ESDInds

ESDinds - Development of indicators and assessment tools for civil society organisations (CSO) projects promoting values-based education for sustainable development - was a two year collaborative research project, running from January 2009 to March 2011. It was funded by the European Commission under the ‘Research for the Benefit of Specific Groups: Civil Society Organizations’ strand of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

The ESDinds project was co-initiated by academics and by representatives of four civil society organisations (CSOs) working on Education for Sustainable Development projects, who felt frustrated that conventional approaches to monitoring and evaluation were failing to capture the outcomes that mattered to them.

The ESDinds project and post-ESDinds follow-up work have been led by Professor Marie Harder, Professor of Sustainable Waste Management at the University of Brighton.

Download the project final report (pdf)

Project aims

The main aim of the project was to develop values-based indicators and assessment tools to evaluate achievements related to core ethical/spiritual values within four CSOs. The partner organisations were all engaged in promoting education for sustainable development (ESD), in a broad sense.

When this initial aim was achieved, a secondary research question emerged: Would the set of values-based indicators designed with the four initial partner CSOs be relevant, comprehensible, and useful (for project evaluation) in new organisations that had not been involved in developing them?

Project findings and impact

The first phase of research generated a draft set of 171 proto-indicators (i.e. localisable prototypes, or templates, for generating measurable indicators). These were initially associated with six value-labels, namely Integrity, Justice, Empowerment, Trust/Trustworthiness, Unity in Diversity, and Care and Respect for the Community of Life.The set of proto-indicators was reduced to 166, and later 125, through iterative field testing.

The relevance and usefulness of the indicators in a wide variety of contexts has far exceeded initial expectations. The web platform created to disseminate the indicators has received over 11,000 hits from 138 countries, and its online community of interest has now reached 162 members. Just over a third of the total membership is from the non-profit, charitable or humanitarian sector, with a further 31 per cent coming from the private sector (companies or social enterprises) and 18 per centfrom academic or educational institutions. Faith-based organisations, public sector organisations, families, informal community groups and individuals have also engaged with the indicators and found them relevant.

The ESDinds project has had a far-reaching impact on theory and practice in a range of different fields. In many organisations where the proto-indicators have been tested in real evaluation contexts, they have catalysed a significant shift in values, vision and strategy. Papers about the project have been published in evaluation, action research, ecology, environmental management, sustainability, ESD and design journals. ESDinds has also given rise to a number of spin-off projects, which collectively can be seen as foundations for a new paradigm of values-based approaches in assessment and evaluation:

Bridging the knowledge-action gap with values-based indicators: the PERL project
Developing values-based sustainability indicators for and with an Austrian university
Starting from values: to evaluate‚ intangible legacies of community-university research partnerships funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council
Cultivating Compassion: Developing indicators of compassion in the UK health service

Research team

Professor Marie Harder, Professor of Sustainable Waste Management

Elona Hoover

Gemma Burford

Firooz Firoozmand

Georgia Piggot

Dr Dimity Podger

Ismael Velasco

Professor Arthur Dahl (a Visiting Professor at the University of Brighton).

Output

Papers in press and published

Burford, G., Hoover, E., Velasco, I., Janouskova, S., Jimenez, A., Piggot, G., Podger, D., & Harder, M.K. 2013. Bringing the 'missing pillar' into Sustainable Development Goals: towards intersubjective values-based indicators. Sustainability, 5, 3035-3059.

Burford, G., Velasco, I., Janouskova, S., Zahradnik, M., Hak, T., Podger, D., Piggot, G., & Harder, M.K. 2013. Field trials of a novel toolkit for evaluating ‘intangible’ values-related dimensions of projects. Evaluation and Program Planning, 36, 1-14. (available online at www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149718912000444)

ESDinds, 2011. ESDinds: The development of values-based indicators and assessment tools for civil society organisations promoting education for sustainable development. Deliverable 17: final project report to European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013): www.esdinds.eu, Publishing, Brighton

Harder, M.K., Burford, G., & Hoover, E. 2013. What is participation? Design leads the way to a cross-disciplinary framework. Design Issues, 29, 41-57.

Harder, M.K., Velasco, I., Burford, G., Podger, D., Janouskova, S., Piggot, G., & Hoover, E. 2014. Reconceptualizing 'effectiveness' in environmental projects: can we measure values-related achievements? Journal of Environmental Management, 139, 120-134.

Podger, D., Velasco, I., Amezcua Luna, C., Burford, G., & Harder, M.K. 2013. Can values be measured? Significant contributions from a small civil society organisation through action research evaluation. Action Research, 11, 8-30.(available online at http://arj.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/12/04/1476750312467833)

Dahl, A.L. (2012) Achievements and gaps in indicators for sustainability. Ecological Indicators Volume 17, June 2012, Pages 14–19.

Podger, D. et al (2010) The Earth Charter and the ESDinds Initiative: Developing Indicators and Assessment Tools for Civil Society Organisations to Examine the Values Dimensions of Sustainability Projects. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development 4 (2) p: 297-305.

Conference presentations

Burford, G. Hoover, E. Podger, D. Piggot G. and Harder, M. (2012) Making the invisible visible: values-based indicators as a novel tool for identifying and bridging value-action gaps. Presentation given at the Planet Under Pressure international conference, March 2012.

Burford, G. Hoover, E. Podger, D. Piggot G. and Harder, M. (2012) Peer-elicited values-based indicators as a strong catalyst for collective behaviour change through transformational learning. Poster presentation given at the Planet Under Pressure international conference, March 2012

Piggot, G. and Hoover, E. et al. (2011) Values-based indicators: Bridging the gap between ethical values and sustainable practice. Presentation give sat the ISDRC 17 Conference at Columbia University, New York on May 9 2011.

Presentation given by Prof. Marie Harder May 27 2009 about the research approach used in the ESDinds project at the European Commission Sustainable Development conference in Brussels.

Partners

Charles University Environment Center (CUEC), Prague, Czech Republic: Dr Tomas Hak, Dr Svatava Janouskova and Dr Martin Zahradnik
The Charles University Environment Centre (CUEC) at Charles University in Prague. Providing academic expertise on traditional sustainable development Indicators.

Alliance of Religions and Conservation: John Smith and Martin Palmer
The Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) UK. A secular body that helps the major religions of the world to develop their own environmental programmes, based on their own core teachings, beliefs and practices.

Earth Charter Initiative: Alicia Jimenez
The Earth Charter Initiative (ECI) Costa Rica. An extraordinarily diverse, global network of people, organisations, and institutions that participate in promoting and implementing the values and principles of the Earth Charter.

European Baha’i Business Forum: Daniel Truran
The European Baha'i Business Forum (EBBF) France. A non-profit organisation of individuals contributing to a prosperous, sustainable and just civilization by promoting and applying ethical values, personal virtues and moral leadership in their workplaces.

People’s Theater, Germany: Curtis Volk
People's Theater Germany, a non-profit program which uses drama workshops to help school children explore social responsibility.