Context Matters: Evaluation in the 21st Century
1.3 Environmental and social depletion
We are living in a time when many species’ survival and health, including ours, are threatened by numerous connected, simultaneous crises. We are observing the extinction of living species. One million animal species are threatened with extinction, and simultaneously populations of other species—mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians—have decreased (World Wild Fund for Nature, 2022). As indicated in the report by World Wild Fund for Nature (2022), monitored wildlife populations have decreased an average of 69% since 1970, the equivalent of 27 football fields of forest is disappearing every minute. At the same time, the global climate is warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. The year 2024 started with heartbreaking news about climate warming: we have reached and are surpassing the original 2030 Paris Agreement target of 1.5°C above pre-industrial level (Hansen et al., 2023; McCulloch et al., 2024). Every year extreme climate events happen with increased frequency and intensity in different regions of the world: heavy rain and floodings, heatwaves, droughts, fires, cyclones, etc. These disruptions put ecosystems under increased pressure and increase risks for biodiversity, and human beings’ safety and well-being (IPCC, 2018). Collectively we are not doing enough or acting quickly enough to maintain a safe environment for all species.
Simultaneously, pollution is currently the top cause of premature human mortality. Pollution is impacting many lands, waters, and living species. Each year, nine million premature deaths are attributable to pollution, over 90% of which occur in low to middle-income countries (Fuller et al., 2022).
Over the past two decades, deaths caused by the modern forms of pollution (eg, ambient air pollution and toxic chemical pollution) have increased by 66%, driven by industrialisation, uncontrolled urbanisation, population growth, fossil fuel combustion, and an absence of adequate national or international chemical policy. (Fuller et al., 2022, p. e535).
Loss of biodiversity, climate change, and pollution are major environmental challenges we need to address. It is not an option; it is a question of survival.
Not everyone faces the same risks or is exposed to risks in the same way. Climate change is increasing risks to food access, security, and water supply, among other concerns (IPCC, 2022). These new pressures on local conditions have consequences for population health and displacement (IPCC, 2022). People most at risk are also those with less capacity to protect themselves; further, people living off of the land and oceans, as farmers, fishers, Indigenous people in coastal and remote communities, are the most threatened (Baier & Brown, 2019).
Approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change […] Regions and people with considerable development constraints have high vulnerability to climatic hazards (high confidence). Global hotspots of high human vulnerability are found particularly in West-, Central- and East Africa, South Asia, Central and South America, Small Island Developing States and the Arctic (high confidence). Vulnerability is higher in locations with poverty, governance challenges and limited access to basic services and resources, violent conflict and high levels of climate-sensitive livelihoods (e.g., smallholder farmers, pastoralists, fishing communities) (high confidence). Between 2010–2020, human mortality from floods, droughts and storms was 15 times higher in highly vulnerable regions, compared to regions with very low vulnerability (high confidence). Vulnerability at different spatial levels is exacerbated by inequity and marginalization linked to gender, ethnicity, low income or combinations thereof (high confidence), especially for many Indigenous Peoples and local communities (high confidence). Present development challenges causing high vulnerability are influenced by historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism, especially for many Indigenous Peoples and local communities (high confidence). (IPCC, 2022, p. 12)
These disproportionate risks, locally and globally, increase social and health inequities, which increase the burden on already more vulnerable communities (Brousselle & McDavid, 2020). Paradoxically, the richest 10% of the world’s population, based on consumption, have been responsible for about half of the cumulative carbon emissions between 1990 and 2015, while the poorest 50% have been responsible for just 7% of cumulative emissions (Gore et al., 2020). The communities at greatest risk are those that have contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC, 2022). These environmental injustices are also entrenched in a long-standing system of exploitation of human and natural resources, sadly illustrated—among other forms of current economic control and domination—by the colonization system established by European countries (Hickel, 2017; Nesmith et al., 2021; van den Berg et al., 2022; Whyte, 2019).
Human and environmental crises are embedded and interrelated, and they can’t be considered separately. Furthermore, time is an issue. The unwillingness to tackle these existential crises creates greater risks over time – dangers of crossing critical thresholds that trigger irreversible consequences.
Evaluators need to consider this context from two related perspectives: programmatic and political. Programmatically, if we want to contribute to stopping social and environmental degradation and contribute to regenerating our systems, we need to understand what risks exist so we can reduce them as much as we can. Understanding risks entails adopting a planetary health approach in everything we do. One where we try to implement positive practices of healing and regeneration (Wahl, 2016) to restore land, air, and water and repair social relationships to create thriving environments. Politically, evaluators need to understand the contextual dynamics of their practice, which include cultural frames; patterns of belief and representations, institutions and organizations; and governance structures and processes. Embedded in the political context are power dynamics that will influence the entire evaluation process. To be relevant, evaluation needs to be conducted in a culturally responsive manner that acknowledges and respects systems of beliefs. Fundamentally, it also needs to give voice to scientific evidence in a polarized world with increasing distrust (Brousselle, 2024).
