Mini Symposium 2026 Jan 28 - Jindra Monique Čekan
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Sustainability
Abstract
Sustainability of results is often assumed hoped for but unproven. Ex-post evaluations are enormously rare. While we promise sustainability to our participants in partners in the global south far less than 1% of the time has 60 years of global foreign assistance (valued at over $5 trillion of public funded OECD projects) been evaluated for what lasts. Much can be learned from evaluating the sustainability, and how local communities and former aid partners sustained results often in different emerging pathways than what was designed, but which can be far more effective. Čekan/ová founded Valuing Voices 16 years ago to advocate for more ex-post sustainability evaluations, and lead teams of national evaluators, thereby building national capacities.
Climate change & weather variability has also added shocks and stresses to already fragile contexts, and resilience to these shocks is also rarely measured. Čekan/ová and Spearman were tasked with designing systems and tools for evaluating sustainability and resilience for the Adaptation Fund and Čekan/ová went on to do so for the Climate Investment Funds. Those lessons are included in this presentation.
Further, Spearman‘s and IPCC’s recognition that our planet’s carrying capacity is far overwhelmed by our consumption and Čekan/ová ‘s finance-experience understanding that a Return on Equity (ROE) needs to be changed into a Return on Environment (ROEn) led to the two proposing a new way to prioritize investable projects that are we generative. We propose including ecosystem services in financial balance sheets for our collective survival. NB: Society member Friend is in talks with Čekan/ová and Spearman on how her Compass work could be used to help corporations evaluate their readiness for such a shift in priorities, but that is not in the scope of the presentation.
Short Bio
Since 2013, she has focused on ex-post-project evaluation and what her firm Valuing Voices at Cekan Consulting LLC can show Global North and South clients about sustained and emerging impacts years after projects close, and before they do. Lately, Valuing Voices’ national evaluators have been evaluating ex-post project sustainability and climate resilience. She presents regularly at conferences and writes articles, including keynotes at Climate and Finance conferences in 2025.
Also, since 1996, she has managed a 535-hectare forest in her family for 150 years in the Czech Republic where she primarily resides. Jindra Čekan/ová is a dual citizen (Czech Republic/USA), presenter and writer, (grand)mother, Buddhist, and loves giraffes.