The principles of sustainable development stems from the idea that it is important to act now while thinking of the future. Since this concept arose, during the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, ensuring economic growth while at the same time protecting the environment and its ability to provide natural resources and guaranteeing the respect of fundamental human rights represents one of the crucial challenges of present generations. In this context, it has been soon recognized that such an ambitious objective requires the active participation of the whole society, both in terms of sectors and people. Considering this, various entities – not-for-profit organizations but also multinational corporations – started implementing projects in developing countries addressed at fostering development in a sustainable way. From here the need of quantifying the desired and undesired effects of the activities undertaken emerges. This is essential first of all for an optimal design of the project but also to allow and enhance the participation of the stakeholders, starting from local authorities and communities. This last aspect has been overlooked for a long time, but lately evidences have proved that involving locals is crucial for the effectiveness of development projects. Moreover, sustainability – under economic, environmental and social perspective – can be granted only if medium and long-term outcomes may be monitored and managed. These are the reasons for using a robust and clear tool for Impact Evaluation. This thesis aims at creating an Impact Assessment Framework specifically targeted at sustainable development projects. Setting such a specific purpose allows to overcome gaps and issues of the current applied methodologies - identified after a scoping literature review - deriving from the fact that they had been created for other purposes and later adapted. Indeed, although there are many applicable approaches, none of them has ever been specifically developed for community investments. Moreover, the analysis allowed to group up the existing methodologies in four groups, namely management dashboard, process based, synthetic and regional flow indicators. Building on these results, an Integrated Impact Assessment Framework for development projects is here proposed. It is basically an ex-ante impact evaluation model that integrates a Cobb-Douglas production function calibrated on historical data with the Leontief Input – Output model. Combining the two well – known and tested models, allows to create a link between the macro-economic of the country where the project is implemented and the project – level itself, with a top-down approach. The Framework is finally applied to a real case study of projects implemented in Kenya addressing development in its wider meaning. The application first shows that deploying the Framework provides different and complementary perspectives about the impact generated by the projects. Moreover, a comparison with some of the main currently applied methodologies is provided to highlight their strengths and weaknesses. All in all, the proposed solution aims at giving an alternative to the existent impact assessment methodologies, trying at the same time to fill the current gaps and envisaging a multidisciplinary approach to the problem.
Il concetto di sviluppo sostenibile nasce dall’idea che è importante agire ora pensando al futuro. Sin dalla sua ascesa, durante la prima Conferenza delle Nazioni Unite su Ambiente e Sviluppo nel 1987, assicurare una crescita economica proteggendo allo stesso tempo l’ambiente e la sua capacità di fornire risorse naturali e garantendo il rispetto dei diritti umani fondamentali, rappresenta una delle sfide cruciali per la generazione attuale. In questo contesto, presto si è capito che raggiungere un obbiettivo così ambizioso richiede la partecipazione attiva dell’intera società – sia in termini di settori sia di persone. Considerato ciò, varie entità – organizzazioni no-profit ma anche imprese multinazionali, hanno iniziato ad implementare progetti in Paesi in via di sviluppo volti ad accelerarne la crescita in modo sostenibile. Da qui dunque emerge la necessità di quantificare gli effetti – desiderati e non – delle azioni intraprese. Ciò è essenziale innanzi tutto per una pianificazione ottimale del progetto, ma anche per permettere e favorire la partecipazione di tutte le parti interessate, iniziando da autori e comunità locali. Quest’ultimo aspetto è stato sottovalutato per molto tempo ma recentemente l’evidenza a dimostrato che includere i locali è cruciale per l’efficacia dei progetti di sviluppo. Inoltre, la sostenibilità da una prospettiva economica ambientale e sociale può essere garantita solo se è possibile monitorare e gestire i risultati a medio e lungo termine. Queste sono le ragioni per cui è importante utilizzare uno strumento per la valutazione dell’impatto affidabile e comprensibile. La tesi ha come obbiettivo quello di costruire un Sistema di Valutazione dell’Impatto mirato ai progetti di sviluppo sostenibile. Un proposito così specifico permette di colmare le lacune e i problemi delle metodologie attualmente applicate – identificate tramite una revisione di letteratura esplorativa – derivanti principalmente dal fatto che sono stati creati per altri scopi ed in seguito adattati. Infatti, nonostante i molti approcci applicabili, nessuno di questi è mai stato specificamente sviluppato per questo tipo di programmi. L’analisi ha inoltre permesso di categorizzare le metodologie esistenti in quattro gruppi, ovvero dashboard di gestione, indicatori di processo, sintetici e di flusso regionale. Partendo da questi risultati, viene proposta un Sistema Integrato per la Valutazione dell’Impatto per progetti di sviluppo sostenibile. Si tratta di un modello di valutazione dell’impatto ex-ante che integra la funzione di produzione di Cobb-Douglas calibrata su dati storici con il modello Input-Output di Leontief. Combinare i due modelli, ben consolidati e testati, permette di creare un collegamento tra il livello macroeconomico del paese in cui il progetto viene implementato e il livello del progetto stesso, con un approccio top-down. Infine, il Sistema è applicato ad un caso studio reale di progetti implementati in Kenya volti allo sviluppo nella sua accezione più ampia. L’applicazione mostra innanzi tutto che questo Sistema fornisce prospettive differenti e complementari dell’impatto generato dai progetti. Inoltre, viene presentato un confronto tra le principali metodologie attualmente utilizzate per evidenziare i rispettivi punti di forza e debolezza. Per concludere, la soluzione proposta mira ad essere un’alternativa alle metodologie per la valutazione dell’impatto esistenti, cercando allo stesso tempo di colmare le attuali lacune e fornendo un approccio multidisciplinare al problema.
Quantitative assessment of the impact of community projects in developing countries
SANTOLINI, SARA
2017/2018
Abstract
The principles of sustainable development stems from the idea that it is important to act now while thinking of the future. Since this concept arose, during the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, ensuring economic growth while at the same time protecting the environment and its ability to provide natural resources and guaranteeing the respect of fundamental human rights represents one of the crucial challenges of present generations. In this context, it has been soon recognized that such an ambitious objective requires the active participation of the whole society, both in terms of sectors and people. Considering this, various entities – not-for-profit organizations but also multinational corporations – started implementing projects in developing countries addressed at fostering development in a sustainable way. From here the need of quantifying the desired and undesired effects of the activities undertaken emerges. This is essential first of all for an optimal design of the project but also to allow and enhance the participation of the stakeholders, starting from local authorities and communities. This last aspect has been overlooked for a long time, but lately evidences have proved that involving locals is crucial for the effectiveness of development projects. Moreover, sustainability – under economic, environmental and social perspective – can be granted only if medium and long-term outcomes may be monitored and managed. These are the reasons for using a robust and clear tool for Impact Evaluation. This thesis aims at creating an Impact Assessment Framework specifically targeted at sustainable development projects. Setting such a specific purpose allows to overcome gaps and issues of the current applied methodologies - identified after a scoping literature review - deriving from the fact that they had been created for other purposes and later adapted. Indeed, although there are many applicable approaches, none of them has ever been specifically developed for community investments. Moreover, the analysis allowed to group up the existing methodologies in four groups, namely management dashboard, process based, synthetic and regional flow indicators. Building on these results, an Integrated Impact Assessment Framework for development projects is here proposed. It is basically an ex-ante impact evaluation model that integrates a Cobb-Douglas production function calibrated on historical data with the Leontief Input – Output model. Combining the two well – known and tested models, allows to create a link between the macro-economic of the country where the project is implemented and the project – level itself, with a top-down approach. The Framework is finally applied to a real case study of projects implemented in Kenya addressing development in its wider meaning. The application first shows that deploying the Framework provides different and complementary perspectives about the impact generated by the projects. Moreover, a comparison with some of the main currently applied methodologies is provided to highlight their strengths and weaknesses. All in all, the proposed solution aims at giving an alternative to the existent impact assessment methodologies, trying at the same time to fill the current gaps and envisaging a multidisciplinary approach to the problem.| File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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https://hdl.handle.net/10589/141504