The Prague Global Assembly 2019 from the perspective of the Climate Change ITIG

Conferences are a wonderful event for professionals and working groups. There is time to network, up-date on the newest trends in various fields of expertice, discuss and exchange. New inspiration and motivation is found and spread. The Climate Change ITIG (IDEAS Thematic Interest Group) and its current leader, Christine Wörlen, took the 2019 Prague Global Assembly as an opportunity to promote the ITIG, reach out and find new members.

Evaluation for transformative change is the core task of evaluators nowadays and the main topic of the Third International Conference on Evaluating Environment and Development, which was held parallel with the seventh IDEAS 2019 Global Assembly, in Prague, Czech Republic. The adoption of the Prague Declaration on Evaluation for Transformational Change on Friday 4 October 2019 underlined the importance of transformative change and made both conferences a huge success.

Over 270 participants from 75 countries joined the conferences which took place from 2 October until 4 October 2019 and discussed the role of evaluation in promoting learning, systemic and transformational change.

The conferences came at the right time: the SDGs but also the young people of Fridays For Future are telling us that we need to act and need to act fast. Climate evaluators need to join in that sense of urgency and support climate-smart programs, policies and projects – with the lessons from evaluations that are produced every day. Evaluators need to broaden their audience and help integrate what they have learned, to speed up progress towards a safe and livable future.

Consequently, the Climate Change ITIG aims to facilitate a broader discussion on climate change in the evaluation field and bring the findings from climate evaluations to the point of use, by reaching out to climate communities and ultimately the broader donor community.

At the conference’ parallel session “Lightening talks on perspectives for the Thematic groups in IDEAS”, Christine Wörlen introduced the ITIG with its mission and activities. At a poster session, the ITIG met at its roll-up and discussed the mission statement, participation in the ITIG and the way forward. The Climate Change ITIG resonated with many participants at the conferences and specifically with the conference team of transformational change.

The Climate Change ITIG is very happy and proud to have welcomed so many new members in Prague – and is of course open for every IDEAS member who wants to join. Members of the CC-ITIG will benefit from a great community and the possibility to shape the ITIG and the discussion on transformational change.

More information can be found here: https://ideas-global.org/climate-itig/

If you got interested and want to support the ITIG and their activities, feel free to contact Christine Wörlen (woerlen@arepo-consult.com) or Karolin Kölling (koelling@arepo-consult.com).