CIFOR conducts internationally relevant research, so as to serve its mission of poverty alleviation and environmental protection.  Discernable contributions to this mission are termed “impact.” Analysis to identify contributions to this mission that can be “attributed” in part to the center’s work is termed “impact assessment.”

While we at CIFOR believe that we are doing research that has helped to improve the lives of millions of poor people, and to improve the management of millions of hectares of forests, identifying our precise contributions is no easy matter.  Existing impact assessment methods are not well developed for our kinds of collaborative policy and management oriented science, as there are no truly objective indicators of reliance on our findings.  Furthermore, our findings often permeate through to practices on the ground through many intermediate changes in understanding and actions.   

As a result, we will probably never be able to fully illustrate all of the benefits that we believe our work has created.  However, this does not alleviate our responsibility to show to our stakeholders that our research matters and helps to achieve our mission. Thus, our impact assessment work is focused on a few example cases where benefits can be quantified, and where CIFOR’s contributions can be clearly illustrated. 

Please peruse the links on the right to learn more about CIFOR’s impact assessment activities and their key findings.