Sustainability-Ready Evaluation: A Call to Action

Abstract

The world is facing an unprecedented crisis of climate change and loss of biodiversity, but the evaluation profession has failed to develop the approaches and tools needed to effectively evaluate programs that operate at the nexus of human and natural systems. The Canadian Evaluation Society (CES) undertook a stocktaking in 2019–2020 to assess the state of sustainability-ready evaluation in Canada. The results confirmed that sustainability is not being systematically addressed by evaluators in Canada and the United States and that considerable work is needed to equip the profession to respond to the need. The CES has taken steps toward promoting the importance of sustainability, but more work is needed to ensure the profession is equipped to effectively address all dimensions of sustainability.