• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Transformation to Global Sustainability: Implications for Evaluation and Evaluators
  • Contributor: Patton, Michael Quinn
  • imprint: Wiley, 2019
  • Published in: New Directions for Evaluation
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.1002/ev.20362
  • ISSN: 1097-6736; 1534-875X
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Sustainability has traditionally been associated with maintaining programs and their results over time, especially after focused funding has been withdrawn. This is a static view of sustainability. With the infusion of systems thinking and complexity theory into evaluation, and in the face of climate change and the vision for the future of humanity represented by the Sustainability Development Goals, sustainability has become associated with major and rapid transformation of global systems and the resilience of transformed systems to adapt over time. This is a dynamic view of sustainability with implications for both design of transformation initiatives and evaluating them. Evaluating transformation means transforming evaluation. Evaluation for transformational sustainability treats the whole Earth as the evaluand and the future of humanity on Earth as the essential sustainability issue, and does so with a sense of urgency.</jats:p>