Response to: Getting beneath the surface in program planning, monitoring and evaluation: Learning from use of Participatory Action Research and Theory of Change in the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems

Abstract

Development organizations who aim to improve program outcomes and ensure increased accountability to communities are under increasing pressure to better understand the experiences of project participants. There is much discussion across the aid community (including, but not limited to, aquatic agricultural research) about opportunities and challenges to adapting planning, monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) approaches in order to improve their relevance and applicability to complex and unpredictable development processes. This article is therefore timely and relevant in describing a Theory of Change (TOC)-based approach to address complexity in a practical and transformative way. The CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems (AAS) used a TOC-based approach to design and establish an ''intelligent'' PM&E system that supported complexity-aware programming addressing the evolving needs and interests of poor and marginalized people in five locations in southern Africa, south and southeast Asia, and the Pacific. The AAS program also intended to empower