Extending the Reach of Rural Institutions

A group of social scientists in the CGIAR has taken an important step toward a more cohesive approach to research focused on strengthening rural institutions. This work is vital for enabling the rural poor to build sustainable livelihoods and cope with climatic, environmental and economic change.

By late March, the group will have developed a draft "framework plan" for research on "rural institutions and their governance." These include farmer associations, other kinds of community-based organizations as well as partnerships involving the private sector, public agencies and civil society (CSO) organizations.

All of the CGIAR-supported Centers work closely with such institutions in their collaborative research. Some of that research deals with the institutions themselves and their role in sustainable development - a research topic that figures among 20 priorities established in 2005 by the Science Council of the CGIAR.

Arguably, research on rural institutions (referred to as "priority 5C") merits special attention, because progress in this sphere profoundly influences the impact of research on all other priority topics - including biodiversity; crop improvement; high-value agriculture; and sustainable management of water, land and forest resources.

Progress in strengthening rural institutions requires, not just more support for particular organizations in rural areas, but a better understanding of how policy incentives, human capacity development and other interventions can better enable rural people, through their organizations, to shape and benefit from the decisions that affect them.

Linking Research with Development

To assemble the components of the framework plan and trade ideas with experts from other organizations, social scientists from several CGIAR Centers took part in two back-to-back workshops held at Washington, D.C., in mid-February.

The first, entitled Mobilizing Rural Institutions for Sustainable Livelihood and Equitable Development, was organized by the Social Development and Agricultural and Rural Development Departments of the World Bank's Sustainable Development Network (SDN), jointly with the CGIAR Secretariat. For details, see the event Web site

A central aim of this event, said Kathy Sierra, who is SDN Vice President and CGIAR Chair, was to identify ways of linking the latest in research with World Bank development operations through "joint action on the ground" that benefits the poor. "The inspiration for this effort," commented Steen Jorgensen, Director of SDN's Social Development Department, "comes from a combination of previous frustrations and successes" with rural institutions.

During the event's morning session, presentations by experts in the field and panel discussions drew attention to a number of key points about the role of rural institutions in sustainable development: for example, their importance in strengthening the position of small farmers in agricultural "value chains" (particularly for higher value products, such as coffee) and the need to invest in the institutions, assets and capabilities of the poor, so they can "reach out" to public and private services - in contrast with the traditional paradigm of formal institutions "reaching out" to the poor.

These points were reinforced by World Bank Executive Director Jiayi Zou, who in opening and co-chairing the morning session, remarked on the advantages of farmers' own organizations over government-led efforts to organize growers. She also cited the key role of rural institutions in China's market reforms and emphasized their importance in maintaining the traditional social fabric while modernizing agriculture.

The afternoon session consisted of presentations and working group discussions on activities supported by the World Bank Trust Fund for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (TFESSD). The Fund is supporting five in-depth case studies -in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, India, Vietnam and Yemen - designed to determine how Bank development operations can best contribute to enhancing the capacity of local rural institutions, both generally and in these particular countries.

"In recent years, we've witnessed the virtual dismantling of some rural institutions in the developing world," noted CGIAR Director Francisco Reifschneider during the closing session. "Now, it's time to see how good we are at helping build new and better ones."

A More Harmonized Way of Working

By setting out key issues and examining diverse case studies, the World Bank workshop nicely set the stage for a day of discussions specifically about CGIAR research on rural institutions. This second event was organized by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), with the Science Council Secretariat.

The CGIAR commits about US$26 million (or 5 percent of its total budget for 2007) to research on rural institutions through 80 different projects across 15 Centers, noted Ruben Echeverria, Executive Director of the Science Council Secretariat. The framework plan, he suggested, should give rise to a "more collective and harmonized way of working" that generates greater impact from donors' significant investment.

In donor support for this research, reducing the vulnerability of rural communities, particularly in the face of forces such as climate change, "is at the top of the agenda," noted World Bank Agricultural Specialist Willem Janssen, who was among several external experts attending the CGIAR workshop.

This event was not about fitting current activities into "new formats," said IFPRI scientist Ruth Meinzen-Dick, but rather was intended to define a "compelling agenda" - one that could provide a strong basis for organizing collaborative research and underline its relevance to other global initiatives.

To identify key elements of that agenda, CGIAR social scientists conducted a quick inventory of current research on rural institutions in the Centers. This work is remarkably diverse, encompassing topics such as the development and dissemination of new agricultural technology, small enterprise development to strengthen farmers' market links and participatory approaches to community-based natural resource management. Through group discussions, workshop participants then defined the goals, key questions and requirements of a more collaborative approach to this research.

In many of the CGIAR Centers, research on rural institutions has found its "intellectual home" in impact evaluation. And a central concern of social scientists engaged in this work is to ensure that technological, institutional and policy innovations genuinely benefit the poor. If they are to achieve that goal, then research on rural institutions must be, not just an "auxiliary," as one Center participant put it, but a vibrant component of the CGIAR's contribution to sustainable agricultural development.