Jan Joost Kessler

Background

About Jan Joost Kessler

My expertise has evolved from environmental sustainability issues towards inclusion of social issues as part of participatory area-based design processes. The focus is on making sustainability standards work, the inclusion of smallholders, environmental sustainability (e.g. deforestation) and social inclusiveness (human rights, child labour, gender). I have undertaken several midterm and final evaluations of complex programmes, as the team leader, for projects in the agriculture, climate change or mining sector. I tend to focus on opportunities for systemic and transformative changes as these will be more likely to sustain in time and achieve impact at scale. Clients include NGOs (Fairtrade, Solidaridad, Hivos, WWF), public agencies (DFID, IDH, IFC, RVO child labour fund) and private sector (e.g. Wilmar, Sime Darby). Lobby and advocacy has been a central focus (DGIS, Solidaridad, Oxfam, WWF, International Justice Mission, Stop Child Labour Coalition). I make use of theory based methods, including impact pathways, contribution analysis and mixed (qualitative and quantitative data) methods, to draw conclusions on effectiveness and contribution by interventions, in relation to external factors.