Partners for climate-resilient development

Outside Partners has been established to help effect the changes needed to transition to climate resilient development in Australia, the Pacific, and Asia.

Our core focus is on food systems and ecosystems — and the interconnected challenges these face. We work with governments and development partners to understand these challenges and develop integrated responses that advance climate action and sustainable development together.

We draw on expertise across economics, social science, and evaluation to inform policy and governance reform, and bring well-developed skills in working across sectors and with diverse stakeholders to support the partnership needed to drive lasting change.

Meet the Team

Outside Partners combines a dedicated core team – Aaron Buncle and Dr. Erica Reeve - with a small network of sub-consultants drawn from research institutions and places where we work (place-based experts).

We also work alongside select consultancy partners who share our values and commitment to lasting systems change.

Principal

Aaron Buncle

Aaron is an environmental economics, governance and evaluation practitioner with extensive experience advising governments and development partners across Australia and the Pacific. Much of his work has been in the cross-cutting area of climate change — approached not as a standalone domain but as a systemic risk that reframes the policy and governance challenges facing food systems, the environment, and development more broadly.

Aaron has built his practice around leading multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder teams — drawing on economics, governance, and evaluation alongside social and natural science inputs to understand complex challenges and formulate evidence-based reform responses suited to their context. He has led major policy advisory and evaluation assignments for Australia's bilateral development program, Pacific Island Country Governments, and regional and multilateral partners; and invests in building the practical capacity of government staff to sustain improved approaches from within.

Principal

Dr. Erica Reeve

Erica is an expert in food systems policy and governance, with 18 years of experience advancing food systems transformation and nutrition outcomes across the Asia-Pacific region. She is an action-oriented researcher specialising in qualitative policy analysis, with deep expertise in designing, implementing, and evaluating cross-sectoral interventions to build healthier and more sustainable food environments.

Erica brings a strong health systems lens to food policy work, including in Pacific Island Countries and lower- and middle-income countries across Asia. She understands how food system governance, ecological conditions, and economic incentives interact to shape nutrition and sustainability outcomes. Erica has led high-level consultancy assignments for national and international agencies including WHO, FAO, ADB, UNICEF and The World Bank, and sits on advisory panels for WHO.

Policy Design

Food systems, ecological and climate challenges are multi-dimensional — with causes and consequences that cut across sectors, agencies and communities. Sound policy begins with appreciating the broader problem landscape — zooming out to see the whole system — and then zooming in to clarify the specific areas that require deeper understanding and targeted action. We support multi-disciplinary analysis of the broader policy problem space and work with governments and development partners to translate this into well-targeted interventions.

Our approach is structured and participatory — building shared understanding across agencies and other key stakeholders, and supporting internally-driven processes. Analytical inputs include food systems and policy diagnostics, climate risk analysis, political economy analysis, cost-benefit and multi-criteria analysis, as well as benchmarking against good practice.

Selected work

Governance

Effective governance is how good ideas become policy and how good policy becomes lasting change. We work with governments to diagnose the conditions shaping current outcomes — examining institutional arrangements, coordination mechanisms, political economy factors, and the wider ecosystem through which governance is exercised in practice. This informs the design of reform programs that are well-targeted, build on existing strengths, and generate the confidence and shared commitment needed to sustain change.

Lasting reform also depends on the individuals and teams within institutions. Alongside structural reform, we invest in the practical capabilities of government professionals — building the competence and confidence needed to drive change from within.

Selected work

Evaluation

Evaluation is central to policy-making and governance reform — generating the insights and evidence needed to inform learning-for-improvement and to empower governments and wider stakeholders to drive change. Our approach to evaluation emphasises formulating the ‘right’ evaluation questions — questions that go to the heart of what stakeholders really need to know. This begins with developing a sound and shared understanding of the policy problem and context, and an explicit theory of change that sets out how and why interventions are expected to produce results (theory-based evaluation).

To answer key evaluation questions we draw on a portfolio of qualitative and quantitative methods — selected and combined to be fit-for-purpose and fit-for-context. Our qualitative practice centres on in-depth interviewing, focus group facilitation, and thematic analysis. On the quantitative side, we emphasise the use of multi-item scales to measure constructs that cannot be directly observed and – where appropriate - cost-benefit analysis.

Selected work