Welcome words of Rob D. van den Berg, IDEAS President, Juha I. Uitto, Director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the Global Environment Facility (GEF-IEO) and Martin Pĕlucha, President of CES

This session focused on transformational change in the environment. The discussion focused on issues, processes, and impacts of transformational change. In particular in two main areas:

Melissa Leach, Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK on Sustainability, equity and the politics of transformation: opportunities and challenges for evaluation

Chair: Indran Naidoo, Director of the Independent Evaluation Office of UNDP

The session on Drivers of Sustainability includes four presentations that bring varied perspectives to the topic. The presentation on "Assessing Sustainable Development" discusses how community focused development interventions may address sustainability.

Global environmental changes are occurring at a faster pace than previously thought. In several areas, damage to the global environment has exceeded critical levels and threatens to lead to irreversible changes in global ecosystems.

The Asia-Pacific Finance and Development Institute (AFDI), together with the Independent Evaluation Department (IED) of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), hosted the 2019 Asian Evaluation Week.

EvalSDGs and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) have teamed up to launch a free e-learning course on Evaluation and the 2030 Agenda. The course will be two weeks long (2-13 September). The deadline to register is 31 August 2019.

The journal Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050, IF 2.592) is currently running a Special Issue entitled "Environment-Poverty Nexus and Sustainable Development". Dr. Juha I. Uitto of the GEF Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) is serving as the Guest Editor for this issue.

The newly published book Economic Evaluation of Sustainable Development by authors Vinod Thomas and Namrata Chindarkar provides evidence of ho

An upcoming IEPPEC Energy Evaluation Academy Webinar will be held on "Energy Program and Policy Evaluation Capacity Building in the Asia Pacific" featuring Dr. Edward Vine (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory).