Alternative. With Kai Lee of the Packard Foundation he has also developed a theory of change and grant-making strategy for use-inspired science.