Towards a sustainable future – Blue Marble Evaluation as an enabler of systemic change

Have you ever wondered what Earth looks like from outer space? When we look at our planet as a ‘blue marble’, we see our shared home, not the boundaries and borders between states, sectors or organisations. Systemic changes are needed to salvage our common future.

Most of us are aware of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the need to tackle them quickly. Blue Marble Evaluation (Patton 2019, 2021) provides valuable support for achieving these global goals through evaluation. In this blog post, we focus on how this evaluation approach can help us understand and shape our future – whether we are talking about climate change, social justice or other global challenges.

Global crises require systemic change

The climate crisis, growing economic and social inequalities and global crises like pandemics have made it clear that our current operating model is not sustainable. At the same time, humankind’s consumption of resources exceeds the planet’s carrying capacity. We cannot continue at this pace without serious consequences for our environment and our societies.

The Blue Marble Evaluation approach combines the requirements of global thinking and ecological sustainability. It also offers evaluation principles that enable us to evaluate and modify systems to respond to these challenges. Patton argues that, rather than just one of the options, systemic change is an essential precondition for achieving a more sustainable and fairer world. This approach of global systemic change stresses extending evaluation beyond national borders and breaking down traditional sectoral silos.

Many of the wicked problems of our time require a multidisciplinary approach. While individual measures are important, they are alone not enough to achieve a sea change – we need comprehensive, systemic solutions that address both the environment and human well-being globally (see Uusikylä & Jalonen 2023).

Evaluation needs to be a stronger driver of change 

Evaluation can help build trust in a sustainable future. Looking to the future and change are built-in elements of enhancement-led evaluation that promotes learning and participation. Evaluation is aimed at achieving positive impacts while the evaluation process is still in progress and at using the findings and proposed recommendations to support the change. The key values that underpin enhancement-led evaluation emerge from these starting points: trust, transparency, engagement and fairness.

Patton proposes four overarching principles that can be used to evaluate global systems and to ensure that the change essentially needed to resolve crises is achieved. The principles guiding evaluation are useful in assessing complex questions.

• The first principle is looking at the big picture from the global perspective. 
• The second is the Anthropocene as context principle, or how human activities have had and continue having an impact on Earth's ecosystems. 
• The third principle emphasises commitment to transformation, which is linked to a number of interdependent dimensions of ecological, social and economic sustainability. 
• The fourth one is integration of the ‘Blue Marble’ evaluation into evaluating systemic changes, commitment and initiatives. 

Sustainability, crossing boundaries and commitment to transformation are the operating methods of ‘Blue Marble’ evaluations. The new kind of overarching perspective challenges the prevailing evaluation models and criteria. 

Enhancement-led evaluation needs to take on an increasingly large role as a driver of change. For this, a more systematic examination of complex phenomena, a multi-method approach and application of several criteria are needed. Engagement and involvement as well as combining different perspectives and information from the global, national and local levels are increasingly important. This way, evaluation helps to distribute competence to a larger number of stakeholders with the aim of solving societal crises.

From waste to advantage – towards more sustainable evaluation

Sustainable and enhancement-led evaluation should continue to be seen as a tool that influences practice and is anchored to real-life activities and efforts towards change as well as the need for evaluation. The basic premise of planning is the usability and usefulness of the evaluation for its subject, the party that commissioned it and those who participate in conducting it. Sustainable evaluation identifies not only development areas but also opportunities for change.

However, the fact that evaluation data are available does not yet guarantee that they are tapped in societal processes and decision-making. Loss can also be a problem in evaluation. Evaluation data are wasted if their use as a basis of societal decisions and development measures is siloed, and administrative boundaries are not crossed. Unused data are also costly. An evaluation cannot be impactful if its findings are not used or drawn on across a broad front.  If this is the case, we need to look at the evaluators’ competence and cooperation.

Patton encourages ‘Blue Marble’ evaluators to:

• Participate boldly in global discussion
• Challenge simplifying and straightforward explanation models
• Explore complex and unpredictable phenomena
• Offer new ways of thinking

The goal is to reform evaluation, enabling it to respond to complex global challenges.

An evaluator can act as an intermediary and initiator of dialogue between different actors, this way supporting the role of evaluation as a tool for systemic decision-making. Evaluation must focus on global problems, and evaluation-oriented thinking must lend support to decision-making. The ‘Blue Marble’ view of evaluation evolves constantly and requires evaluators to have an ability to evaluate the impact, relevance and sustainability of global efforts aiming for change in an ethically sustainable manner.

Ethical questions are assuming an increasingly important role in evaluation

The ‘Blue Marble’ evaluation approach challenges us as evaluators to reflect on our personal professional ethics but also our personal and social responsibility. 

According to Patton (2021), evaluation processes must be in line with ethical principles at all levels:

• Personal level: How do our choices and lifestyles promote or obstruct a sustainable future?
• Professional level: How can evaluators promote drivers of change and transformative activities in their work?
• Societal and global level: How can evaluation support society and the common good in the midst of a global crisis?

In concrete terms this could, for example, mean ensuring that the impacts of the projects to be evaluated target different population groups fairly and that their ecological impacts are in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.

Rather than merely measuring the current situation, the role of evaluation is to guide us towards better decisions and a more sustainable world. The Blue Marble Evaluation approach strives to introduce a new level in evaluation that not only measures the effectiveness of interventions but also ensures that they are socially, economically and ecologically fair.

Together for our blue planet

A global systemic change and looking beyond the borders of individual countries is a precondition for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. As evaluators, we can start dismantling silos in our evaluations by crossing administrative and sectoral boundaries, combining national and local perspectives, and strengthening engagement in our evaluations. Evaluators must also take care of their personal competence and reflect on the sustainability of their evaluation work in national and international dialogue with other producers and users of data. 

An evaluator’s competence includes a critical attitude towards the rhetoric of change and ensuring that evaluation-oriented thinking supports real change. Transformation is not a project or programme, which makes evaluating it challenging. In addition to their personal competence, evaluators must ensure that other stakeholders can learn something for the future from evaluations and their findings. We can combine our capacity, expertise and thinking for the benefit of our blue planet.

Sources that inspired our blog: 

• Patton, M.Q. (2019). Blue Marple Evaluation. Premises and Principles. Guilford Press
• Patton, M.Q. (2021). Blue Marble Evaluation Perspective: How Evaluations Help Solve Global Crises. Teoksessa Rob D. van den Berg, Christina Magro & Marie-Helene Adrien (toim.) Transformational Evaluation for the global crises of our times. Exeter, UK:IDEAS 
• Uusikylä, P. & Jalonen, H. (toim.) (2023). Epävarmuuden aika. Into-Kustannus oy. 

The Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC) is an independent authority responsible for the national evaluation of education. The evaluations of FINEEC cover the education system in its entirety, from early childhood education to higher education. 

FINEEC's approach to evaluation is enhancement-led evaluation. Enhancement-led assessment supports the achievement of objectives and promotes learning and change. It aims to create positive impacts during the evaluation process and to use evaluation results and recommendations to support change.