The Asia-Pacific Finance and Development Institute (AFDI), together with the Independent Evaluation Department (IED) of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), hosted the 2019 Asian Evaluation Week. The theme was "Quality Evaluation for Better Results: Local, National, Regional Perspectives". Juha Uitto (Director, GEF IEO) organized a session on evaluative evidence to tackle environmental and development challenges in SIDS.

The GEF IEO participated in the Evaluation Cooperation Group (ECG) Spring 2019 meeting hosted by the Black Sea Trade and Development Banks in Thessaloniki, Greece.

On June 12th, 2019 the GEF Independent Evaluation Office presented the updated M&E Policy and the FY19 Program and Budget, informational documents and presentations

As part of the UNEG Evaluation Week's Evaluation Practice Exchange (EPE) Seminar, Juha I. Uitto (GEF IEO Director) organized session 2.2 on 'Taking stock of evaluations towards achieving the vision of 2030 Agenda: Open theory of change' with the following panel members: Oscar Garcia (IFAD), S. Nanthikesan (UNFPA), Patricia Vidal Hurtado (ILO), Veridiana Manour-Mendes (FAO), Juha Uitto (GEF), and Martin Barugahare (UN-Habitat) on Tuesday, May 14, 2019.

The American Association of Geographers (AAG) held its annual meeting for the latest research and applications in geography, sustainability and GIScience. The GEF IEO participated in the following sessions:

Land systems science - Research frontiers and challenges at the intersections of remote sensing and qualitative social-scientific approaches and methods

Chair: Martin Lukas

Panelists:

The IEO participated in a lunch-break conference on Evaluation in difficult contexts and hard-to-reach areas organized by the Evaluation Support Service of DG DEVCO and the unit 'Results, Monitoring and Evaluation' of DG DEVCO. The focus of the conference was on improving international development evaluation through geospatial data and analysis.

Panelists:

The 9th African evaluation Association (AfrEA) International Conference "Accelerating Africa's Development: Strengthening National Evaluation Ecosystems" took place from March 11-15, 2019 in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. The conference was co-hosted by the Réseau Ivoirien de Suivi et d'Evaluation (RISE) and the Government of Cote D'Ivoire. The conference aime to:

Juha I. Uitto, Director for the Independent Evaluation Office of the GEF, participated as a keynote speaker at the 2019 Asian Pacific Evaluation Association (APEA) international conference. Uitto focused his discussion on evaluation results tied to climate change and environmental sustainability's link with peace, security and development. In addition, Uitto chaired the session on Evaluating Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction (details TBD).

On December 19th, 2018 the GEF Independent Evaluation Office presented the following documents to Council Semi-Annual Evaluation Report (SAER): November 2018, informational documents and presentations