Delivering on environmental commitments? Guidelines and evaluation framework for an ‘‘on-board’’ approach

In contemporary contexts of complex, integrated policies, it has become ever more essential to assess whether environmental political commitments are effectively implemented. Endeavouring to find out, the evaluator finds himself ‘‘on-board’’: committed to one problematic, under strategic pressure, caught between paperwork and field investigation and looking for markers in ever changing situations and discourses. Based on evaluative research on environmental management programs in an arid region, the Senegal River valley, this paper reviews the pitfalls the evaluator has to confront, the successive deconstruction, reconstruction and assessment phases the evaluation has to go through, and proposes an ‘‘on-board’’ framework evaluation to prevent blurring of the environmental bottom-line.