Brief: The most important results of place-based work are often the least visible. Before waste is recovered, land ecosystem restored or livelihoods strengthened, relationships, capabilities, rules, finance and operating arrangements must be built so that people and institutions can act together. This essay argues that these enabling conditions count as change—as long as evidence shows that they function in practice, unlock further results and remain available over time. It calls for evidence that matches the claim and an honest account of contribution within systems shaped by many actors. From this perspective, scale is not simply about replicating a model, but about strengthening local capacity, transferring useful functions and reshaping the wider systems that sustain change.
In 2026, Hội A government assigned REED to operate an underused public facility as Hoi An Eco-Hub. An implementation plan connected the Hub to Cẩm Kim’s municipal source-separation system, defined a catchment of 1,222 households & small businesses and assigned roles across public agencies, service providers, neighbourhood groups, community organisations and REED. A later notice routed separately collected organic resources to local treatment at the Hub.
On paper, an unused infrastructure gained an operator and a new function. In practice, public authority, local capacity, community participation and a physical asset entered one delivery arrangement that is important to address the local solid waste issues. Materials had somewhere defined to go, organisations knew their roles and a local social enterprise gained a recognised place in a public-service system.
This arrangement took years to build. Since 2021, REED’s work with tourism authorities and businesses on waste prevention, separation, recovery and operational change had built practical knowledge, credibility, relationships, staff, routines and operations.
These are enabling conditions: the capabilities, relationships, rules, resources and arrangements that allow further change. They are central to place-based intermediary work, yet difficult to assess. The case raises a wider question: what changed when a place became better able to organise a shared response—and how can that change be recognised without claiming beyond the evidence?
The work before the result
Most project frameworks move from inputs and activities to outputs, outcomes and longer-term impact. This sequence is useful, but it can imply a more linear pathway than change in complex systems actually follows: outcomes observed during a project may not endure after it ends, while many wider changes arise through the combined influence of the project, other actors and changing conditions.
Training can be counted. Its value becomes clearer when a kitchen team separates materials correctly through a busy season, a collector follows an agreed standard and a recovery service remains available. That performance depends on management support, clear instructions, equipment, staff time, finance, a viable collection route and someone able to respond when the arrangement fails.
The same pattern applies elsewhere. Tree planting is visible; continued restoration depends on land access, stewardship, knowledge of water and soil, suitable plants, seasonal care, finance and learning from mortality. A community programme may reach many participants; its deeper value grows when local practitioners have the confidence, recognition and resources to keep doing and adapting.
Enabling conditions do not produce final outcomes by themselves. They change what people and organisations can do together. OECD evaluation guidance places this capacity within sustainability: future benefits depend on resilient institutions, ownership, resources and the ability to adapt (OECD, 2021). Enabling conditions are therefore legitimate results—but they need a clear standard of proof: they must be visible in use.
When an enabling condition becomes real
A meeting creates contact; coordination becomes real when partners share information, make a decision or solve a problem together. A facility exists; operating capacity becomes real when people, finance, routines and material flows keep it useful. A contract assigns responsibility; accountability becomes real when standards are followed and poor performance triggers a response.
Four practical tests help distinguish potential from functioning capacity:
- Does the condition exist? Is there a role, capability, relationship, asset, rule or source of finance that was previously absent or weaker?
- Does it function? Can we see it shaping behaviour, decisions or operating performance?
- What does it enable? Which constraint shifted, opportunity opened or result became more dependable?
- Does it remain available? Can the system use this capacity again when staff, funding, weather or priorities change?
The fourth test matters because a trained person may leave, a committee may stop meeting and a facility may become idle after a grant ends. Continuity turns a temporary resource into local capacity.
Change appears in layers
Environmental and social results often emerge slowly. Earlier changes can still be observed with precision. Looking across five layers shows where progress is real, where it remains fragile and what needs to happen next.
1. Practice
People and organisations work differently: a hotel changes purchasing and separation; a collector follows a quality protocol; a farmer tests soil practices across seasons; a local facilitator leads learning once dependent on an outside expert. Repeated practice carries more weight than intention.
2. Operating capacity
The place gains people, knowledge, infrastructure and routines that make action dependable. Performance shows who can do the work, to what standard and how they respond when conditions change.
3. Relationships and coordination
Actors gain reliable ways to work together. Meeting counts show contact; joint decisions and responses to disruption show the quality of coordination. UNDP similarly treats collaborative behaviour as an early signal that a group can act differently together (UNDP, 2022).
4. Rules and resource flows
Authority, finance, assets and incentives support the intended direction: a public facility receives an operating purpose, a contract pays for accountable recovery or a budget funds skilled local work. Documents establish the decision; implementation shows whether it has force.
5. Longer-term conditions
Environmental quality, livelihoods, wellbeing, resilience or equity improve over time. Because many forces shape these results, each claim needs fit-for-purpose evidence: material-flow data for waste, ecological monitoring for restoration, income and work-quality data for livelihoods, and changed practice or agency for learning.
Together, the layers distinguish what was delivered, what a place can now do and which wider effects still need time.
Why this work is difficult to measure
Enabling conditions often precede results by years and are shared across actors. Trust belongs to a relationship; coordination belongs to a group; institutional permission involves both the authority that grants it and the organisation ready to carry responsibility. Their quality often appears only under pressure, when floods interrupt a route, costs rise or an agreed task fails.
They are also shaped by place. History, informal authority, land tenure, public finance, seasons and personal relationships can make the same arrangement enabling in one setting and constraining in another. Simple counts are therefore insufficient. Evidence must follow change across time through decisions, operating records, observation, partner accounts and the system’s response to difficulty.
Some early signals look ordinary: a procedure survives staff turnover; a public asset remains in use; partners share data; a failed collection produces a better route; a community practitioner gains a recognised role and income. Each suggests that a place is becoming more able to organise itself—and prompts the next question: what did this new ability make possible?
Contribution is a more truthful account of causality
Place-based change has many authors. Public officials exercise authority; businesses change operations; residents participate; practitioners contribute knowledge and labour; funders provide resources; and weather, markets and regulation alter the path. The useful causal question is not who caused the change alone, but how each actor contributed.
Contribution analysis tests whether the expected pathway occurred, considers other influences and asks how strongly the evidence supports the explanation (Mayne, 2012).
For Hoi An Eco-Hub, REED can credibly claim that its technical advice, pilots, operating experience and relationships helped build conditions for the 2026 arrangement. The formal decision and public authority belong to Hội An Ward. The facility, plan and municipal notice document institutional change. Whether the arrangement delivers service quality, financial viability and environmental outcomes must be established through operating evidence over time.
This account respects every actor’s agency while making REED’s distinctive contribution visible: sustained local practice helped turn broad Zero Waste intentions into the decentralised arrangement the public system could begin to use.
Monitoring as part of the operating system
Monitoring earns its value when it improves the next decision. Contamination may reveal a weak kitchen workflow; a missed collection, an unrealistic schedule; tree mortality, a problem with hydrology, timing, grazing or care.
A problem becomes useful evidence when the response is recorded: what did we expect, what happened, what changed and what happened next? Complexity-aware monitoring was developed for settings where relationships shift, outcomes emerge and the wider system influences results (Britt and Patsalides, 2013).
Scale can strengthen, travel and reshape
Scaling is often equated with replication: more sites, participants or territory. Lam and colleagues offer a wider view—strengthening an initiative, extending what is useful and influencing institutions, rules or ways of thinking (Lam et al., 2020).
GYC’s sites are rooted in communities and landscapes. Hoi An Eco-Hub cannot simply be lifted from Hoi An; REwild’s work is inseparable from Go Noi’s hydrology, land use, livelihoods and stewardship. The form belongs to the place. What may travel is:
- A function: quality control for separated materials, a useful-plant nursery or a mechanism that pays for land stewardship.
- A capability: monitoring ecological change, facilitating community learning, designing a service or negotiating shared roles.
- An institutional arrangement: a public asset brought into shared delivery, a service contract, cost sharing or distributed responsibility.
- A learning process: testing assumptions, recording failure and adapting across seasons and partnerships.
Another place can rebuild these elements in its own form. Transfer begins by asking what created value, what allowed it to work, what it cost, who held risk and what must be redesigned.
For Hoi An Eco-Hub, scale might mean a stronger service in Cẩm Kim, better cost recovery, wider tourism participation, recovery functions elsewhere or changes in municipal procurement. Each direction needs different evidence. Success shows that an arrangement worked here; understanding why makes it useful elsewhere.
Evidence should support honest public claims and improve the working model. Five questions can guide each important result:
- What changed? Name the practice, capacity, relationship, rule, resource flow or longer-term condition—and specify the place and period.
- What does it enable? Show which constraint shifted and what became possible or more dependable.
- How do we know? Identify the evidence, source, method and limitation.
- How do we contribute? Explain GYC and each of our ecosystem member’s role alongside the authority, resources and choices of others.
- What continues? Identify what remains available and what is still uncertain.
The better question
Impact is what changes—and what continues.
For place-based intermediary work, this brings the middle of the story into view: whether people can act differently, whether responsibilities and resources support that action, whether partners can adapt together and whether capacity remains after an activity or grant ends.
The 2026 Hoi An Eco-Hub arrangement matters because technical capability, working relationships, public authority, community participation and an operating place had developed far enough to enter one formal mechanism. It does not yet prove all the results that mechanism seeks.
The next tests are practical: can it deliver a fair, reliable service, recover materials at meaningful scale, sustain skilled local work, survive leadership changes and improve wider waste and tourism systems? These questions keep the claim honest—and show why the earlier work matters.
The better question for any place-based initiative is therefore:
What has this place become more able to do—and what evidence shows that this ability is being used, producing value and continuing over time?
What practice has taught us
Intermediaries build conditions through which others create and sustain change. Those conditions become results when they function and unlock something further.
What the evidence suggests
Place-based change needs matched evidence, a credible account of contribution and attention to capacity that remains. Scale can deepen capacity, extend functions and influence the surrounding system.
What we are still testing
GYC is developing an evidence system across its working places that serves daily decisions, supports credible public claims and allows learning to accumulate across seasons, projects and partnerships.
References
Britt, H. and Patsalides, M. (2013) Complexity-Aware Monitoring. Discussion Note. Washington, DC: USAID. Available at: https://www.betterevaluation.org/sites/default/files/Complexity_Aware_Monitoring_2013-12-11_FINAL.pdf (Accessed: 9 August 2026).
Lam, D.P.M., Martín-López, B., Wiek, A., Bennett, E.M., Frantzeskaki, N., Horcea-Milcu, A.I. and Lang, D.J. (2020) ‘Scaling the impact of sustainability initiatives: a typology of amplification processes’, Urban Transformations, 2, article 3. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s42854-020-00007-9.
Mayne, J. (2012) ‘Contribution analysis: Coming of age?’, Evaluation, 18(3), pp. 270-280. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1356389012451663.
OECD (2021) Applying Evaluation Criteria Thoughtfully. Paris: OECD Publishing. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1787/543e84ed-en.
UNDP (2022) Documenting Systems Change through Effective Collaborative Action: The Early Signals of Change Self-Assessment Tool. New York: United Nations Development Programme. Available at: https://www.undp.org/foodsystems/publications/documenting-systems-change-through-effective-collaborative-action-early-signals-change-self-assessment-tool (Accessed: 9 August 2026).