Short Abstract

A visual approach to evaluation of England’s marine plans, which uses radial diagrams built of evaluation triangles, to communicate progress and interactions across policy areas, making marine plan monitoring and evaluation more accessible, engaging, and actionable for planners and policymakers

Description

Marine plans are a central part of how England manages the sustainable use of its seas, balancing environmental, economic and social priorities across different marine sectors. Each plan contains a set of policies and objectives designed to guide decision-making and deliver multiple outcomes; from supporting blue growth to protecting marine ecosystems and enhancing community wellbeing. To assess their effectiveness, the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) monitors data on policy implementation and environmental and socio-economic indicators. However, this data is not yet systematically evaluated or presented in an accessible way, limiting understanding of whether plan policies are achieving their intended objectives, and how progress in one policy area may influence outcomes in others.

To address this challenge, ICF developed a contribution analysis framework for marine plans through an MMO-commissioned project, providing a structured way to assess how plan policies contribute to outcomes across the complex marine and coastal system. Building on this, a joint ICF/MMO CECAN Fellowship research project has been exploring how to organise marine plan monitoring data to enable more systems-based evaluation and more effective communication of findings. Central to this work is the development of a visual approach that helps represent the progress of policies and objectives in a clear, engaging, and holistic way.

Inspired by established visual frameworks such as Planetary Boundaries (Rockström et al., 2009) and Doughnut Economics (Raworth, 2018), radial diagrams built up of evaluation triangles show how each marine plan policy is performing relative to its intended outcomes and acceptable system limits. This visualisation makes it easier for planners, policymakers, and stakeholders to understand how progress is distributed across different outcomes, where synergies or trade-offs may exist, and which areas may require adaptive management.

This approach directly supports the conference theme “Communicating Evaluation for Action” by translating complex evaluation findings into intuitive visual narratives that promote shared understanding and dialogue. The evaluation triangles and radial diagrams are scalable, meaning they can be applied at the level of individual policies, plan objectives, or even across multiple marine plans. This scalability enhances the accessibility of evaluation findings, making contribution analysis more transparent, easier to interpret, and more actionable for policymakers and delivery partners.

In the joint presentation, delivered by Dr Rachel Holtby (ICF) and Victor Owoyomi (MMO), we will share: the methodological steps for linking monitoring data to the visual triangles; examples of how visual tools help clarify progress and interdependencies across marine policy areas; reflections on how the approach facilitates faster analysis and more engaging communication; and insights on how this technique could be adapted to other policy domains facing similar systems challenges.

Ultimately, this work aims to stimulate discussion around how evaluators can use visual tools to communicate complexity effectively, promote adaptive learning, and strengthen collaboration between evaluators, analysts, and decision-makers. By demonstrating the potential of evaluation triangles, we invite participants to consider how similar techniques might enhance evaluation reporting and action across diverse policy areas.