Le mardi 12 mai, 13 h 30 (heure de l'Est)
Titre : Use, Influence and Polycrisis
Résumé : As environmental change accelerates and policy challenges become increasingly interconnected, evaluation must evolve to remain credible, relevant, and influential. This workshop examines how evaluation at the Global Environment Facility has contributed to decision-making within the human–environment nexus by strengthening independence, adopting systems thinking, advancing methodological approaches, and ensuring timely insights.
The workshop will focus on the use and influence of evaluation, exploring how innovative and evolving approaches can enhance the relevance, rigor, and uptake of evaluation findings. Particular emphasis will be placed on the need for evaluation to be adaptive, enabling evaluators to respond to changing conditions, emerging knowledge, and evolving program contexts while providing timely insights for decision-making.
Systems thinking offers essential tools for understanding the complex relationships, feedback loops, and cross-sector interactions that shape outcomes across social and environmental systems. Independence remains central to the credibility and legitimacy of evaluation, enabling evaluators to provide trusted and transparent evidence while engaging constructively with policy and program stakeholders. The forms and necessary attributes of independence that enable addressing coupled human and natural systems will be a point of discussion in the workshop.
Drawing on evidence and experience from current evaluation units in multilateral institutions, the session will also reflect on the responsibility of evaluation and evaluators—especially in times of polycrisis, scarce financing and heightened accountability—to provide credible, independent, and timely evidence that supports learning, informs policy choices, and guides the effective use of limited resources.
Workshop participant successes in influencing interventions will be solicited and celebrated.
Présentation : Geeta Batra (Director, GEF IEO), Jos Vaessen (Senior Adviser, IEG), Andreas Reumann (Head of Evaluation, GCF) , Juha Uitto (President, IDEAS) , Andy Rowe (Principal, Footprint Evaluation, moderator)
Bios
Geeta Batra, Director of the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the Global Environment Facility
Geeta Batra is Director of the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the Global Environment Facility since 2024. She has over 25 years of experience in international development, including 15 years of experience in program evaluation. She has a Ph.D in Economics and an M.B.A in Finance.
In 2015 she joined the Independent Evaluation Office of the Global Environment Facility as Chief Evaluator and Deputy Director. Before this role, she worked in the World Bank's private sector development department for seven years (1998-2005) implementing competitiveness projects in East Asia and Latin America; and then with the International Finance Corporation as head and chief evaluator for the IFC advisory services portfolio. Geeta also worked in the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank as chief evaluator and manager for country and corporate thematic evaluations.
Juha Uitto, Independent
Juha Uitto is the former Director of the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the Global Environment Facility (2014-2024). He has worked as an evaluator with the GEF and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) since 1999, including as Deputy Director of the UNDP IEO from 2009 to 2014. He has conducted and managed many programmatic and thematic evaluations of international cooperation at the global, regional and country levels, in particular related to environmental management and poverty-environment linkages. He served as the Executive Coordinator of the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) from 2009 to 2012 and again in 2014.
Juha's entire career has focused on environment and development, with earlier positions at the United Nations University (UNU), Nordic Africa Institute, and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). He has worked as consultant in the field and held visiting positions at Rutgers University and Kyoto University. He was educated at the Universities of Helsinki and Lund, and holds a PhD in Social and Economic Geography.
Jos Vaessen, Chief Evaluation Officer and Senior Adviser at the Independent Evaluation Group at the World Bank
Jos Vaessen is Chief Evaluation Officer and Senior Adviser at the Independent Evaluation Group at the World Bank. Since 1998 he has been involved in evaluation research activities, first as an academic and consultant to bilateral and multilateral development organizations and from 2011 to 2016 as a lead evaluator at UNESCO. Between 2016 and 2024 he has worked at the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group as evaluation adviser. He established and led IEG's Methods Team (2016-2022) and in collaboration with other colleagues and institutional partners, contributed to establishing the Global Evaluation Initiative, a global partnership to strengthen M&E systems and capacities. In 2024-2025 Jos was Principal Advisor at the Office of Evaluation and Oversight at the Inter-American Development Bank. Jos has been author of several internationally peer-reviewed publications, including three books. Notable examples of his publications are: Impact evaluations and development – NONIE guidance on impact evaluation (2009, with Frans Leeuw; World Bank), Mind the gap: perspectives on policy evaluation and the social sciences (2009, with Frans Leeuw; Transaction Publishers), Dealing with complexity in development evaluation: a practical approach (2015, with Michael Bamberger and Estelle Raimondo; SAGE Publications), Evaluation of international development interventions: an overview of approaches and methods (2020; with Sebastian Lemire and Barbara Befani; World Bank). Jos regularly serves on reference groups of evaluations for different institutions.
Andreas Reumann, Head of the Independent Evaluation Unit Green Climate Fund
Andreas is the Head of the Independent Evaluation Unit. His extensive experience includes designing impact monitoring systems for large R4D projects, developing alternative evaluation methods and, prior to IEU, strengthening the Center for International Forestry Research’s M&E capacity. He holds a BA in European Economic Studies and an MSc in Economics from the University of Copenhagen.
Type : Atelier express (90 min)
Langue : English
Expertise : Geeta Batra has been the Director of the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) at the Global Environment Facility (GEF) since 2024. She brings over 25 years of experience in international development and 15 years specifically in program evaluation to the role.
Her career includes significant tenures at the World Bank Group. She spent seven years (1998-2005) in the private sector development department working on competitiveness projects, followed by roles at the Independent Evaluation Group and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), where she served as head and chief evaluator for advisory services.
Prior to joining the GEF in 2015 as Chief Evaluator and Deputy Director, she also worked at American Express as a senior risk manager. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics and an M.B.A. in Finance. In her current role, she leads a team of evaluators, oversees evaluation quality, and has co-authored numerous publications while managing over 100 evaluations."
Niveau : Intermediate/Advanced
Prérequis : Awareness and some experience undertaking evaluations and communicating findings. Experience with international development not required.
Objectifs : Participants will be introduced to key contributors to the high level of influence achieved by the Independent Evaluation Office at the Global Environment Facility, including how their evaluations shifted from a strong environmental focus to include human system outcomes, and contributed to similar shifts at the GEF.
Stratégies : Facilitated discussions engaging success stories from participants and reflecting on the centrality of use and influence of evaluation in times of polycrisis.