Inclusive, Cross-Sectoral and Evidence-Based Decision-Making for Resilience Planning and Decision-Making in a Devolved Context

Abstract

Successfully achieving the sustainable development goals requires addressing complex, interrelated, wicked problems across multiple scales and contexts and decision-making that tackles nested layers of goals and targets across the interrelated social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability. The Stakeholder Approach to Risk-informed and Evidence-based Decision-making (SHARED) bridges processes, tools and accessible evidence to support inter-sectoral and multi-stakeholder decision-making and implementation aimed at achieving resilience aspirations and associated investments. Adaptive collaborative management and multiple-loop learning serve as a basis for the systematic approach to institutional learning that supports shifts in underlying institutional understanding and values leading to actionable organisational change. This paper describes a contextual application of tailored technical assistance and institutional support to the Turkana County Government in Kenya, a newly devolved governance structure, under conditions of complexity. The SHARED Turkana County decision case demonstrates how the approach responded to a policy aspiration, resulting in greater and more intentional use of evidence in planning and budget allocations, cross-sectoral and multi-stakeholder partnerships, inclusive and transformative projects and a consultative and evidence-based five-year County Integrated Development Plan.

Analysing agricultural policy outcomes in the uplands of Indonesia: A multi‐dimensional sustainability assessment

“…Like in other forested agricultural landscapes in Southeast Asia, food security in many parts of rural Indonesia is mainly met through income security from perennial crops, which also provide a range of ecological and non‐production functions (van Noordwijk et al, 2014). At global and national levels, countries can strengthen cross‐sectoral and multi‐scalar development coordination to improve the contribution of agricultural systems to achieve sustainable development (Neely et al, 2017). In the upland of Pagar Alam, the potential misalignment of the IR policy agenda with other sectoral and regional agendas could inhibit optimum outcomes for food production and environmental conservation.…”

“…To generate positive broad, sustained impacts from agricultural policy, Indonesia and the global agri‐food research and policy communities should consider moving beyond the focus on productivity targets and work explicitly to reconcile national food production goals with other equally important national, regional and local development agendas. Such reconciliation could be facilitated through sufficient understanding of the local people, places and ecosystems (Amaruzaman et al, 2022) and improving coordination between governance scales and sectors (Neely et al, 2017).…”

“…Among the key obstacles to meeting SDG goals is the inconsistency among policies across socio‐economic and environmental sectors. Agricultural policies often work in siloes, without enough consideration of the consequences across sectors and scales (Neely et al, 2017). For example, attempts to establish food and agricultural policies often result in negative consequences of deforestation and environmental degradation (Sonnino et al, 2014; Tilman et al, 2002).…”

Strategic engagement of business with Sustainable Development Goals: A systems thinking approach

“…Traditional linear thinking around cause and effect cannot resolve complex global challenges, whether the COVID-19 crisis, increasing storm intensity, or urban environmental injustice (Neely et al, 2021).…”

Rural Aspirations: Reflections for Development Planning, Design and Localized Effects

“…Local political processes and international organizations are setting future visions based on their assessments and values while a collection of individual aspirations is shaping the response to these through the multitude of visions for future lives. Linking and aligning these two views and processes could significantly improve outcomes and accelerate progress (Neely et al 2021;Dilley et al 2021). How this plays out towards reaching development goals such as livelihood improvement or environmental targets is outlined and reflected upon in more detail in the following section.…”