aes26 International Evaluation Conference

Putting Money Where the Evidence Is: a perspective from international development
 Emmanuel Jimenez, Director General, Independent Evaluation Department of the Asian Development Bank

As resources become increasingly constrained, organizations face growing pressure to make better decisions with limited funding. Evidence of what works is needed even more when resources are tight. In this environment, evaluation matters not simply because it generates knowledge, but because it helps organizations learn, adapt and improve as they optimize the allocations of their resources.

As richer countries reprioritize their spending due to economic pressures and geopolitical shifts, the downward trend in donors’ aid budgets may weaken the impetus for strengthening evaluation ecosystems – just when credible evidence is most needed to guide difficult choices.

Drawing on experiences from the Asian Development Bank, this plenary will reflect on the institutional opportunities and challenges for evaluation in a resource-constrained world. The questions are practical and pressing: how do we strike an appropriate balance between accountability and learning in generating credible evidence when incentives are not always well-aligned, when there are debates on the credibility of methods, and when there is uneven capacity to undertake evaluation? How do we ensure that evaluation findings, once generated, are communicated well and used effectively by decision-makers?

The lessons from answering these questions are relevant to governments, organizations and evaluators as the need for evidence is growing and the resources to produce and use it are under pressure.