The WaterBlog

Data or dialogue: how to do a baseline?

Reflections by IMPACT (Peter Lengurnet), Musul Community Land (Jackson Nkaiduri), and MetaMeta (Femke van Woesik, Esmee Mulder, Frank van Steenbergen) IMPACT Reversing the Flow program baseline video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ7OMG86Khg Baselines are part of many development endeavors. They document the zero situation and allow later revisiting to objectively see what change has occurred, if any. They are a good practice in development management. Yet beyond these basic good practices, we may ask some fundamental questions, like who is measuring what? Whose indicators matter? In fact, do indicators matter? Who shares what with whom and how? Also, can the baseline be more than an instrument for monitoring, and can it be an asset in locally-led development, too? Many development project baselines focus on measurable indicators such as household income, family wealth, green matter, soil health, water discharge, and more. The baselines are primarily used by implementing organizations and are externally defined. They are captured in writing and not much shared typically beyond the… Continued