Development of PIPA

Researchers from the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT - Spanish acronym), WorldFish Center and International Potato Center (CIP - Spanish acronym) are developing Impact Pathways models.

The following projects are currently developing PIPA:

• The CPWF Impact Assessment Project is working to construct impact pathways for the 52 CPWF projects in nine river basins around the world (Volta, Mekong, Karkheh, Indo-Gangetic Basin, Andean System of Basins, Sao Francisco, Limpopo, Nile, Yellow River).
• The European Union and Latin American Project on Co-Innovation of Agricultural Systems (EULACIAS) is using impact pathways as the framework to plan, monitor and evaluate co-innovation processes in case study sites in Mexico, Uruguay and Argentina.
• The Cambio Andino project
• The ICT-KM Knowledge Sharing Project

PIPA grew out of ILAC funded work by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT – Spanish acronym) on innovation histories (Douthwaite and Ashby, 2005) and work to evaluate impact pathways in an integrated weed management project in Nigeria (Douthwaite et al., 2003 and 2007). It was first used in a workshop in January 2006 when seven project teams, funded by the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), met for three days to co-construct their respective impact pathways in order to help the CPWF better understand the types of impacts its teams were envisioning. To date, staff from 44 CPWF projects have constructed their impact pathways in seven workshops. 

During 2008, PIPA will continue to be used for project planning and M&E by CPWF; by an EU-funded project in Latin America[1], and by the International Potato Center (CIP - Spanish acronym) for ex-post evaluation purposes in the Andean Change Project. PIPA will also be used for ILAC’s own learning-based evaluation.

PIPA is an umbrella term to describe both the participatory construction of impact pathways and their subsequent use. This brief focuses on the participatory monitoring and evaluation of progress along impact pathways. The use of impact pathways for ex-ante impact assessment is described in Douthwaite (et al., in press). Used ex-post PIPA involves using the PIPA workshop format to reconstruct impact pathways. More information on all aspects of PIPA, including an on-line manual, can be found at http://impactpathways.pbwiki.com. PIPA is similar in its philosophy to ‘outcome mapping’ (Earl et al. 2001). A main difference is that PIPA stretches participants to predict how project outcomes can lead to social, economic and environmental impacts.