Sustainability-inclusive evaluation: Guidance for Global Affairs Canada to include consideration of the environment in all evaluations

Particular attention is devoted to the natural system effects of trade, development, and foreign affairs policies, initiatives, programs, and other government undertakings whose primary purpose is not environmental.

By far the greatest environmental damage is being done as an inadvertent side impact of economic and other human activity; clean-up efforts that are explicitly focused on the environment are vanishingly small in comparison. Therefore, the most powerful contribution of evaluation to sustainability will come from our work evaluating efforts that primarily focus on improving human systems.

The guide is designed to be user-friendly and to provide cost-effective guidance, helping evaluation teams to identify two or three issues worth highlighting and finding reasonably quick and cost-effective ways of addressing them within the context of a wider evaluation.

This guide is presented as key steps for integrating environment into all evaluations. The general logic for the order of presentation is to begin with the more foundational and broad reaching steps proceeding to still critical but more specific steps. Where an important consideration is discussed in a subsequent step, reference is made to that step.