Publication Name

The

Environmental Food Crisis: The Environment's Role in Averting Future Food Crises

(February 2009)

www.grida.no/publications/rr/food-crisis/

This publication achieved a high level of recognition resulting in a

significant level of impact. The phrase “environmental food crisis” was

not in common use prior to the publication. Today’s “google” search

produces more than 55 million hits. The need for linking the food crisis

(the top 2008 theme of the UN and an issue of global concern), to

concrete environmental measures has at least raised the awareness of

the masses. If this awareness results in concrete implementation of the

recommendations outlined in the publication, then a clear and

measurable link could be made to the report.

As previously mentioned under the “Effectiveness” section the approach

adopted leading to the production following publication resulted in the

successful implementation of capacity building in Uganda:

Uganda: Atlas of our Changing Environment

(June)

There were many more GRID-Arendal publications produced in 2008

and 2009 (partly funded by MoFA under the framework agreement) that

have the potential to generate real, long-term impact. In many cases

GRID-Arendal has only limited capacity to monitor and assess such

impacts, resulting in some difficulty tracking the real impacts back to the

ideas, products and initiatives GRID-Arendal undertook.

Annex 4 gives a complete overview of the publications 2008 and 2009

with some indications depicting where impacts might be expected.

12. Lessons learned

Although it is in all our interest to achieve real impact with our work (“Environmental knowledge for

Change” is GA’s slogan), it will never be easy to assess and monitor the impact of GA’s supportive work

for UNEP. This is due to the fact that it is often not possible to relate the portion of work GA puts into

projects shared with UNEP and other partners to the impact of the entire project. Further, the GA name

and brand is not appearing on many of our products. Nevertheless, we have learnt that our direct work

partners recognise our work and competencies. For example, GA’s competence to produce assessments

on global and burning issues with a rapid turnover seems to be increasingly in demand and relates also to

our flexibility and capability to use wide and relevant networks of partners for data and information supply.

The need to secure and develop this strength further is an important lesson. To keep a major networking

and facilitation role, GA needs to be attentive in promoting itself to increase its brand recognition by

ensuring a higher degree of visibility for its name and logo.

Still, the focus on impact needs to be followed and strengthened wherever possible. Some lessons

learned in this context are:

•

Assessment and monitoring of impact should be increasingly done on UNEP’s side, including

their assessment of GA’s role in it;

•

It is useful for GA to create titles, phrases and ideas (example “Blue Carbon” or “The

Environmental Food Crisis”) which are innovative and original to the point that the related

products and their impact can be traced beyond the launch phase;