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This webinar will provide a space for panelists from a recent AEA session on the climate crisis to continue the conversation and answer questions.

The urgency of climate change presents an opportunity for action by evaluators on what is arguably the most pressing challenge we face not just as evaluators, but as inhabitants on this planet. This “tragedy of the commons" sits squarely within the AEA ethical guiding principle, Common Good and Equity. The climate crisis is one of humanity's great moral moments, alongside the abolition of slavery, the defeat of apartheid, votes for women and gay rights. There are no bystanders; the outcomes affect us all and future generations. What does this mean for evaluation as a profession, and how can evaluators engage in the challenge of our time? The answer to these questions will shape the future of evaluators in more ways than one. In the original session, panelists explored our collective and individual responsibilities as evaluators.

Panel Moderators & Co-Presenters

Allison Van 

Scott Chaplowe

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Summary: r3.0 (Redesign for Resilience and Regeneration) just hosted its 7th International Conference in September, and so in this webinar, they present a round-up of activity from it. The Program structure revolves around four thematic pairings that align with r3.0’s Work Ecosystem and its vision of the elements of necessary transformation.  

• Science & Behavior: The Global Thresholds & Allocations Council (GTAC) ties the science of threshold determinations with the behavioral ethics of allocations — this Webinar will cover r3.0’s work on GTAC's Theory of Transformation as well as approaches to addressing bioregional carrying capacities
• Finance & Growth: r3.0 is releasing its Sustainable Finance Blueprint, which addresses post-growth concepts  
• Value & Circularity: r3.0 is also releasing its Value Cycles Blueprint, which calls for a new system of value focused on System Value, and transcending linear and circular economics with cyclical, spiral, and fractal economics
• Governance & Education: the Conference marks the launch of 1-year development processes on Systemic Governance & Funding Blueprint and Educational Transformation Blueprint. 

r3.0 is pulling all of these themes together in a World Progress Report that sets a baseline for gauging future progress (defined much differently than how progress is defined today) that we will publish on an annual basis thereafter.    

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Learn how two professional development and capability-building trainers, Glenn Page and Michael Quinn Patton, are adapting to the online environment. Two principles-focused evaluation approaches interconnect as Glenn will focus on how to apply the principles of Blue Marble Evaluation for place-based “bioregions" and understanding transformations pathways through the use of a Blue Marble Baseline and Michael will focus on further Blue Marble Evaluation Training.

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Greg Watson is the Director of Policy and Systems Design at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics. His work currently focuses on community food systems and an initiative to improve global systems literacy. Greg has spent over 40 years learning to understand systems thinking as inspired by Buckminster Fuller and to apply that understanding to achieve a just and sustainable world. He has served on the board of the Buckminster Fuller Institute and as a juror for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge. His presentation will be 12 Degrees of Freedom: Understanding Our Options for Success. 

Kirk Bergstrom is a social entrepreneur who enjoys architecting ideas and making things real. Growing up at the base of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Kirk cultivated a deep commitment to the living systems of Earth and the wisdom of nature. He is passionate about big-picture thinking and our collective potential to create a flourishing future. Kirk currently serves as President of WorldLink, a public benefit organization based in San Francisco. He has also served as Vice Chair of the Buckminster Fuller Institute and Executive Director of the Nourish initiative. Kirk recently co-taught an undergraduate course entitled Design for Global Transformation at the University of California, Berkeley. As part of the course experience, student teams designed a planetary-scale strategy with the potential for real-world transformational change.  

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Presenters: Steve Lydenberg, William Burckart & Mirtha Kastrapeli

Hosted by Glenn Page

This webinar will explore the work of TIIP and their vision for engaging Blue Marble Evaluators to help transform the financial sector - with an eye to Large Asset Ownership. 

TIIP was founded in 2015 by Steve Lydenberg—co-founder of the first index to utilize social and environmental standards—and William Burckart—a respected impact investing consultant—who were determined to help investors align their strategies and practices with the increasingly complex world of the 21st century. Not only did they want to show investors that everything—from the environment to healthcare to the financial markets—is interconnected, they also hoped to demonstrate that investors can play a major role in preventing environmental disasters and easing social unrest. They hoped that investors would realize that doing so is not only good for global sustainability and well-being, but it is good for their bottom lines. TIIP has since worked tirelessly to encourage adoption of system-level investing, an advanced sustainable investing approach through which investors consider the bigger-picture environmental, social, or financial system context of their security selection and portfolio construction decisions. Throughout 2015 and 2016, they established the theoretical frameworks for identifying systemic environmental and social challenges best-suited to investor action and developed and disseminated information about effective system-level investing tools. They have since broadened their efforts and are helping to meet industry demand for practical guidance on adopting system-level investing approaches and measuring investors’ impacts and influence on environmental and social systems.

Presenter Bios

Steve Lydenberg, TIIP’s Founder and CEO, also serves as Partner, Strategic Vision of Domini Impact Investments where he provides strategic vision and direction to guide the firm’s policies, procedures, and daily practices. Mr. Lydenberg previously served as the firm’s Chief Investment Officer and was a co-founder of the Domini 400 Social Index, the first index to utilize social and environmental standards. In addition, Mr. Lydenberg has been active in researching the social and environmental performance of corporations since 1975. Mr. Lydenberg was a co-founder of KLD Research & Analytics, Inc. and served as its research director from 1990 to 2001. From 1987 to 1989, he was an associate with Franklin Research and Development Corporation (now known as Trillium Asset Management). For 12 years he worked with the Council on Economic Priorities, ultimately as director of corporate accountability research. Mr. Lydenberg is the Founding Director of the Initiative for Responsible Investment (IRI) at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, which was established to provide institutional support for catalytic activity for responsible investment, broadly construed, with a strong focus on creating a foundation of research activity around the field. He has published widely on responsible investment and corporate social responsibility and is a CFA charter holder.

William Burckart is the President and co-founder of The Investment Integration Project (TIIP), an applied research and consulting services firm that helps investors manage systemic environmental and societal risks. Mr. Burckart has worked with a range of clients, including investment management firms, private foundations and endowments, government and major industry bodies, helping them to integrate impact and investment goals through the development and implementation related strategies. He has also contributed to the field through groundbreaking research, including the development of market insights and practical guidance for investors and financial advisors in collaboration with the Money Management Institute (MMI); co-editing the New Frontiers of Philanthropy: A Guide to the New Tools and Actors that Are Reshaping Global Philanthropy and Social Investing (Oxford University Press: 2014), and helping to write the “Status of the Social impact investing Market: A Primer” (UK Cabinet Office: 2013) that was distributed to policymakers at the inaugural G8-level forum on impact investing. His writing has been featured in The Guardian, Forbes, Quartz, top1000funds, Investment & Pensions Europe (I&PE), Benefits & Pensions, InvestmentNews, Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), ImpactAlpha, CSRwire, Alliance, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, FundFire and Next Billion to name a few. Mr. Burckart is a fellow of the High Meadows Institute and member of the advisory council of the Investments & Wealth Institute’s WealthBoard 100.

Mirtha Kastrapeli is the founder and CEO of Beyond Alpha. She is also a Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Investment, CCSI. Most recently, Mirtha was Managing Director and Global Head of State Street’s Center for Applied Research, an independent think-tank designed to provide insights about the future of the investment industry. In this capacity, she co-authored multiple papers including ‘The Big Shift; Finding a New Center of Gravity for the Investment Industry’ in 2019, ‘The Investing Enlightenment: How Principle and Pragmatism Can Create Sustainable Value through ESG’ in 2017, the award-winning study ‘Discovering Phi: Motivation as the Hidden Variable of Performance’ in 2016 and ‘The Folklore of Finance: How Beliefs and Behaviors Sabotage Success in the Investment Management Industry’ in 2014.

Ms. Kastrapeli has over fifteen years of experience in the private and public sector, analyzing capital markets, and helping shape public policy. She spent seven years as a Global Macro Strategist at State Street Global Markets in Boston. In the public sector, Ms. Kastrapeli served as an advisor to the Secretary General of the Ministry of Economics in Nicaragua. She also worked at the Economic and Commercial Office of the US Embassy in Managua, where she received a Meritorious Honor Award by the US Department of State. Mirtha earned a bachelor’s degree with honors in Finance and Economics from Ave Maria College in Nicaragua and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the Brandeis International Business School.

Join us for this special edition of our Blue Marble Evaluation Book Club. This month, we will look at the Cross-Silos principle, presented in Chapter 7 of the book, Blue Marble Evaluation: Premises and Principles. In particular, we will explore the intersection between the movements for social justice and environmental sustainability with a look at environmental justice. 

We will begin with a short overview of the Blue Marble Principle and then move into small groups where we will have a chance to explore these issues more deeply.

As an emerging network, we hope these conversations will help to inform how we can more intentionally work across silos and decolonize our work together going forward. We hope you will join us. 

Click here to watch a recording of this webinar.

Presenters: Isabel Carlisle & Eduard Mueller

Hosted by Glenn Page & Michael Quinn Patton

Future resilience of our communities across the globe is a whole-systems challenge in the face of whole systems change (climate change being one of those lead systems). This webinar focused on two scales of transformation, one at the regional scale in the southwest of UK and the other at the national scale of Costa Rica. We began with the story of the Bioregional Learning Centre in South Devon, England, who have been supporting a whole region and multi-sector response for the past four years and is now moving in the next phase of the work. Isabel Carlisle talks about assessing the baseline for action and explore what is needed for seeding multi-level shifts towards resilience. Eduard Müller then introduces his work in developing a Roadmap for Regeneration for the nation of Costa Rica. The road map is a process to define the national strategic commitment to regenerative development (political outcome) that would support the co-production of a high level regenerative development plan as a living document that is deeply informed by the voices of the territories, all local communities and indigenous groups, and those most often marginalized or excluded; and dedicated funding streams for regeneration committed from government agencies, private sector, foundations, and academic sector. While ambitious, this effort in Costa Rica is being viewed very closely by other countries and networks such as the Common Earth, a partner of the Commonwealth of Nations. This webinar features an introduction by Michael Quinn Patton, lively dialogue between both Isabel and Eduard facilitated by Glenn Page who illustrates the alignment with the principles of Blue Marble Evaluation. 

Presenter Biographies

For the past thirty years, Eduard Müller, President Rector of the University for International Cooperation, has been deeply involved in addressing the challenges of biodiversity and land regeneration. He has participated in the negotiations of the Convention on Biological Diversity, in the development of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the Earth Charter movement, and in UNESCO’s MAB Programme.  Here he speaks frankly about what humanity needs to do, and why we have thus far failed to do it, as we head into the Sixth Planetary Extinction.

Isabel Carlisle leads the team for the Bioregional Learning Centre (BLC) in South Devon. BLC is working on the ground for whole-systems change for climate resilience across all sectors. The emphasis is on multi-stakeholder design that includes civil society. Current projects include European collaboration on a course to train leaders in regional regeneration and resilience. As well as regional-scale work, Isabel has convened the UK national bioregional community of practice and BLC is working at international scale with Ecolise, Regenerative Communities Network and Ecoversities Alliance. Following a long career in the London art world that began in 1980, Isabel set up and directed the Festival of Muslim Cultures that took place across Britain throughout 2006. She then became a Creative Consultant to the University of the Arts in London and developed learning strategies for sustainability with schools in the east end of London. In 2013 she co-founded the Community Chartering Network that played a role in bringing about the Scottish government ban on fracking. She has been a part of the Transition movement since 2008, and worked in the Transition Network team as Education Coordinator from when she moved to Totnes, Devon, in 2010 until 2016. She is trained in Regenerative Development and Design (Regenesis), Education for Sustainability (Schumacher College) and Awareness Practices for Leadership (UAcademy). She is a skilled facilitator, designer of learning programmes and large-scale project manager. 

Presenters: Kofi Agbogah and Alasdair Harris

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Hosted by Glenn Page and Michael Quinn Patton.

This webinar dives into the case study presented here, with a focus on the Blue Marble Integration principle.

Small scale, wild capture fisheries provide employment, food, and livelihoods for tens of millions of people globally.  Listen here as we introduce Kofi Agbogah Executive Director of of Hen Mopano in Ghana and Dr. Alasdair Harris Executive Director of Blue Ventures as they discuss truly innovative and integrative programs. As background, approximately a third of wild fish landings come from artisanal and subsistence fishers and most recent estimates suggest that small scale fisheries account for over 90 percent of the world’s commercial fishers, processors and other persons employed along the seafood value chain. This is equivalent to over 100 million people – making small scale fisheries far and away the ocean’s largest employer. Small scale fisheries are a critical component of global food security; fish provide between 15-20% of animal protein worldwide, and a much larger share for coastal fishing communities. Small scale fishing is also stitched into the cultural fabric of coastal communities. For many communities, fishing represents not just an economic livelihood but a way of life that has shaped the development, stewardship values, and traditions that define social and cultural identities. Beyond the hard numbers of landings and employment, healthy and vibrant small scale fisheries provide critical cultural services to the communities that depend on them.

Despite their importance, small scale fisheries are often hidden or absent from national statistics and frequently ignored in states’ policy-making. This, in most contexts, has led to a lack of effective management and social safety nets, which drives destructive fishing practices that threaten coastal ocean ecosystems and the livelihoods of coastal communities and individuals.  With millions of people dependent on small scale fisheries, and given their impact on nearshore ecosystems, small scale fisheries sit squarely at the intersection of social development and ecological stewardship.

In recent decades, there has been a shift to devolve more management authority to the local level and the tenants of what constitutes responsible and sustainable management are becoming clear. Several ambitious efforts have emerged over the last few years to effectively support small scale fisheries. The momentum in support of small scale fisheries is an exciting development, and the funding community is well-positioned to support a cohesive movement that supports resilient and equitable small scale fisheries across the global.

Presenter: Fred Cardin of Using Evidence

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Summary: To quote a researcher from a recent study of institutions in Africa, "How is Africa ever going to develop if it doesn't  have its own set of very strong institutions?" If we are going to collectively address global challenges, strong national partners are essential. A continuing failure to address this gap in many parts of the world will stymie active engagement in the co-creation, co-design and implementation of solutions to the major challenges of our time. This webinar explorea what strong institutions would mean based on a study of African research institutions. The webinar explores the decolonisation of research as a proxy for decolonising development more broadly in addressing the challenges we face collectively.  

Photo Credit: Fred Cardin