Institutional Learning and Change Initiative

Keywords:

Abstract:

Participatory impact pathways analysis (PIPA), as described at http://impactpathways.pbwiki.com, complements current approaches to priority setting and is not intended as a stand-alone priority setting instrument. PIPA provides important additional criteria about individual projects of practical use to those responsible for determining funding priorities. PIPA can assist in priority setting by helping make explicit the links between project or program interventions and the activities and partner roles and inter-relationships that are believed necessary to bring about outputs, outcomes and impacts. Priority setting in the CGIAR is concerned with how scarce resources can be assigned between a range of alternative research activities or projects. Projects generate outputs, which are expected to lead to outcomes and impacts along an impact pathway which extends well into the future. It is the nature of research-for-development (R4D) that there is considerable uncertainty attached to the achievement of outcomes and impacts. Furthermore, the level of uncertainty increases as one progresses along the impact pathways. By making explicit the assumptions which underpin the transformation of outputs into outcomes and outcomes into impacts, PIPA provides critical information about the likelihood of project success and so improve decision making about resource use. 

PIPA is being developed by the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) and a number of CG Centres including CIP, World Fish, CIMMYT, ICRISAT and CIAT. It is a young approach which continues to evolve (hence a web-page as a reference rather than a journal article). The idea of constructing and analyzing impact pathways has existed for much longer, and so in this chapter we analyze experience from both implementation of PIPA and the more general use of impact pathways (IPs), in particular the use of IPs in the construction of Center Medium Term Plans.