Synthesis, part of a special feature on Enhancing Social-Ecological Resilience and Equity in Southern Africa: insights from Research and Practice

INTRODUCTION

The complexity of interconnected social and environmental challenges such as natural-resource depletion, declining biodiversity, and rising inequality makes these issues inherently difficult to solve (Centeno et al. 2014, Reyers et al. 2018). Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers turn to monitoring and evaluation (M&E) as a transdisciplinary tool for transformative change (Picciotto 2015, Knight et al. 2019).

M&E is an integrated, ongoing process for gathering and assessing information, judging progress, uncovering unintended consequences, and evaluating actions (Woodhill 2007). M&E involves making judgements about the value or quality of a program (Fournier 2005), thereby distinguishing it from other forms of inquiry such as scientific research, clinical medicine, or public polling (Chirau and Blaser-Mapitsa 2020).

Given its focus on value judgement, M&E is intricately linked with power dynamics (Patton 2017). Power is exercised in choices about what, how, by whom, and for what purpose M&E is conducted, shaping data collection, success criteria, and the dissemination of knowledge throughout the process (Parkinson 2009, Chilisa et al. 2016). M&E findings sway funding and support decisions, influencing whether they promote equity and resilience, or perpetuate dominance, exclusion, and dependency.

Equity, defined as “fairness and justice within social and economic systems” (DPME 2022:5), demands systemic transformation in light of systemic causes of inequity. Pascual et al. (2014) propose a four-dimensional concept of equity encompassing (1) procedural equity, or the extent to which people are included or excluded in decision making; (2) recognitional equity, or the extent to which different values, knowledge systems, and norms are recognized, considered, and respected; and (3) distributional equity, or access to resources and how fairly costs and benefits are shared among stakeholders. These three dimensions are embedded within a fourth dimension: contextual equity, or the surrounding conditions that influence actors’ ability to participate and gain recognition and benefits. Context, as defined by West et al. (2020), denotes a dynamic set of relations between actors and their social and material environments. These relations become animated and established through practice. Viewing contexts as dynamic sets of relations established within practice opens avenues for re-enacting these relationships to instigate transformative change.

Resilience in social-ecological systems entails the capacity to live and develop amidst change and uncertainty, going beyond mere bounce-back ability to include shock absorption, avoiding tipping points, and fostering innovation and transformation during crises (Rockström et al. 2023). Whereas the relationship between equity and resilience is complex, existing scholarship positions equity as a fundamental attribute underlying resilience, alongside diversity, redundancy, connectivity, and adaptive learning (Rockström et al. 2023). However, the application of resilience in social-ecological systems has been criticized for insufficiently acknowledging and exploring relationships, particularly power and equity dimensions (Matin et al. 2018, Lejano 2019).

Increasing awareness of equity in monitoring and evaluation

Several developments indicate a growing awareness of equity and power within M&E. The Sustainable Development Goals highlight a shift toward a systemic approach to address inequalities, social determinants, gender, and human rights, acknowledging the shortcomings of the Millennium Development Goals in addressing these issues (Saith 2006, Zamora et al. 2018).

Simultaneously, Africa and the Global South are urging a re-evaluation of M&E practices to better serve and empower Africans, offering fresh perspectives about development and evaluation in these regions. The African Evaluation Principles emphasize empowerment and ethics and note that evaluation demands responsible practice, “especially when dealing with vulnerable communities and economies, developing institutions, and the rich diversity of worldviews, experiences, and traditions that define African societies” (AfrEA 2021:4). Responding to decades of evaluation priorities determined by north-south cooperation in Africa, the principles outline a vision of evaluation practice rooted in Africa, emphasizing south-south cooperation while remaining open to the global community (AfrEA 2021).

To support this vision, the African Evaluation Association started the South to South Initiative, which aims to elevate “under-utilized indigenous knowledge, theory, and capacities of the Global South, and to reverse the asymmetries in decision making, resources, and knowledge in the global evaluation ecosystem” (https://afrea.org/s2se/). This initiative aligns with the goals of the South-to-South Resilience Academy.

Made in Africa Evaluation (Chilisa and Malunga 2013) challenges the decontextualized, externally framed focus in traditional M&E by questioning its purpose and who it serves. At its core is the concept of relationality (Lejano 2019, Cockburn et al. 2020b). Chilisa and Malunga (2013) advocate for a relational evaluation branch of the evaluation theory tree, drawing from the Southern African concept of ubuntu: I am because we are (Le Grange 2012). This focuses on collective wellness, dignity, self-esteem, reconciliation, and heritage, alongside efficiency, effectiveness, value for money, and accountability (Cloete 2016). The emphasis on relationships and collective well-being provides a foundation for evaluation practices that address power, justice, equity, and promote resilience.

The #ShiftThePower movement, advocating for locally led development, likewise recognizes that M&E practices are rarely power-neutral. A group of 130 non-profit professionals collaboratively produced the publication “Measuring What Matters” (Doan and Knight 2020), which advocates for more meaningful approaches for measuring success and promoting accountability.

Empowerment evaluation (Fetterman and Wandersman 2005) prioritizes inclusion, capacity building, and self-determination to help stakeholders gain greater control over their lives and resources. An empowerment approach changes the M&E professional’s role and relationship with stakeholders from expert/advisor to collaborator/facilitator (Zimmerman 2000).

Feminist evaluation centers on gender inequities with a systemic and structural perspective (https://www.betterevaluation.org/methods-approaches/themes/feminist-evaluation), considering relationships between women and men, intersecting with race and class. Feminist approaches differ from gender approaches by not solely collecting data on gender differences but also challenging the reason behind differences. Whereas gender approaches often assume equality as the goal, feminist approaches seek to understand intersectionality and the different values and aspirations within gender groups (Podems 2011).

Despite all of the above, the recent revision of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee evaluation criteria, which guide most global evaluations, did not include equity as a criterion. Some evaluation experts question this decision (Chaplowe and Hejnowicz 2021, Patton 2021; https://www.betterevaluation.org/en/resources/social-equity-assessment-tool-seat-evaluation, https://zendaofir.com/dac-criteria-guidance-2021/).

Reflections of practitioners

An evolving body of research conceptualizes how forms of M&E that emphasize learning, complexity awareness, and relationality can foster equity and resilience (Woodhill 2007, Patton 2010, Hertz et al. 2021). Numerous guidelines and theoretical frameworks propose ways to implement such M&E practice (Pringle 2011, Villanueva 2011, Mills-Knapp et al. 2019). However, the current discourse lacks practitioners’ reflections on their experiences implementing these principles and frameworks within the complex, contested, and resource-limited contexts of organizations and projects.

A practice-based approach to knowledge is valuable because of its situational, varied, and improvisational nature, contrasting with the institutionalized approach of merely applying preconceived, expert knowledge to action (West et al. 2020). The focus is on deriving workable solutions in complex and unpredictable situations. Knowledge is not applied to action or used as a template but is instead drawn upon, produced, and employed emergently within the specific situation (Cohen and Axelrod 2000, Cook and Wagenaar 2012). The process of creating knowledge through action and reflection is integral to praxis, the mutual dependency of theory, action, and reflection (https://sustainingcommunity.wordpress.com/2020/03/12/what-is-praxis/). Unfortunately, practitioners often lack the time or space for deep reflection on their practice, and there are limited incentive structures in place to support it.

This paper explores four ways in which M&E practice can promote equity and resilience, drawing from six case studies based on our experience as practitioners. Although grounded in experiences from South Africa, a nation grappling with deep-seated inequality, the insights and findings are broadly applicable in other contexts.

South Africa: context for equity through M&E practice

South Africa stands as the world’s most unequal nation, evident in its Gini coefficient of 0.67 measuring income distribution (Sulla et al. 2022). Historical legacies of colonialism and apartheid have entrenched deep-rooted multidimensional disparities that persist despite policies and constitutional frameworks aimed at equity and redress (IMF 2020). Inherited circumstances, especially race, account for almost half of overall inequality in South Africa, leading to exceptional inequality of opportunity, even relative to other highly unequal upper-middle-income countries such as Brazil and Colombia (Sulla et al. 2022). Approximately 50% of people live in poverty and 18.8% in extreme poverty (Statistics South Africa 2023).

South Africa’s National Development Plan (National Planning Commission 2011) envisions a 20-year strategy to address poverty, unemployment, and inequality. The national Department of Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation (DPME) was established in 2010 to facilitate achievement of these goals.

The extreme inequality as well as the recent focus on a so-called just transition from coal to renewable energy has prompted interest in monitoring and evaluating equity. The DPME recently published guidelines aiming to mainstream transformative equity into all government sector evaluations (DPME 2022). These guidelines resulted from a collaborative process involving the South African Monitoring and Evaluation Association, representatives from various government departments, independent evaluators, researchers, and civil society representatives.

METHODOLOGY

This paper draws on insights from a working group convened under the Southern African Resilience Academy (SARA; https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/what-we-do/knowledge/south-to-south-resilience-academy/southern-african-resilience-academy/), funded by the Global Resilience Partnership and supported by the Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society, a community of practice for social-ecological systems research (Biggs et al. 2023). Eight working groups tackled different topics related to equity and resilience in southern Africa.

Comprising two doctoral scholars, two independent M&E practitioners, and two organizational practitioners, the working group convened during three in-person SARA workshops and numerous online meetings. The initial workshop focused on reviewing key developments and literature on equity and resilience in global and South African contexts, highlighting the need for a practitioner’s perspective to complement existing research.

Sharing of experiences during the first workshop led to the identification of four themes: (1) learning, or using M&E to learn what equity and resilience mean in a particular context; (2) inclusion, or using inclusive M&E as a route toward equity and resilience; (3) purpose, or raising the contribution of Global South actors to M&E design and purpose; and (4) continuity, or establishing sustainable institutional arrangements and funding mechanisms for long-term M&E continuity and ownership. These became the holding framework for the paper. Each member explored the themes and equity dimensions (Pascual et al. 2014) within a narrative case study from their work.

To enhance our insights and receive practitioner feedback, findings were shared with two communities of practice. In October 2022 emerging insights were presented to the Garden Route Interface Network, a South African regional network of social-ecological researchers and practitioners. In July 2023 findings were shared with the SAMEA’s M&E for Just Transition community. These engagements enriched the paper and provided a deeper connection to the South African policy landscape.

Case study selection

A case study methodology offers depth, focus, and concentrated enquiry that is contextually situated (Lotz-Sisitka and Raven 2004). The six case studies all address social-ecological challenges in under-resourced South African communities through relational, complexity-aware, learning focused, values-based, and inclusive M&E approaches.

The authors approached the case studies from diverse contexts, i.e., parastatals, NGOs, and state- or donor-funded projects; capacities, i.e., academic scholars, independent consultants, and organizationally based evaluators; and purposes, i.e., accountability, mid-term review for adaptive management, learning, and reporting. The case studies were situated within various social-ecological interventions, i.e., climate action, land rehabilitation, local water-resource governance, and organizational culture. The first three case studies, set within freshwater catchments, respond to a government policy imperative for inclusive water-resource governance. They are complemented by two cases offering organizational perspectives and one that bridged international, national, and local contexts to address climate change. Details of all cases are provided in Appendix 1.

Case study 1, the Tsitsa Project, focused on M&E in a multi-stakeholder land rehabilitation project in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. It addressed lack of access to land, water, and natural resources for sustaining livelihoods. As a state-funded project involving researchers, NGOs, local communities, and traditional leadership, it emphasized social and governance issues, learning, and capacity development. The explicit goal was to enable and support inclusion as broadly as possible, guided by seven principles, four of which directly supported equity and resilience.

Case study 2, the Ecological Infrastructure for Water Security Project (EI4WS), was a five-year project funded through a multilateral environment fund, focused on ecosystem restoration in a freshwater catchment. The project aimed to enhance water security by integrating biodiversity and ecosystem services into water-sector finance and development planning. To complement the donor’s requirement for quantitative indicators, the project developed a social learning strategy, promoting inclusive and participatory M&E to recognize all stakeholder voices.

Case study 3, the Umzimvubu Catchment Partnership (UCP), established in 2013, is a multi-donor funded partnership supporting water governance, land management, and sustainable livelihoods in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. This voluntary partnership brings together government agencies at national, provincial, and local levels, along with conservation agencies, NGOs, traditional authorities, local communities, and social enterprises. It facilitates collaborative research and projects within the catchment. It underwent a mid-term evaluation to assess the partnership’s successes, challenges, and impact on member organizations.

Case study 4, the Small Grant Facility for Climate Change Adaptation in South Africa (SGF) was a pilot project testing approaches to cascade large-scale multilateral climate funding into local adaptation efforts. Implemented in two districts and 12 sites over four to five years, it addressed inequity for small, local organizations in vulnerable communities. A mid-term evaluation served as a real-time learning opportunity for adaptive management and to scrutinize requirements for institutions working across scales.

Case study 5 centers on Living Lands, a local non-profit facilitating landscape-based collaborations for ecological rehabilitation at the agriculture-ecology intersection. Operating holistically, it fosters social-ecological resilience that upholds natural capital, i.e., soil health, indigenous biodiversity, and ecosystems; social capital, i.e., networks and knowledge exchange; financial capital; and relational values, i.e., individual and collective agency, sense of meaning, and hope. The challenge lies in the complex and contested nature of local landscapes. In this organizational context, M&E is not only used for reporting to funders, but also facilitates internal decision making and critical reflection on the organization’s impact on landscapes, trust-building, and local livelihoods.

Case study 6, is the Resilience in the Limpopo Basin - Olifants (RESILIM-O) Program, implemented by the Association for Water and Rural Development (AWARD) from 2013 to 2020 in the Olifants River Basin in northeastern South Africa and southern Mozambique. Comprising 23 projects, the program aimed to enhance resilience of the local communities and ecosystems through systemic and social learning approaches. This case delves into the challenges faced by non-profits, including balancing the M&E requirements of funders with organizational learning and resilience.

Some connections occurred among the cases. Learnings from case study 6, the RESILIM-O Program, were transferred into case study 1, the Tsitsa Project, case study 2, the EI4WS Project, and case study 5, Living Lands, through the involvement of some of the same personnel. Whereas some cross-pollination did occur between case 2, the Tsitsa Project, and case 3, the UCP, this was not focused on M&E. Case 4, the SGF, was not connected to any of the other cases.

Whereas case studies are limited in their ability to offer generalizations, the primary aim was not to generalize but to showcase practitioners’ experiences in employing M&E to foster equity and resilience. The cases illuminate both successes and challenges, suggesting processes and practices that, when contextually adapted, may enhance equity and resilience. They also highlight areas demanding additional work and advocacy.

Ethical considerations

We adhered to ethical standards (Babbie 2013) throughout the case comparison process. Conducted under the guidance of the Rhodes University ethical standards committee (application number 2022-5837-7068), the procedures included protection of personal information and sensitive data. Working group members committed to maintaining confidentiality, refraining from sharing any case study details beyond the group. Each case study’s responsible member obtained consent from relevant custodians to include the case in this research. We shared the findings and conclusions with custodians for verification and ongoing consent regarding the inclusion of information.

RESULTS

Processes and practices for building equity and resilience through M&E

The four themes comprehensively cover the equity dimensions outlined by Pascual et al. (2014). Theme 1, learning, underscores the role of M&E in understanding contextual equity, thereby guiding effective support for recognitional, procedural, and distributional equity. Theme 2, inclusion, addresses both recognitional and procedural equity. Theme 3, purpose, delves into enhancing recognitional and procedural equity by amplifying the contribution of Global South actors to M&E design and purpose. Theme 4, continuity, highlights the importance of institutional arrangements and funding mechanisms for M&E, emphasizing procedural and distributional equity.

Learning: using M&E to learn what equity and resilience mean in a particular context

This theme explores how M&E contributes to social and organizational learning processes, deciphering equity in specific contexts, i.e., contextual equity, and supporting appropriate and effective ways of achieving a more equitable distribution of costs, benefits, opportunities, and resources.

Collaborative learning processes potentially prevent imposition of external assumptions and measures, and promote more contextually appropriate measures. For example, in the SGF case study, the implementing organization expanded its understanding of climate resilience over the life of the project to include both climate adaptation abilities and the organizational abilities crucial for accessing tightly administered adaptation resources. Greater organizational resilience was perceived to bolster recognitional and procedural equity.

The Tsitsa Project also prioritized understanding local perspectives on equity. Community members, and women separately, contributed to the project’s M&E by creating wellbeing and resilience indicators based on their experience. A shared lexicon was co-developed to bridge language gaps between English and isiXhosa, the dominant local language, fostering a common understanding of concepts like resilience. Understanding what equity meant to people in this context helped to change the power dynamics between researchers and local communities, which then increased recognitional equity, and ultimately procedural equity in the project.

Living Lands uses a relational approach that focuses on teams being embedded in the landscape, meaning that they live in the landscape and slowly build relationships in a congenial and informal process. Teams also continuously reflect on and question their position in the landscape, including whom they do and do not engage, and why. This approach has enabled the organization to establish and maintain good relationships with communities despite generally high levels of mistrust of conservation authorities and outsiders. However, it also to some extent hinders the implementation of structured M&E processes to measure impact and resilience. The organization’s emergent understanding of the context makes applying a conventional theory of change challenging. Moreover, bureaucratic systems and protocols do not align with the unpredictable nature of cultivating relational emergent processes. Achieving landscape sustainability is a slow process and challenging to measure, leading to a shortage of data to communicate the organization’s impact. This, ironically, undermines staff autonomy, creativity, drive, and confidence: fundamental strengths of the organizational culture.

Inclusion: using inclusive M&E as a route toward equity and resilience

Inclusion is vital for fostering equitable and resilient social-ecological systems. From an M&E perspective, it involves engaging staff, participants, or partners not typically part of M&E processes. Participation levels can vary, from superficial, i.e., minimally inclusive M&E, to deep, where stakeholders actively contribute to designing and setting M&E goals, often becoming owners or leaders of the M&E process (Figure 1).

Currently, none of our case studies has yet reached the deepest levels of inclusion, but they illustrate that achieving meaningful inclusion requires long-term investment in relationship building and capacity development. Whereas these processes are resource intensive, the benefits of inclusion extend beyond M&E, enhancing stakeholder engagement, bolstering the sustainability and impact of the initiative, and enacting procedural justice.

The Tsitsa Project illustrates the inclusion of local people in M&E processes and emphasizes the significant effort and time invested in ensuring meaningful participation. Toward equitable participation, the name of one of the project’s principles, was embodied in the Participatory Monitoring, Evaluation, Reflection, and Learning (PMERL) system. Designing equitable and inclusive processes required an understanding of contextual politics and power relations, given the historical and geographical factors contributing to entrenched social injustice, such as the Black homeland legacy shaping access to land, water, and other resources in the Eastern Cape, South Africa (Cockburn et al. 2018). Although it was challenging, the project tried to eliminate power asymmetries by creating conditions for equal and genuine participation and benefit-sharing (Fabricius et al. 2016).

The PMERL system aimed to integrate monitoring with evaluation and to include as many people as possible in this process. The project employed four types of community-based monitors (Figure 2) who collected environmental and social monitoring data regularly, offering feedback and recommendations during reflection events. Scientists and researchers from Rhodes University and partner organizations conducted more technical monitoring. The PMERL team organized all data and observations, facilitated conversations, shared information with stakeholders, and created opportunities for reflection, joint evaluation, and synthesis. This approach brought multiple benefits: beyond data collection, it created income for locals, established a network with capacities for sustainable land management, facilitated knowledge exchange, and increased the project’s reach and impact.

Specific capacities and skills were needed for the social process work (Tsitsa Project et al. 2021b), and practical aspects of facilitating work in the remote, rural, and mountainous area had to be addressed, such as providing transport and technological support as needed. Because of the challenges with mobile network access, in-person meetings were more successful than online ones. Language played an important role in power dynamics, and researchers ensured participants used isiXhosa whenever possible. Researchers accustomed to working in English adapted to situations where their language was not dominant. The M&E team also focused on translating and mediating knowledge products across language groups and stakeholder types.

To enable meaningful participation and inclusion of local residents in planning and decision-making processes concerning land use, rehabilitation, and livelihood activities, the Tsitsa Project worked toward building their capacities, using the capability pathway developed in the project (Figure 3; Tsitsa Project et al. 2021b):

• co-knowing, including a shared understanding of vocabulary and concepts, in isiXhosa and English;
• co-listening and co-speaking, including stakeholder mapping exercises by community-based monitors to help them know who they should be talking and listening to;
• co-planning, and co-design of events and workshops;
• co-influencing and co-deciding, influencing decision making through active participation, building co-ownership of initiatives, and co-development of stakeholders’ agency; and
• co-acting and co-adapting, with the above leading to the manifestation of capability achievement in changes to landscape management, sustainable livelihoods, and local peoples’ contributions to decision making.

The capability pathway reflects deepening levels of inclusion, empowerment, and therefore equity. Establishing the relationships crucial for this pathway required substantial investment in capacity development. Initiatives involved creating and implementing a course on facilitating social learning and stakeholder engagement, and training monitors in data collection, using online meeting platforms and reflective reporting. Whereas progress was notable, the project, after five years, had not yet achieved co-influencing and co-deciding, or co-acting and co-adapting. This underscores the need for sustained relationships between individuals and organizations to develop a genuinely inclusive and collaborative working approach (Tsitsa Project et al. 2021b).

The RESILIM-O case study shows the benefits of including all staff, not just designated M&E personnel, in M&E processes. Embedding reflective processes into the implementing organization’s culture promoted an appreciation for the value of M&E, mitigating resistance and malicious compliance, i.e., where staff manipulate the system to meet their targets rather than using M&E as a learning opportunity. All staff participated in collecting M&E data, sense-making, all three loops of learning (Hummelbrünner 2015), and adaptive management and planning. However, inclusion did not extend to program beneficiaries in this case. Whereas the intention was there, the available time was dedicated to making it work at an organizational level. Subsequent attempts to extend inclusion to beneficiaries were made in the Tsitsa Project.

The above two cases highlight several co-benefits of inclusion, including greater awareness of on-the-ground realities, personal and organizational capacity development, employment, personal and collective agency, and improved collaboration. These transformative outcomes have the potential to propel the system toward greater equity and, ultimately, resilience.

Our case studies also highlight situations where achieving inclusion was challenging because of contextual constraints. For example, the UCP illustrates the difficulties of implementing collaborative M&E processes despite long-term presence and established collaborative practices. Despite 20 years of activity in the same area and shared values of mutual respect, inclusivity, transparency, and cultural responsiveness, extending this collaborative approach to M&E has been hindered by the project-based nature of funding. Insufficient funding is available to establish collaborative M&E structures and processes, revealing inequities in the broader development aid system.

In the Small Grant Facility (SGF) case, both immediate and longer-term results relied on facilitated inclusion processes. The complex project structure contained three levels of project management and six organizational tiers: (1) international funding agency; (2) national responsible agent managing the relationship with the funder; (3) executing entity, a national independent organization; (4) two NGOs serving as local facilitators to each site; (5) local community-based organizations receiving grants; and (6) project beneficiaries and community participants. Inclusion practices spanned the spectrum in Figure 1. Grant recipients and local government officials engaged in data interpretation and advocacy, conveying insights upward, i.e., executing entity, national authority, and international donor. However, their involvement in planning, adaptive management, M&E system design, and writing was limited. Community beneficiaries had even less participation in evaluation, providing one-way information and receiving directions. The international donor agency, having devolved authority to the national agency, opted not to participate in evaluation processes, and minimally contributed to data collection. Consequently, the donor had limited opportunity to respond to and learn from lower-level organizations’ struggles because of strict environmental and social safeguards, except at the project’s conclusion.

The SGF case study suggests that for M&E to promote mutual accountability and sharing of power in hierarchical project management systems, all levels of the hierarchy, including donors, should be involved in evaluation and learning processes. Whereas project management responsibilities can be divided, evaluation and learning should be integrated. However, it is important in each case to consider capacity limitations, ethical concerns, and stakeholders’ willingness to participate.

Purpose: raising the contribution of Global South actors to M&E design and purpose

Two of the cases raise issues related to the power dynamics between project funders and project implementers. AWARD, a small yet well-established NGO with a strong participatory social learning orientation, experienced rapid expansion following a grant acquisition for the RESILIM-O program. This influx of new staff unfamiliar with the organizational culture was accompanied by funder requirements for a comprehensive M&E plan, unlike any undertaken by the organization before. Initial resistance to this new M&E approach led to conflicts around reporting and tensions between the competing goals of impressing the funder and documenting unfolding processes for learning and adaptive management. The M&E system seemed overly focused on meeting the funder’s needs rather than addressing the organization’s and program’s needs.

Following negotiations, a collaborative process was initiated to create an M&E system that catered to the needs of both parties, with the funder providing significant support. This facilitated experimentation and learning over several years, and the principles and practices developed were later disseminated to other projects nationwide. Funder recognition of NGOs’ needs and constraints exemplifies recognitional equity, and their willingness to involve implementing partners in M&E system design reflects procedural equity.

The M&E system’s key features, as outlined by Rosenberg et al. (2025), reconciled funder and implementing organization needs. This was achieved through using standard M&E tools, i.e., results frameworks, indicators, and theories of change, in ways that supported and captured learning. Process monitoring and qualitative data from various reflection practices were also incorporated, and reporting combined indicators with narrative reporting, including contextualization, pictures, and reflection on challenges and successes.

In the EI4WS project, the funder-driven M&E approach focused on quantitative indicators and lacked emphasis on equity and power. Project partners therefore introduced a social learning strategy to enhance the M&E by incorporating the voices of the project team as well as the people within the context. Stories of change (Solinger et al. 2008), and the value creation framework (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner 2020) were used to assess value within the project’s learning networks.

These cases show the potential for organizations to negotiate M&E requirements with funders, if they know what they need and why. Funders can contribute to equitable M&E practices through collaboratively determining approaches, frameworks, and criteria that align with everyone’s needs, instead of predefining them.

The SGF project, designed as a learning opportunity in the South African context, offered insights into how evaluation is experienced in Global South contexts and contributed to global learning about the localization of climate funds. Despite an avowed desire to learn and adapt, the international donor organization’s obligation to uphold stringent environmental and social safeguards cascaded risks downwards through the six-level hierarchical system. Small grant recipients struggled with the compliance and reporting requirements, leading to unintended consequences such as reputational damage when payments were delayed, and a perception that they were not trusted. A learning from the mid-term review was that the hierarchical system needed to be more dynamic and responsive.

The SGF case illustrates how contributions from the Global South are often stifled by the strict constraints and compliance mechanisms imposed by governments and multilateral funders. These powerful actors need to consider the impact of their compliance requirements on procedural equity for all actors, and advocacy is needed at all levels. It is crucial to challenge the narrative that Global South organizations always need capacity development to align with funder needs. Funders equally need to develop capacity for more equitable interactions. Including partner organizations in M&E design enhances recognitional and procedural equity, helping to avoid harmful M&E requirements. Funders can support partners by recognizing their knowledge, norms, and values, and ensuring that M&E systems fairly reflect these.

Continuity: establishing sustainable institutional arrangements and funding mechanisms for long-term M&E continuity and ownership

M&E processes and data should be owned by local organizations and endure beyond project completion. Traditional project-model funding hinders this, because each project has unique M&E requirements, indicators, and reporting formats, often with restrictions on data sharing. Short-term funding further complicates continuity, hindering the accumulation of data to demonstrate lasting impacts. This impairs local organizations’ ability to attract funding, work strategically, and be accountable to their partners on the ground. Innovative solutions are needed for funding and coordinating M&E, data storage, and institutional memory, especially in multi-stakeholder contexts, where continuity is essential for supporting locally led development.

M&E continuity across projects is seldom prioritized. Typically, M&E practices end with the project and do not report on the sustaining of project practices or benefits. The upward accountability model means that most of the M&E budget is allocated to meeting funder compliance needs, leaving little for ongoing M&E (Paul et al. 2022).

The case studies suggest two avenues for enhancing ownership and long-term benefits from M&E. The first involves integrating M&E capacity, defined in terms of usefulness for implementers, into organizations, transforming it into an organizational competency rather than a project-related activity. The second approach, particularly relevant for multi-partner initiatives, involves integrating M&E data and processes at a level beyond individual organizations.

Grant-based funding in the RESILIM-O case was an important enabler of AWARD’s M&E competency. A grant, rather than a consultancy contract, offered budget flexibility and allowed adequate funding to be allocated toward integrating M&E into organizational processes. However, AWARD lost its core M&E funding post RESILIM-O, reducing the coherence of subsequent projects. Fortunately, M&E learnings from RESILIM-O were transferred to the Tsitsa Project and Living Lands cases, extending the program’s empowering impact beyond AWARD and fostering personal and professional networks characterized by shared intentions and approaches. Such networks lay the foundation for enhanced ownership and long-term benefits from M&E processes.

The Tsitsa Project and UCP cases suggest the need for embedding M&E data and processes beyond individual organizations and projects in place-based multi-partner contexts. For example, the UCP aims for an M&E system benefiting all partner organizations and guiding future investments in the area. Despite recognizing this need, implementing it is challenging. UCP partners depend heavily on short-term project funding from one to three years, which intensifies their reporting burden, impedes the sustained employment of citizen monitors and M&E staff, and hinders long-term strategic planning. Regardless of these challenges, small organizations feel compelled to accept funding offers, thereby compromising their resilience and sustainability. Achieving effective partnership-wide M&E collaboration requires greater formalization of the UCP as an organizational entity and establishment of M&E as an independent project. Stable core funding and longer-term security would provide the UCP with the flexibility to strategically collect and utilize data, empower members to decline unsuitable funding, and facilitate the appointment of dedicated M&E staff.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

The cases presented in this paper suggest strategies for enhancing M&E practice to better foster equity and resilience in the social-ecological contexts it serves. The four themes, spanning various scales and stakeholders, represent a systemic approach to building equity and resilience (Figure 4). This includes developing effective indicators and measures, embracing participatory and inclusive M&E methods, and addressing issues of power dynamics in designing, governing, and funding M&E systems. The latter two aspects are often overlooked in M&E guidelines and frameworks. Sharing control with less empowered individuals, organizations, and collaboratives promotes fairer decision making and opportunities for individuals and groups to actively shape their future rather than passively receive it.

Building equity and resilience in deeply inequitable contexts demands a fundamental shift in power relations. The four enablers illustrated in Figure 4, based on the four themes, suggest ways to reconfigure power dynamics through monitoring and evaluation.

Enabler 1, which measures and reflects on equity and its role in resilience in context, facilitates understanding for both the powerful and the less powerful, illuminating their positions in the system, revealing hidden power structures, and identifying potential avenues for action. When executed optimally, combining measurement with critical reflection can help individuals, groups, and organizations to understand the deep connections between the different dimensions of equity, aiding in the development of more effective context-specific interventions. A profound understanding of inequity and vulnerability in one’s context can lead to personal transformation, as exemplified by Fetterman’s work on empowerment evaluation (2017), drawing inspiration from Paulo Freire.

Enabler 2 suggests that expanding the inclusion of less powerful individuals and groups in M&E (Figure 1) can shift power dynamics by building their capacity and confidence to negotiate with more powerful partners, ultimately enabling participation in resource allocation decisions. However, achieving this requires genuine inclusion beyond tokenism. The case studies reveal that deeply inclusive M&E processes are time-consuming and slow, vulnerable to disruption by the short-term, project-focused nature of development practices. This highlights the need to challenge dominant funding models and inequitable relationships across scales.

Enablers 3 and 4 build on the aforementioned points by emphasizing the need for more equitable power-sharing on a larger scale, specifically between funding organizations, often from the Global North, and those reliant on this funding in Global South contexts. Active engagement and advocacy from both sets of players is essential to establish more equitable collaboration models than the traditional donor and beneficiary dynamic. The case studies in this paper illustrate the risks faced by Global South organizations when such collaboration dynamics are neglected. Collaboration across different scales and geographical locations, especially in hierarchical structures, can inadvertently perpetuate inequities despite well-intended goals. To redress this power imbalance, M&E processes should encourage self-reflection and learning by all participants, including those at the top of the hierarchy. Establishing institutional arrangements and funding mechanisms that empower local individuals and organizations to own and sustain M&E in the long-term, i.e., Enabler 4, shifts power toward them, providing a foundation for strategic planning, advocacy, and continuity.

In reshaping power dynamics through M&E practices, it is valuable to move beyond viewing power solely in adversarial terms. Gaventa (2006) discerned different dimensions of power, including power over, a win-lose scenario, and alternatives like power with, e.g., mutual support, solidarity, and collaboration; power to, e.g., agency; and power within, e.g., individual self-worth, self-knowledge, and hope. Achieving systemic change involves navigating and changing the dynamics of power over through a combination of these dimensions (Gaventa 2006). The less visible aspects of power over, embedded in societal norms and values, can be exposed by M&E, fostering power within, which includes introspection and deep personal transformation. The four enablers discussed above engage with power to, power with, and power within at various scales and organizational levels.

Comparing the four enablers to Meadow’s (1999) places to intervene in a system (Figure 5) shows their alignment with deeper leverage points for systemic change, particularly those associated with system design and intent (Table 1).

The M&E practice described in this paper is not only systemic but also relational. A relational approach views M&E as a socially transformative process addressing historical and contemporary injustices and preventing their perpetuation, rather than a purely technical process (Whitfield et al. 2021). Using relationality as a framework to understand practices of how things are done, by whom, and why, aids in identifying power dynamics within the system.

Relational M&E, focusing on inclusion (Figure 1), extends beyond participants’ involvement to encompass relationships between implementing organizations and funding agencies. Equity in these relationships cultivates healthy organizations, which are capable of learning, innovating, evolving, and rebounding, bolstered by supportive institutional and funding arrangements.

Relationality can be taken into account in M&E practice by:

• Developing relationships within and between organizations, and between people at different levels/parts of the system, as seen in the SGF, Tsitsa Project, and EI4WS case studies;
• Explicitly noticing, measuring, and evaluating relationships and mediating practices, including those between people and the environment, as seen in the Living Lands and SGF case studies;
• Addressing power imbalances by providing space for indigenous knowledge and different perspectives (West et al. 2014), facilitating transformative learning spaces, and ensuring empowering research processes, as seen in the Tsitsa Project and UCP case studies; and,
• Increasing inclusion in M&E processes, possibly by building relationships before developing an M&E plan, as seen in the Tsitsa Project and RESILIM-O case studies.

The systemic, relational view of equitable and resilient M&E practice described in this paper resonates with both empowerment and feminist evaluation, but extends beyond project beneficiaries and addresses diverse power relations besides gender.

Ongoing advocacy by all role-players is crucial to embed equity and resilience into M&E practice. Insights from the case studies suggest four areas for focused advocacy. A possible fifth avenue is distributional equity: to monitor and challenge inequitable distribution of project benefits. Although none of our case studies dealt with this use of M&E, it would be a promising avenue for further research.

In conclusion, reflecting on the paper’s production process as M&E practitioners, we found value in collectively examining our experiences. This process, coupled with theoretical connections, deepened our understanding of equity and resilience in M&E practice. Such reflective processes, often overlooked because of time constraints and lack of incentives, are essential for praxis (Figure 6). Opportunities like the SARA working groups can provide the necessary space for practitioners to bring practice into knowledge.

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