Opening remarks by Emmanuel Jimenez, Director General, Independent Evaluation Department, at the 2023 Asian Evaluation Week, 11 September 2023
Introduction
Sawatdee Khap. Thank you and good morning. And Welcome to Bangkok and AEW!
It is indeed a pleasure to address all of you in the Asian Evaluation Community live – after three years of virtual meetings. You were all photogenic as small icons in zoom during the past 3 AEWs. But you all look so much better in person! It’s a relief to trade our headsets for handshakes and our webcams for face-to-face conversations.
So, it’s great to have us all together again. I want to recognize in particular:
Mr. Lu Wenbin, President of the Asia-Pacific Finance and Development Institute or AFDI. Congratulations on your appointment. I would like to thank you and AFDI, as well as PRC’s Ministry of Finance, for eight years of partnership with ADB. Our work together has made AEW the flagship evaluation event in the region and I look forward to building on our strengths in the years ahead.
Ms. Jomkwan Kongsakul, Deputy Secretary General with Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission. As you will have seen on screen, this is the first year that our in-person Asian Evaluation Week (AEW) is taking place outside of China. In this regard, I want to recognize the people of Thailand for your hospitality and for being such gracious hosts.
And from within the Asian Development Bank, Executive Director and Vice Chair of the Development Effectiveness Committee, Justine Diokno-Sicat; and
I also want to thank special guests who wanted to come but couldn’t and have instead sent us recorded messages. The Honorable Dr. Andrew Leigh, Australia’s Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury and Federal Member for Fenner; ADB’s Managing Director General Mr. Woochong Um.
And I want to thank my colleagues in the Thailand Country Office under Mr. Anouj Mehta and in IED, especially the EKM team under Deputy Director General Sona Shrestha and Sonia Chand Sandhu.
Beyond recovery: Evaluation for development effectiveness
The theme of this year’s gathering is “Beyond Recovery: Evaluation for Development Effectiveness.” The worst of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be behind us. Now, the development community must refocus on the vexing issues that challenged it already, back in 2019: inclusive growth, poverty eradication, and long-term sustainability.
But clearly, we cannot go back to “business as usual.” While we were seeing good progress on poverty reduction, the pandemic has made outcomes worse. More than 155 million people suffered from extreme poverty in developing Asia in 2022, about 68 million more than if the pandemic and cost of living increases had not occurred, according to a recent ADB report.
In addition, progress for a global consensus on how to mitigate climate change remains elusive —while the forecasts for climate change worsen. According to the International Disaster Database, Asia experienced 81 natural hazard events, mainly floods and storms in 2022 alone, much of it due to climate change. These events directly impacted more than 50 million people, especially the poorest, and caused more tens of billions of dollars in damages.
And we are facing new concerns: the return of inflation, rising food insecurity and heightened geopolitical tensions that have made it harder to find shared solutions to cross-border concerns
So, as governments, international organizations and civil society try to respond, what does all this mean for us, the evaluation community? AEW 2023 will reflect on this through the three subthemes of the conference.
The first subtheme is resilience
There is little doubt that disasters, whether from natural causes or from human actions, will have profound implications, especially for the most vulnerable. Sessions in this conference will discuss how evaluation can inform the design and implementation of programs to build the resilience of communities and individuals by improving livelihood, local capacity and adapting infrastructure investments to make them more sustainable.
The second subtheme is inclusive partnerships
While global consensus on some pressing issues remain elusive, the past three years has shown us that countries and institutions working together can achieve more to address the needs of the poor, the marginalized, and the most vulnerable, than in isolation. Several sessions will touch on this theme – referencing partnerships for joint evaluations, designing communications strategies to ensure buy-in among all stakeholders and adopting international norms for evaluation.
We would be well advised to remember the insightful observation of Thailand’s beloved King Rama IX: “Unity is strength, division is weakness.”
The third sub-theme is innovation
The past 3 years has not only highlighted problem, but also uncovered new opportunities, including new (and perhaps more efficient) ways of working and major technological advances. We are more easily connected than ever before. Sessions will discuss how we can take advantage of the technological leaps that have occurred to make our work better and more effective? Also, what have we learned from having had to be more nimble to react to a much faster changing policy and programming environment? Many of us here have had to build in contingencies for “real time” evaluations and other approaches to ensure a quick and effective response when the next crisis hits.
Conclusion
Ladies and gentlemen: I believe that the organizers have put together a wonderful agenda that will advance the evaluation agenda in Asia. I encourage you to take advantage of as many of the sessions on offer as you can.
Also, as with many conferences, many of the gains take place outside of the formal sessions. Use the time to network, make new friends, and expand our community of evaluators.
Most of all, enjoy the next four days.
Khop Khun Khap. Thank you all very much, and please enjoy your discussions.
Speaker
