Updates
August 2011 update
Julian is leading the independent evaluation of Norway’s billion-dollar REDD+ Partnership with Indonesia. This is an ambitious programme to achieve fundamental reform of Indonesia’s forest and peat-land sector in support of efforts to slash national carbon emissions and conserve biodiversity. The evaluation contract with the Government of Norway through Julian’s company Creatura Ltd and Gaia Finland provides for annual visits to Indonesia. The first was in March 2011 when 60 key informants were interviewed, having been chosen for their knowledge of the Partnership, and for their views on deforestation and forest conservation as representatives of government institutions, donor agencies, REDD+ projects, and civil society organisations. The study provided a unique snap-shot of a country (the most species-rich on Earth and one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases) that is trying to find a path towards sustainable development, with REDD+ as a key mechanism for doing so. Julian is continuing his study on this to build understanding of all the private and public actors that are engaged with these efforts in Indonesia and other countries, those who have notes to compare and lessons to teach.
Julian is also leading the independent evaluation of development cooperation partnerships between Finland and Nepal, Nicaragua and Tanzania. This contract with the Government of Finland through Creatura Ltd and Agrer NV provides for a strategic, holistic and forward-looking evaluation of the three country programmes over the last decade. These are exciting times in Nicaragua as the country transits to a second Sandinist government (and since early 2007 full membership of the Bolivarian Alliance led by Venezuela and Cuba) following the Sandinist Revolution in 1979-1990 and 16 years of conservative rule in 1990-2006. Likewise in Nepal, where civil war in 1996-2006 led to the Maoist overthrow of a 250 year old monarchy and the painful birth of a federal republic under a new constitution that is due by the end of August 2011. Things have been calmer in Tanzania (if not in the surrounding countries of DR Congo and Kenya), but here fundamental questions are raised on the nature of foreign aid and the sustainability of its impacts. Julian’s team is analysing records and opinions to find out exactly how aid and development policies have been turned into practice over the years, and exactly what has been achieved, by and for whom, and with what implications for the future and for other partnerships.
Finally, following the publication of his book on the ecology of the global water crisis in English (2008), Finnish (2009) and Spanish (2011), with Arabic in the pipeline, and of his team’s synthesis evaluation of sustainability in the global Finnish aid programme (2010), Julian is now working on an app (‘Creatura Help’) for the smart phone and tablet market. A prototype of this was field-tested with positive results by the World Bank, the Danish, British and Guyanese governments, the Iwokrama International Institute, and the Living Earth Foundation. The system offers a guided ‘how to do and how to understand’ tour of the world of biodiversity-friendly, low-carbon and carbon-negative sustainable development, and how to put an approach into practice that works with the flow of ecosystems, water and the fulfilment of human rights. The content comprises educational browse-paths, pop-up definitions and other features to help standardise concepts and the use of terms among sustainable development workers and low-carbon investors everywhere.
