ESPA's innovation for impact

Over the last month I have had a number of opportunities to reflect on the way that ESPA is delivering impact, helping to improve the lives of poor people in low-income countries.  For those of you who attended the first ESPA meeting in October 2010, you may remember that, at that time, I laid out a vision for ESPA: that it would not just do innovative science but thatit would be truly innovative in the way that it does science.  Now, in 2014, halfway through the programme, I see growing evidence of the value delivered by that innovation and a growing interest in the way in which the ESPA programme works, and the contribution made by the ESPA Directorate.

In May, I was invited by the International Council for Science (ICSU) to South Africa to attend a meeting which brought together the research and development communities to consider how international research could help to address the changes for Africa linked to Global Environmental Change, and  potentially feeding into ICSU’s plans for their Future Earth initiative. 

ESPA, as an innovative programme, was seen at the meeting to be a model for new initiatives in Africa and Future Earth.  I highlighted three areas of innovation that I feel make ESPA different and contribute to ESPA’s growing global impact.  These are:

• ESPA’s approach to building truly interdisciplinary teams through international partnerships.  You can read more about this in an external report on ESPA’s approach to commissioning interdisciplinary science.
• ESPA’s investment in building partnerships and supporting capacity strengthening.  This can be seen in the current programme statistics which show that half of ESPA’s researchers come from developing countries.  The seven ESPA Fellows, currently being appointed, represent ESPA’s largest investment to date in capacity strengthening.
• ESPA’s investment in building impact.  This is seen through the launch of the new Regional Opportunities Fund and in the next month we will welcome two new staff into the Directorate to take up new roles to enhance and communicate ESPA’s impact.  I also described our intention to appoint Regional Evidence Brokers in Africa and South Asia, an innovation welcomed by many from both the development and the research communities at the event.

Reflecting on my participation at the ICSU event in South Africa, I saw huge growth in interest in ESPA’s approach as a programme.  I was able to reflect on our programme vision for the world after ESPA, which includes the statement that by the year 2022 “ESPA’s innovative approach to designing and implementing development research, and then to turning research into results, is recognised by being adopted by other agencies and becoming standard practice for global environmental research projects”.  It is very pleasing for me to see that this is happening much earlier than we had expected.

My second opportunity to reflect on the value of ESPA’s approach linking research with direct impacts on the lives of the poor came when DFID’s Minister of State, the Rt. Hon. Alan Duncan MP, visited the University of Edinburgh, which hosts the ESPA Directorate.  The Minister was very interested in hearing about a range of innovative approaches linking research and development impact. I had the opportunity to tell him about ESPA, including the success of ESPA’s Swahili Seas project in Kenya.  The Minister was keen to see new ways of working which enhance the delivery of benefits from DFID’s investment in research.

Over the next few months our partners in ESPA will be able to see much more evidence of how ESPA is working in new and innovative ways.  The programme will be publishing the report of a very positive external Mid-Term Review (MTR) of the ESPA programme as a whole which highlights our achievements so far and the challenges that ESPA has in doing even more to further enhance its impact by March 2017, when ESPA is scheduled to close.  ESPA’s Programme Executive Board will publish a response to the MTR indicating the priorities that ESPA’s funders have agreed for the programme over that period.  In the next month, the ESPA Directorate will be announcing the successful ESPA Fellows and welcoming our new Impact Officer and Communication Officer to the Directorate team, while working with partners in Africa and South Asia to appoint our new ESPA Regional Evidence Brokers. 

These new investments will help to further enhance the ESPA programme, and to describe the quality of its science, the value of its partnerships and the growing significance of ESPA’s impact on the lives of poor people in low-income countries around the world.