Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning - What's a Regenerative approach?

Our planet’s vital life systems are being nurtured by the hands of people working alongside nature’s genius, regenerating our global ecosystems.

As we undergo this transformation, it is critical to monitor ecology as they go through a state change process so that we can learn from and reward them. It is important that we create evidence to build and bolster the regenerative movement.

Alongside this, it is critical that we monitor and learn in a way that does not replicate and perpetuate colonial and mechanistic models. How can we make monitoring and evaluation relevant and inspiring to the communities utilising it?

We explored these key questions and more in our recent Humans of Regeneration webinar. We were grateful to welcome Dorn Cox, Gisel Booman and Anne-Marie Mayer onto our guest panel. View the webinar here:

Three key takeaways

1. Embrace Complexity

A regenerative, whole-systems approach will always be complex. It can be challenging to map and measure when there are so many moving parts. Embrace this, and find creative ways to visualise and measure the many elaborate relationships.

2. Embed Co-benefits

How can monitoring and evaluation create many benefits for the people, community and ecosystem where it’s being undertaken?

3. Take a Tailored Approach

Monitoring and Evaluation should reflect the uniqueness of the place, people and ecology where it’s being undertaken. One size can’t fit all. While there could be similar measurements across different projects and places, the process and approach should be unique.