CGIAR contributions to international and national polices, legislation and significant investments in 2018 were spread over global, regional, multi-country, national and sub-national contributions. The majority were contributions at the national level, which accounted for 59% of contributions. The range of contribution types included policies or strategies, budgets or investments, curricula, legal instruments and others. The majority were policy and strategy contributions, which accounted for 77% of contributions. Ten contributions had gender as a principal objective, and 35 had gender as a significant objective.
Examples at the global level in 2018 included contributions to the World Health Organization (WHO) on nutrition, WHO’s Animal department on zoonotic disease, Codex Alimentarius, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) on biofortification, the CGIAR Antimicrobial Resistance Hub strategy, and the Group of 7 (G7) on empowering women.
Regional or multi-country contributions were made to the regional plan for Cassava Mosaic disease in Southeast Asia, the African Development Bank’s multi-sectorial nutrition action, the Climate Research for Development (CR4D) Africa 2018-2022 Strategic Plan and intra-regional Fish Trade in sub-Saharan Africa.
Seeds without Borders agreement expands to Bhutan
RICE 2018 annual report
The Seeds without Borders agreement was initiated by IRRI and first signed between Bangladesh and India in 2013. Originally applying to rice seeds, the agreement allows for any given rice variety that has been tested, approved, and released in one country to be released in other countries that are part of the agreement without undergoing further testing and evaluation, as long as they are grown under similar agroclimatic conditions. The seed agreement has since expanded to cover a number of rice-based crops such as maize, wheat, vegetables, pulses and others, with the possibility to include many more in future.
Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka are now also members of the network agreement, with Bhutan’s agriculture secretary, Dasho Rinzin Dorji, formally signing the agreement on June 13 2018.
The agreement is a rare opportunity for like-minded countries to share commercial crop varieties to enhance crop production and food and nutrition security. The vision ultimately is to have countries freely share their improved crop varieties of seeds with each other for the benefit of farmers, producers and consumers, and especially the disadvantaged population.
Source: RICE, AR 2018.
Examples of national policy contributions reported in 2018 included the National Fisheries Strategy for Timor Leste, the Scientific Fish Farming in Gram Panchayat Tanks by Women Self Help Groups policy in Odisha, China’s Rural Revitalization Strategy, the Direct Seed Marketing Program in Ethiopia, and the Rwanda Livestock Master Plan. A private-sector policy contribution was also made in 2018, with Mbale coffee management.
Major investments influenced by CGIAR in 2018 included the Indian government rolling out national solar irrigation investment, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s first investment in aquaculture in Bangladesh and Nigeria, and World Bank investments in greenhouse gas emission reduction.
The number of contributions is summarized in Table 11. A full list is available in Annex 5.
Examples of policies, legal instruments, investments and similar to which CGIAR contributed in 2018
- In order to increase fish production, reduce malnutrition and increase the income of women in Odisha, India, the Department of Panchayati Raj and Drinking Water (PR&DW), in consultation with the Department of Fisheries and Animal Resources Development (FARD) and WorldFish, formulated a policy corrigendum for long-term leasing (3-5 years) of approximately 65,000 village public water bodies called Gram Panchayat Tanks (GP tanks) spread over 50,000 hectares. Previously, these GP tanks had been underutilized or not used for fish production. The revised policy enables these tanks to be leased to women self-help groups for fish production on a priority basis (FISH, 2018).
- Research outputs from a collaborative project of IRRI and PhilRice – Benchmarking the Philippine Rice Economy Relative to Major Rice Producing Countries in Asia – were drawn on for the formulation of the Philippines’ Rice Industry Roadmap (PRIR) 2030 (RICE, 2018).
- PIM research using computable general equilibrium modeling informed the development of the National Agricultural Investment Plans of Malawi and Rwanda. These strategic documents provide a country-wide framework to coordinate and prioritize investments by government agencies, development partners and other actors in the agricultural sector (PIM, 2018).
- LIVESTOCK researchers and partners used their modelling expertise to provide a guide for public and private investments in Ethiopia, with the objective of reducing poverty; achieving food and nutritional security; contributing to economic growth, exports and foreign exchange earnings; and contributing to climate mitigation and adaptation. This
roadmap, or master plan, was then used by various actors including the World Bank to shape their investments, which will ultimately impact more than 2.3 million of Ethiopia’s 11 million livestock-keeping households (LIVESTOCK, 2018). - CCAFS is supporting a five-year (2018-2022) pan-African climate research for development (CR4D) strategy that links climate research to agriculture for food security and resilience. CCAFS contributed to CR4D’s initial agenda and launch, and its 2018-2022 Strategic Plan, which sets priorities and strategy to catalyze climate research that is responsive to development stakeholder needs at local, national and regional levels (CCAFS, 2018).
See more examples and details in Annex 5.
Source: CRP 2018 annual reports.
*Note: This is not a list of top examples, but a selection to demonstrate range.