New Study Assesses CGIAR Priorities and Strategies

CGIAR’s research priorities and strategies are anchored in a common objective of improving food and livelihood opportunities for poor farmers while sustaining the natural environment. To ensure relevance and maximum development impact, these must continually be revised to be in lockstep with new knowledge and changing realities.

In a first step toward designing a priorities and strategies framework that will guide the formulation of future CGIAR research programs including Challenge Programs (CPs), the Interim Science Council (iSC) has launched a broad-based e-consultation to seek the views of CGIAR stakeholders. The iSC undertook this task in response to a request from the Group at AGM02. The iSC’s Standing Committee on Priorities and Strategies (SCOPAS), chaired by Alain de Janvry, backstopped by Amir Kassam of the iSC Secretariat, are managing the exercise.

Their starting point was the new CGIAR vision and strategy, and the stated CGIAR goals. The panels were asked to identify and prioritize critical issues that require attention by the CGIAR and its partners in a bid to reduce poverty and hunger, and to enhance sustainability of resource use in agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Stakeholder views were tapped through five panels (Global, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, CWANA for Central and West Asia and North Africa, and Latin America) established by iSC, and selected in consultation with the CGIAR CDC/CBC and GFAR. Each panel consisted of some 20 members drawn from national agricultural research institutes, government ministries, Centers, NGOs, farmers and producers organizations, the private sector, regional organizations, regional development banks, foundations, and donors.

Panelists drew on an updated and expanded database of information, including regional priorities established by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) and regional organizations, Millennium Development and World Food Summit Goals, and international Conventions and Agreements. They also benefited from 35 position papers commissioned by the iSC and written by experts on core issues such as poverty, science, natural resources, and public policies.

The initial results are illuminating.

Stakeholders support holistic approaches for developing solutions to complex poverty and agro-ecological problems, have called for an increased emphasis on upstream research, and better coordination of research efforts between CGIAR and its partners.

In an excellent example of using modern communication technology, the consultations were conducted in virtual mode, and managed by Julio Berdegué of RIMISP, a Chilean NGO.

The panels’ assessments were then made the subject of a broad electronic discussion in which more than 10,000 stakeholders were invited to rank the lists of issues prepared by the panels and make additional suggestions on priority themes through a dedicated website www.rimisp.org/cgiar-ps.

A synthesis of views that emerged from the discussion will feed into Step 2, in which scientists, from both the CGIAR and the broader scientific community, will translate the Step 1 outputs into research and capacity-building projects for the CGIAR and its partners that have the greatest chances of success. The initial results were presented at the triennial meeting of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) held in Senegal in May 2003.