Caring for our Country

Monitoring & evaluation

National evaluations of the Trust and the NAP

Ten national evaluations of the Natural Heritage Trust (the Trust) and the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality (the NAP) were carried our during late 2004 and early 2005, nine of which have been made public.

Why evaluate the Trust and NAP?

The Trust and NAP programmes were evaluated to see what is working well and what improvements can be made to make them more effective.

The Trust and NAP programmes are funded until mid-2008, so it cannot yet be determined if they have met all their goals. However, evaluating the programmes can help improve the way they work and direct investment into activities that will help meet their goals.

What was evaluated?

Of the ten evaluations, nine have been completed and the remaining evaluation, Impact of the National Network of NRM Facilitators, is due for completion in late 2006.

Six of the evaluations deal with the regional component of the Trust and the NAP. Of these, four address specific areas in which investments are being made:

Two reports cover the governance arrangements of the regional bodies and the effectiveness of the bilateral agreements between the Australian Government and the state and territory governments for the regional component of the extension of the Trust.

In addition, there are separate evaluations of the Australian Government Envirofund (the local component of the Trust) and the National Investment Stream of the Natural Heritage Trust (the national component of the Trust).

Who carried out the evaluations?

All ten of the evaluations were conducted by independent consultants who were selected through a public tender process. Each evaluation was guided by a steering committee with members from the Department of the Environment and Water Resources and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

Depending on the expertise required by the particular evaluation, there were also members drawn from various:

Key

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