Newsletter - September 2005

Dear CGIAR Partners and Colleagues:

We are pleased to present the second e-newsletter from the Centers, highlighting the growing list of focused collaborative activities. The news items this quarter show how formal inter-Center programs—including the Systemwide, Ecoregional and Challenge Programs—and the System Office Units are strengthening and building partnerships that are helping us to tackle special challenges, such as the water needs for livestock production in the Nile basin and mainstreaming gender and diversity in research programs in Africa. In addition, a number of shared service initiatives are bringing Centers and partners, such as FAO, together to create international synergies in support of research for development.

Of special importance is the major CGIAR inter-Center initiative underway to develop two sub-regional Medium Term Plans (MTPs) in Sub Saharan Africa. These plans are for East and Southern Africa (ESA) and West and Central Africa (WCA). This issue of the e-Newsletter includes an update on progress in their development. In addition, it provides an update on the development of the Alliance of Future Harvest Centers of the CGIAR. Progress on both the MTPs and the Alliance will be presented at the forthcoming 9 th meeting of the CGIAR Executive Council in Stockholm ( October 19-20, 2005).

We trust you will enjoy reading the following news items.

Updates from Center and Partner Collaborative Programs:

A New Era in CGIAR Partnerships: Sub-Regional Medium Term Plans for Sub Saharan Africa

Nearly half of the CGIAR research and development program is now focused on Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). The CGIAR has long sought solutions for making the overall SSA programs more cohesive, in true partnership with the NARS, which are also represented by the Sub-Regional Organizations (SROs) and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa.

In 2004, the Centers commenced work to develop integrated Medium Term Plans (MTPs) for SSA, breaking the task into two sub-regional Plans—one each for West and Central Africa (WCA) with CORAF, and for East and Southern Africa ( ESA ) with the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA). Following the release of the report of the CGIAR SSA-Task Forces in May 2005, the CGIAR asked the Centers to accelerate this work in consultation with partners.

On June 8, 2005 the Centers consulted with FARA, NARS, Sub-Regional Organizations and SSA-Challenge Program partners. This resulted in a shared commitment by these bodies to join the Centers in developing the plans. The WCA Plan is now consolidating the projects of five Centers and reorganizing them into the required CGIAR logframe format, with the assistance of a consultant. The early drafts will be shared with CORAF and NARS partners, as well as the WARDA Ministerial Council. A workshop is also planned for late October. WARDA is leading the preparation of the WCA Plan. For the ESA MTP, the Centers (led by ILRI and assisted by a consultant), assembled partners’ and Centers’ relevant projects for a workshop held in collaboration with ASARECA (September 12-15) in Nairobi.

The CGIAR is also examining the implementing arrangements for the resulting Medium Term Plans. To assist in this deliberation, the Centers in East and Southern Africa have commissioned an organizational management expert to develop suitable options, such as joint ventures. In West and Central Africa, discussions are underway between the Boards of WARDA and IITA regarding suitable arrangements.

Developing the Alliance of Future Harvest Centers of the CGIAR

July and August were months of intense development and consultation among Centers and with the CGIAR Chair and Director over the details of the Centers’ Alliance and how it could be used to strengthen the contributions by Centers to ongoing CGIAR goals. At the recent meeting of the Executive Committees (ExComs) of the Committee of Board Chairs and the Alliance Executive in Hyderabad (at ICRISAT, 1-2 September, 2005), the ExComs grappled with various aspects of the Principles and Procedures governing the Alliance. The latest version of the draft by a team led by Jimmy Jones (Chair of CIAT) was reviewed and core issues, such as Alliance Membership and Procedures for Dispute Resolution, were discussed.

On the question of when Center Board powers will be referred to the Alliance Board, the ExComs will recommend to their membership that the Alliance Board be given specific governance and conflict resolution powers under MTPs, Challenge Programs, SWEPs and other collaborative research and shared services agreements, plus certain powers in matters where the Centers decide that a common approach or decision is required. The process recommended will enable the Alliance to be proactive in recommending, for consideration by the Members, structural and governance reforms that would promote the efficiency of Centers.

The rationale for the Alliance and its value-added will be discussed at the CGIAR ExCo9 meeting in Stockholm October 19-20, 2005. After taking on board ExCo9 recommendations, the Centers will review their existing development plans prior to putting revised Alliance principles and procedures to the Board Chairs and Directors General at their meeting in December, 2005.

Health-related Workshops hosted by the Centers

Building upon the CGIAR tradition of exploring the linkages between agriculture and nutrition, and more recent work on the linkages between HIV/AIDS, nutrition and agriculture, two workshops were recently held. The first was a roundtable workshop held at IFPRI in Washington DC (June 23-24): “Agriculture and Health Linkages: Towards Improved Co- ordination”. This workshop brought together researchers from ten CG Centers and the World Vegetable Center with professionals from academia, international organizations and the donor community to discuss selected domains of agriculture-health linkages and agree on steps that need to be taken to move research forward. . The workshop served as follow-up to an Alliance decision taken during the last meeting of the Alliance Executive in Penang, where a working group of Center Directors was formed to further explore the agriculture-health linkages.

They identified the need to:

• Coordinate health-related work in the CGIAR, in partnership with the health sector
• Develop a conceptual framework on agriculture-health linkages and communicate it through a range of publications
• Through these activities, encourage greater synergies between agriculture and health in research, policy making, donor investments and community-level programs

For additional information please contact Marie Ruel m.ruel@cgiar.org or Corinna Hawkes c.hawkes@cgiar.org. The outputs of the workshop will be posted on the IFPRI website at http://www.ifpri.org/themes/grp24/grp24overview.htm.

A second workshop, with a regional focus and entitled “HIV/AIDS and Agriculture: Implications to Food Security in West and Central Africa”, was held in Cotonou, Benin (18-20 July). It provided a forum for interaction in which HIV/AIDS and agriculture specialists were able to share experiences and research ideas with food security and nutrition professionals from SSA.

Over 75 experts in nutrition, agricultural research, development, health, extension, gender and policy focused on HIV/AIDS in SSA met with representatives of donor, regional, national and international organizations. Six CGIAR Centers took part in the workshop as well as the CGIAR G&D Program and the Systemwide Initiative on HIV/AIDS and Agriculture (SWIHA), based at WARDA.

For additional information please go to http://www.warda.org/swiha/Conference.htm or contact the SWIHA coordinator, AnnMarie Kormawa a.kormawa@cgiar.org.

New Initiative to Increase Livestock and Water Productivity in the Nile Basin

During a meeting held in Kampala, Uganda (September 5-9), ILRI and partners launched an innovative livestock-water project under the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food.

The Nile waters sustain life for roughly 200 million people from ten African countries, many of whom are desperately poor. Water shortages already constrain food production in much of the Basin. In the past, livestock—cattle, donkeys, goats, sheep, camels, pigs and horses—have been overlooked in water management programs in the Basin, yet the amount of water depleted by livestock there appears to be at least as great as that used to produce human food. (Production of livestock feed requires 50 to 100 times more water than is consumed by animals.) A rising demand for milk and meat products in these countries has placed an even greater demand on water resources. The initiative will address technological, policy and behavioral changes that can allow livestock to become effective and productive users of the scarce water resources in the Nile Basin.

Uganda ’s State Minister for Animal Industry, Mrs. Mary Mugyenyi, opened a workshop entitled “Nile Basin Water Productivity: Developing a Shared Vision for Livestock Production”, which attracted media attention from as far away as China.

For more information please visit http://www.ilri.org.

Five CG Centers Collaborate to Support New Pan-African Knowledge Support System

Are current agriculture and rural development investments in Africa falling short of reaching global benchmarks, and if so, what is needed to turn things around?

Credible and locally-relevant answers for ministers of agriculture and other policy makers are essential for Africa’s long-term development. Five CGIAR centers—ICRISAT, IFPRI, IITA, ILRI, and IMWI—have responded to this need by launching the Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System for Rural Development Strategies in sub-Saharan Africa. Known as SAKSS, the initiative provides a channel for research and analysis to inform agricultural-based rural development strategies. The SAKSS initiative offers an excellent example of how CGIAR Centers can combine expertise and resources to develop a program that meets an expressed need of donors and African stakeholders.

With appointed regional SAKSS coordinators in place, the CGIAR Centers are now developing frameworks and analytical tools, preparing donor proposals, and building a network of regional and country nodes in partnership with regional research organizations such as the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa in East Africa, and the Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network in southern Africa. SAKSS also serves as a model for pan-African efforts, such as the Pan-African Regional Strategy Knowledge Support Systems (RESKSS), under the leadership of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development’s (NEPAD) Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP).

For more information about SAKSS, visit www.ifpri.org/themes/sakss/sakss.htm.

Gender Mainstreaming in East and Central Africa

The Systemwide Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis for Technology Development and Institutional Innovation (PRGA Program) has teamed up with the Eastern and Central Africa Program for Agricultural Policy Analysis (ECAPAPA) of the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) in a program to build capacity for gender analysis and to mainstream gender in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa (ECSA).

The Pilot Phase project is being conducted with 10 partner organizations from the region. It will work to establish a viable set of best practices for mainstreaming gender-sensitive participatory research. The project will also develop human resources through capacity-building in partner organizations, and establish a network of innovators in ECSA for mainstreaming gender-sensitive participatory approaches in agricultural research for development.

For follow-up information, please contact Barun Gurung at b.gurung@cgiar.org or prgacoord@cgiar.org.

Goals, Goals and More Goals

Forty Gender and Diversity Associates (GDAs) from 14 Future Harvest Centers gathered in Bogor, Indonesia for an inspiring week of interaction June 13-17. Their mission: mutual learning; stock-taking of centers’ progress on gender and diversity goals (for staffing, policy and practice); and planning for the future.

Convened by the CGIAR Gender and Diversity Program (G&D), the 2005 Annual GDA Workshop was graciously hosted by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). Three additional SO Units gave the work a big boost: from Internal Audit, a review of its new Good Practice Note for HR; from ICT/KM, an introduction to knowledge-sharing; and from the CGIAR Secretariat—via videoconferencing—an overview on CGIAR reforms and the role of diversity in those reforms (presented by Francisco Reifschneider from Paris), plus highlights from the systemwide compensation survey (presented by Sandra Lawrence, from Washington D.C.).

Core to the interactions was an assessment of the Centers’ 1-, 3- and 5-year G&D goals, set at the 2004 annual GDA meeting in Sri Lanka. What was achieved and what was not? What were the success factors or constraints? GDAs shared best examples in a stimulating series of presentations, films and drama.

To help with some of the Centers’ most challenging goals, G&D launched its updated guidelines for diversity-positive recruitment and its new policy models for the prevention of harassment and discrimination. GDAs (previously known as G&D Focal Points) also explored new scales for work-life balance and tools for exploring diversity dynamics. In its new strategy for 2005-2008, aimed at leveraging global diversity for global impact, G&D commits resources to strengthen and support each center's internal change agents for gender and diversity work.

For more, please visit us at http://www.genderdiversity.cgiar.org/resource/calendar_events.asp.

FAO and Centers Working to Share Natural Resource Library Services

The eNRIC (electronic Natural Resources Information Centre) is a collaborative library project between IWMI, WorldFish, CIFOR and FAO whose aim is to explore options for extending and sharing library services. In August the project moved into high gear with the arrival of its new Regional Manager, Prasanna Samba, at IWMI headquarters.

The eNRIC represents an opportunity to establish an open Access Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts Subject Thesaurus service (ASFA), as well as a Global Forest Information Service (GFIS). In addition, FAO will look into outsourcing its primary cataloguing to the eNRIC, while assisting IWMI and WorldFish in library organization and further coordinated activities.

Impacts of 50 Years of Water Management being Assessed

Work on the report of the Comprehensive Assessment on Water Management in Agriculture is underway. Upon completion, the Assessment report will present an in-depth analysis of the costs, benefits and impacts of the last fifty years of water development, with a view to guiding investment and management decisions over the next half century. The assessment is co-sponsored by the Ramsar Convention Secretariat, FAO and the CGIAR. The Ramsar Convention is an international convention on the conservation of wetlands, signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971.

The Comprehensive Assessment has brought together more than five hundred practitioners and researchers from different institutions, including universities, NGOs and CGIAR centers. In June and July, the writing teams of each chapter of the report (a total of nearly 90 authors and contributors) gathered in workshops to develop their respective chapters. Initial chapter drafts are currently undergoing a rigorous process of scientific review and feedback. The Assessment receives funds from the World Bank’s strategic contribution to the Systemwide and Ecoregional Programs to assist in its completion.

For further information on the Assessment, please visit http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/Assessment_html/About/.

Urban Agriculture in Kenya: Research to Support Nairobi Youth

Soweto Youth in Action (SOYIA), a Nairobi community-based organization, is set to benefit from the research findings of a CGIAR System-wide project on nutrient flows in rural-urban natural resources systems involving composts and animal manures.

Research to understand the potential benefit of urban organic residues for agriculture was carried out by Urban Harvest, the CGIAR System-wide Initiative on urban and peri-urban agriculture, in partnership with the International Livestock Research Institution (ILRI), the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), and Kenya Green Towns Partnership Association.

SOYIA is a youth group located at Kahawa Soweto, an informal settlement which was one of the study sites. T o ensure that both the bio-chemical studies and the socio-economic marketing studies result in practical benefits for some of the 60 percent of the population living in informal settlements in Nairobi, a team of CGIAR scientists and local partners will implement work at Kahawa Soweto. They aim to enhance the quality and volumes of the compost produced, and to train the group to target the multiple markets identified and use the enhanced compost for their own crop production. The project activities on the ground will be led by SOYIA, with technical support from the CGIAR Centers involved, in collaboration with KARI.

For more information please visit www.cipotato.org/urbanharvest/home.htm or contact urbanharvest@cgiar.org.

Roadmap to Collaboration

A novel approach to collaboration will give the partners of a CGIAR Andean development initiative much greater representation at the regional level. Building on many years of successful collaboration, CONDESAN has been preparing a Road Map that will give its partners much greater influence in the operation and impact of the Consortium in the region. CONDESAN, the Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion, is an ecoregional program coordinated by CIP since 1993.

“The Road Map will better define the cooperative relationship between CONDESAN and its partners,” said Hector Cisneros, CONDESAN’s Programme Coordinator.

CONDESAN’s partners are assuming greater leadership and organizing themselves into Partner Initiatives. The Road Map establishes a framework of priority issues that respond directly to research questions that are key to rural development in the Andes. The Road Map allows CONDESAN to advance its work and increase the participation and influence of its partners, while concentrating on ecoregional activities based on the results and knowledge of its partners . “CONDESAN is powered by its partners’ work, allowing it to enrich every partner’s work in return,” said Cisneros.

Over 70 national and international organizations, both public and private, are involved. Most of CONDESAN’s work takes place at seven benchmark sites within the Andean countries, in watersheds that are broadly representative of major Andean ecosystems.

For more information please visit http://www.condesan.org/.

NEW Publications and Information:

Slash-and-Burn Agriculture: The search for alternatives

Edited by Cheryl A. Palm, Stephen A. Vosti, Pedro A. Sanchez, and Polly J. Ericksen.

 “This remarkable volume addresses the sustainable management of tropical forests with unstinting sophistication, moving the analysis beyond clichés to the true complexities of the challenge. . . [It] is a landmark on the path to sustainable development.”

—From the Foreword by Jeffrey D. Sachs,

Director, Earth Institute of Columbia University and Special Advisor to UN Secretary General

Small-scale farmers in the tropics often depend on slash-and-burn agriculture for food and income. Yet this form of agriculture, in many cases, represents a threat to biodiversity and carbon emissions.

Slash-and-Burn Agriculture: The search for alternatives provides a synthesis of the first decade of research of the Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn (ASB) program. It brings together the insights of 76 soil scientists, economists, ecologists, anthropologists and foresters, encompassing 26 nationalities.

The volume presents the ASB framework, including the tradeoff matrix for assessing the environmental, economic and social impact of tropical deforestation, and its threat to biodiversity. The costs and benefits of alternative uses of forests and cleared land are explored, giving rise to new conceptual tools and a rich compendium of empirical analyses needed to formulate viable alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture in the forests margins of Brazil, Indonesia, Cameroon, Peru and Thailand.

The table of Contents can be found at http://www.asb.cgiar.org/pdfwebdocs/Slash_and_Burn.pdf.

For more information, contact ASB at asb@cgiar.org or visit http://www.asb.cgiar.org.

Tsunami Website Pulls CGIAR Information Together

Nine months after the disastrous Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of December 26, 2004, the Future Harvest Centers of the CGIAR are pleased to report that thanks to the support of donors from around the world, their combined efforts with partners—including the governments in the region—are solidly contributing to the rehabilitation of the lives of the survivors in the hardest hit areas.

To learn more about the CGIAR work and that of many other agencies, please visit the CGIAR Tsunami website at http://www.cgiar.org/tsunami/. This collaborative website, constructed by the World Agroforestry Center’s South East Asian team in Bogor, Indonesia, is jointly supported by funds from the Alliance Executive (formerly the Center Directors Committee) and generous technical support from the CGIAR Secretariat.

Mark Your Calendars—Upcoming Workshops:

International Research Workshop on Gender and Collective Action

The CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi) has organized a research workshop on Gender and Collective Action to be held in Thailand from October 17 to 21, 2005. It will be hosted by the World Agroforestry Center, with representatives of ten CGIAR Centers and many partners participating.

The workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners from various social science disciplines to investigate how gender-oriented analysis and action can foster more effective collective action in the context of agriculture and natural resource management. Its focus will be on three research themes:

• Motivations for engaging in collective action: Do women and men mobilize over different issues? Do gender stereotypes privilege the formation of particular groups over others?
• Effectiveness of Collective Action: Do women and men assume different roles in collective action? What are the conditions under which mixed or single-sexed groups perform more effectively?
• Impacts of Collective Action on Gender Relations: Are there trade-offs between empowering women or men and the economic goals of collective action? Without addressing the gendered dimensions of collective action, do we risk contributing to the disempowerment of women?

The workshop papers will be available on the CAPRi website, http://www.capri.cgiar.org, shortly after the workshop.

Impact Assessment Workshop

The CGIAR Systemwide Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis for Technology Development and Institutional Innovation (PRGA Program) and the International Maize and Wheat Center (CIMMYT) are co-organizing a three-day impact assessment workshop (October 19-21) at CIMMYT Headquarters in Mexico.

The objective of the workshop is to build capacity in impact assessment and foster mutual learning among the impact assessment practitioners from within and outside the CGIAR. The workshop will address difficult-to-approach-issues in impact assessment such as: measurement of empowerment; project impact on women; use of information from stakeholder assessment in project evaluation; selection of a manageable set of local and global poverty indicators; costs structure of participatory research; and a framework for measuring institutional learning.

This e-news has been prepared by the Future Harvest Alliance Office, a unit of the CGIAR System Office