On the Impact Assessment of ACIAR (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research) Projects

The current ACIAR (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research) guidelines forimpact assessment of agricultural development projects see impact assessment as being usefulfor both accountability to stakeholders and as a learning tool to find out what works, whatdoesn’t work and why. The methodology involves the use of conventional economicevaluation and the estimation of a money metric based on measuring outcomes in terms ofeconomic surplus changes attributable to directed actions and activities. On the question ofaccountability to stakeholders, this paper suggests that the money metric may not be the bestoutcomes-based measure of performance against development goals and that other performanceindicators ought to be considered. The paper also suggests exploring other approaches to assessaccountability including qualitative (narrative) methods as well as process-basedaccountability. On the question of using impact assessment as a learning tool, the papersuggests this might be quite useful for more traditional non-adaptive research, but is less usefulfor adaptive research projects involving participatory action research (PAR). With PARprojects, learning about what works, what doesn’t work and why already occurs as an integralpart of the research process. The paper concludes with some thoughts about project evaluationof an ACIAR-funded project with which the authors are involved in northwest Cambodiafocusing on upland crop production and marketing.