Dr. Rebecca Butterfield, U.S.
Rebecca, Director of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) at Tetra Tech discusses USAID’s ‘Measuring Impact’ project and shares her reflections on the importance of integrating adaptive management in development programming.
Women in Development: This series focuses on the inspirational Tetra Tech women that take strides to make the world a more inclusive place.
What is the Measuring Impact (MI) project? How did you get involved?
MI is a project designed by the Forestry and Biodiversity Office of the U.S Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment Bureau (E3). MI’s objective is to provide technical assistance, training, and tools to USAID Missions using biodiversity funds to ultimately improve Mission programming and better quantify the impact of their conservation programs. MI focuses on design and evidence-based programming for biodiversity conservation. It uses a threat-based approach to understand human activities that undermine biodiversity and how to mitigate the effects of those threats.
My initial involvement with MI began when I worked at USAID, where I was one of the individuals who helped design and manage the project. Now, at Tetra Tech, I support our projects from the MEL aspect, applying the same approach and tools to improve the impact of Tetra Tech implementation on biodiversity conservation. Tetra Tech is also applying an adaptive management, or CLA (Collaborating, Learning and Adapting), approach in all of its sectors and projects. The experiences, lessons learned, and tools from MI can be adapted to land tenure, water and sanitation, agriculture and democracy and governance.
Why is learning and adaptive management important for international development programming?
We never have enough resources for development so we need to be as efficient and effective as possible. Learning to be explicit about your development hypothesis allows you to monitor and test progress to ensure you are on track or to make course corrections early enough to reach final outcomes. Programming can be efficient when funds are used for maximum impact, and learning and adaptive management drives that through evidence-based decision making. If we notice we are not going to achieve specific goals, we can take a new approach on how to improve the ultimate effect of the project.
What challenges have you faced when trying to adopt learning and adaptive management as promoted by MI?
It is hard when you are an implementer and you have many deliverables and activities that you are trying to achieve in a short amount of time. There’s also an extended period of time between USAID’s initial project design and implementation — sometimes a five-year gap. The situation and political climate can drastically change in five years and assumptions and risks need to be rethought and strategies readjusted. Adaptive management is a process that requires a collaborative effort between the involved counterparts to recognize the challenges and what needs to happen to address them.
Another challenge is that technical staff (USAID and contractors) become attached to certain approaches or types of programming and are reluctant to change even when there is no evidence that the approach is working. In pivoting to a new approach, something else has to be given up as resources are constrained. The challenge is to make decisions based on data and information and stop doing the activities that are not yielding sufficient results.
What is your favorite aspect in working for Tetra Tech?
I enjoy working across all the various sectors, from strengthening land rights to improving water services to better functioning agricultural supply chains to building municipal governance capacities. I originally come from an environmental background, so I appreciate the opportunity to learn about these other fields.
I enjoy working on proposals; it’s always a puzzle to try to put technical aspects together to determine how to best measure the outcomes. Working on the implementer side is also rewarding as it allows me to work directly with people in the field to ensure they are thinking about the big picture of what they are trying to achieve and not get too caught up with all the details.
What inspires you? What has made you devote your career to international development?
I have been working in international development since 1984 and have never been bored. Of course, there are innumerable challenges but there are also many opportunities and it is very satisfying to support successful efforts to realize some of those opportunities or overcome some of the challenges. The best part is getting to the field where I always learn so much from local counterparts and you get to meet the people whose lives and environment we are working to improve.
