Tracking impact
Why is tracking impact so important?
Cost-effective monitoring is essential to justify investment from ecosystem services (ES) beneficiaries, be they public or private. Investors and ES beneficiaries need to know their funds are effectively assisting farmers to shift to sustainable agriculture and generate the ecosystem service expected.
What do you monitor?
The performance of the IES package in delivering the right type of incentive to change agri-environmental behaviors can be measured by its environmental and social impacts. Environmental impacts can affect species diversity, habitat connectivity and ecosystem processes. Social impacts can be diverse, affecting livelihoods, income, food security, gender and well-being. Tracking these impacts is key as its socio-economic outcomes determine the long-term environmental performance of the initiative.
How do you measure impacts?
Not all ecosystem services have equal monitoring requirements. For example, while rates of carbon sequestration in young fast-growing trees can be easily estimated with allometric equations, changes in water quality and quantity can take several decades to be realized. Relationships between land management and hydrology in particular are complex, site-specific and prone to misunderstandings and more detailed and site specific measurements may need to be kept for long periods of time to yield reliable data.
A monitoring framework needs to be set in place from the very beginning, to allow for comparison with the results achieved along the way. Indicators can then be used to measure both environmental and socio-economic impacts of IES. These can be identified through participatory research methods, such as household surveys, focus groups, mapping, and ranking methods etc. for socio-economic impacts, and remote sensing and ground-based surveys, etc. for environmental impacts.
Tips on monitoring
- Develop a clear monitoring framework during the program’s inception that lays out the program’s strategy and the steps required to achieve its desired outcomes.
- Build capacity of the relevant institutions who may continue to monitor environmental and social impacts in the future.
- Ensure that sufficient funds are included in the agreement to cover running costs of collecting and analyzing the data.
- Build monitoring partnerships: Key projects, programs, or partners already monitoring the same indicators or areas, or who can assist you with monitoring reporting and verification (MRV).
- Communicate monitoring outcomes with stakeholders, investors, and partners to maintain transparency and accountability.