SDR/TAC:IAR/01/24 Rev.1
CONSULTATIVE GROUP ON INTERNATIONAL AGRICULTURAL
RESEARCH
TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE
TAC SECRETARIAT
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE
UNITED NATIONS
September 2001
There is growing awareness - some would call it concern - about the need to pay more direct attention to issues related to environmental sustainability as the CGIAR and its partners move ahead in the quest to reduce poverty and increase food security. While for some time in the CGIAR, there has been an explicit recognition of the importance of the environment and the sustainability of the natural resource base on which all food production depends, it is only within the past 10 to 15 years that the CGIAR System has started to think seriously about an overall strategy for its involvement in "sustainability research" related to the integrated management of the environmental resources (or natural resources) that provide the basis for agricultural production (see document: Evolution of NRM Concepts and Activities in the CGIAR - SDR/TAC:IAR/01/18).
In tackling this increased concern about the environmental resource base for agriculture, the CGIAR Centre Directors (CDs) established an INRM Task Force and facilitated a rather large community of researchers within the System in their establishment of a CGIAR INRM "community of interest" or INRM group, that has met three times. Notably absent from the results of these meetings is a coherent Systemwide strategy for INRM priority setting and for operationalizing a more effective set of strategic INRM activities within the CGIAR. A key purpose of this background paper is to develop a concise statement of TAC's views on the way ahead.
The paper builds on what TAC has said previously and does not deviate from the general lines of approach laid out in the Committee's 2000 Vision and Strategy (V&S) document. However, some questions are raised in places for consideration in moving towards a more integrated strategy for including the most relevant NRM priorities that the System has accepted in the past, i.e., a strategy for how best to bring GPI, agronomic, water, LARM, agroforestry and forestry research together in the quest to reduce poverty and establish sustainable food security for the poorest of the poor.
The background paper takes into account the often forgotten fact that the CGIAR is focused not only on NRM to help reduce existing poverty and food insecurity, but also on preventing future poverty and food insecurity by developing technologies that can help avoid future degradation of the natural resource base on which food, fibre, fuel and fodder production for the poor depends. While getting people out of existing poverty may have the most dramatic political visibility, preventing people from going into poverty because of declining food production due to environmental degradation is just as important from a humanitarian point of view.
The paper is brief, recognizing that the background information on TAC's thinking is explored in detail in the Evolution document, SDR/TAC:IAR/01/18 - TAC Cali paper. Thus, this background paper covers basically the following ground:
first the context is laid out, including the priorities set out in the 2000 Vision and Strategy paper;
second, these elements are translated into a set of propositions on operational strategy;
third, the propositions are linked to considerations of implications for the System related to the various component NRM elements involved and dealt with by the CGIAR.
As evident from the discussion in the TAC Cali Paper, TAC's ideas on natural resources management research have been evolving in keeping with new knowledge, with the changes in CGIAR objectives and with new thinking on issues such as sustainability and poverty alleviation. They are still evolving. However, some points seem clear: While TAC fully acknowledges the multifaceted nature of the integrated management of natural resources, it also recognizes and emphasizes here that the CGIAR cannot deal with all issues, challenges and opportunities. TAC's perspective of its role in INRM focuses on management of natural resources for the purpose of achieving the goals of the CGIAR related to poverty reduction and sustainable food security through improved sustainable food production.
It is possible to argue that most aspects of INRM are inter-related and that, in a sense, all INRM issues and opportunities should be of concern to the CGIAR, since ultimately, in one way or another, they relate to the goals of the CGIAR. While this is true in theory and in concept, it also is true that resources within the CGIAR are limited and that many more institutions of diverse nature and often with greater resources than the CGIAR are tackling many of the issues, relationships, and research opportunities that exist in INRM. The CGIAR should focus on those INRM issues for which it has a comparative advantage, based on its many years of work in the agricultural systems of the developing world. At the same time, the CGIAR Centres should be, and are open to, cooperation and collaboration with many other groups involved in researching INRM problems, which do not fall in the above category.
More specifically, TAC recognized in its 2000 Vision and Strategy that there are limits to how much and what type of NRM research the CGIAR should support. TAC suggested that priorities for NRM research should be determined based on the following six principles:
1. The CGIAR should concentrate on NRM research that contributes to productivity enhancement and sustainability of natural resources for production of crop, livestock, forest and fish outputs that have impacts on poverty reduction and food security, giving appropriate consideration to inter-generational equity of benefits.
2. The CGIAR Centres should use an integrated NRM focus in their planning to define problems in NRM that require research.
3. International integrated NRM research should be process oriented to ensure maximum contribution to production of international public goods.
4. The CGIAR should give greater attention to research to resolve water issues.
5. Focusing NRM research around common reference locations or benchmark sites is essential in incorporating the many dimensions of integrated NRM.
6. Priorities for specific NRM research themes should be determined by the CGIAR Centres in the context of the sustainability issues affecting productivity increases, regional priorities and comparative advantages of the CGIAR.
These six principles seem as relevant today as they did in 2000. They are considered as the basic context for the discussion that follows.
Within the context of what TAC believes is appropriate boundaries for INRM activity within the CGIAR, candidates for priority natural resource areas for CGIAR research is as follows:
management of land and terrain resources and related flora and fauna to enhance sustainable agricultural production, (e.g., prevention of soil nutrient depletion, declining physical properties of soils, etc., when used under intensive and extensive agriculture);
integrated water and watershed management (i.e., management of land and water resources for the primary purpose of securing the best quantity and timing of water flows, and quality of water for the benefit of farmers and rural citizens, particularly the poor);
management of water as habitat for living aquatic resources for rural, coastal and floodplain (including estuarine) livelihood enhancement;
management of forest environments for rural livelihood enhancement, including social forestry as well as through sale and personal consumption of forest outputs, including, but not limited to wild game, fruits, nuts, oils and other forest products;
INRM associated with intensive peri-urban agriculture, livestock and fuelwood production;
incentive systems for securing improved NRM management, e.g., through downstream land and water user payments to upstream land users for conservation activities and through other means of bringing natural resources management into the market system.[6]
It is recognized that the issues and research opportunity areas could be cut in different ways. Thus, this is a major theme that should be debated at TAC81. Some classification of priorities is needed to go on to operational issues and to assess the potential complementarities that are so important in designing effective integrated NRM systems research.
The themes identified should be dealt with in an integrated fashion, within the four sets of linkages that TAC defined in its 1997 strategic review of soil and water research needs and priorities in the CGIAR:
links between productivity-enhancing and resource-conserving research (e.g., crop improvement and natural resources management);
spatial or landscape level linkages (e.g., upstream-downstream linkages in a watershed management framework: or scaling up from plot to farm to watershed);
temporal linkages (e.g., links between present and future, short vs. long term; i.e., sustainability considerations);
linkages between research and the diffusion/adoption of results from such research.
These provide the context for linking research to application to implementation and eventual benefits in the context of the overall CGIAR goals. We emphasize that this is not a new perspective for TAC.
Scientific and technical developments, particularly in the information and communications technologies (ICT), are increasing our capabilities to carry out INRM research much more effectively, by extrapolating from point measurements to the higher scales in a realistic fashion. Furthermore, our understanding of the processes occurring at and beyond the field scale has increased substantially in recent years, thus providing new insights on the behaviour of ecosystems.
At the same time, interdisciplinary approaches based on agricultural, forestry and fisheries ecosystem sciences such as production ecology, landscape ecology, water resources management, and integrated pest and biodiversity management show promise for being able to help integrate different traditional disciplinary approaches and knowledge bases in more effective ways. To a large extent, the new technological developments in ICT are permitting this rapid progress. It is imperative that the CGIAR incorporates these new technologies and integrates them into its INRM research to the fullest extent possible. TAC also intends to devote a significant amount of time at its 81st meeting to a discussion of these themes and linkages.
There is no set model of INRM research. Regardless of which line of reasoning is followed, lessons from the past teach us that a key need is not to let the rhetoric of INRM get ahead of the science and not to focus too much on concepts without having common definitions and solid operational research approaches and procedures in mind.
In the past, research on natural resources has been too often conducted in a disjointed, fragmented fashion. We have now reached a situation where problems in managing natural resources are recognized to be multidimensional, with physical, economic social and cultural dimensions. It is now possible, with the modern tools of ICT and computers, to combine the various scientific and technological approaches to solving NRM problems with the social science approaches to achieve the goals of poverty alleviation and of sustainable food security. That should be a main focus of the CGIAR in the area of INRM.
The CGIAR has for more than a decade been dealing not only with soils, livestock, irrigation systems and agronomic NRM related research, but also with trees in and around agricultural systems (agroforestry and forestry) and with living aquatic resources management. In addition, in recent years, the interest in water related irrigation management issues has broadened out to a concern with a host of additional micro and landscape level water research related issues. What should TAC's positions be on (1) the priorities that should be given to these various resources in the overall research agenda; (2) the directions of research in each area; and (3) the ways in which the complementarities between research in each of the different resource areas?
First, the four resource domains are briefly described in a strategic context. Second, some possible directions are put forth for TAC discussion of their relative importance in the overall INRM research picture of relevance to the CGIAR and its partners.
Effective soil management for sustainable productivity of crops, pasture and forests is a foundation for most land-based CGIAR programmes. The production potential and the returns on crop, tree or animal systems investment is dependent on soil quality as determined by nutrient suppliers capacity, physical characteristics and a favourable biological condition for plant disease and pest balance. Centre programmes have increasingly adopted a holistic approach to soil management, considering the entire production system over time. Soil science has increasingly moved away from a crop-by crop approach.
A first essential goal in long-term management is to minimize soil loss by wind and water erosion. Such loss removes the critical upper layers which are rich in nutrient and organic matters and which serve as habitat for all-important communities of beneficial flora and fauna. Erosion control must be built into patterns of field contouring, crop diversity over time and space, use of trees, wood shrubs and grasses, as well as appropriate and highly reduced tillage. The land use management schemes build these into their programmes.
A second intermediate goal in soil quality is to increase equilibrium levels of soil carbon (organic matter). Soil organic matter is crucial to favourable physical qualities, soil biological activity and nutrient recycling. Maintenance of a large active fraction of organic matter through crop biodiversity, legumes in the rotation and keeping crop residues and animal manure where available in the upper 10 to 15 cm of soil through limited or zero tillage is critical both to maintenance of total soil organic matters and efficient nutrient cycles. High soil carbon equilibriums are consistent with global warming mitigation, a clear win-win situation. Such soil ecosystem management should always be the starting point. Nutrients from outside sources, including fertilizers then can be used far more efficiently, having greater crop response then when added to poor quality, low organic matter, "dead" soil as a sole crop nutrition strategy.
Centres must therefore build soil management in as part of a system strategy. Such measures normally require a 3 to 10 year-time frame for full response and adequate return on management investment. Land tenure or access must be guaranteed. In summary, it is becoming clear from current research that effective soil management requires careful carbon husbandry, appropriate low to zero tillage regime which keep residues in the upper soil layers with a flourishing soil flora and fauna when properly done, fertilizers inputs are complementary and even provide synergies with biological management.
Indicators of soil chemical, biological and carbon status can be made available for GIS mapping and management extrapolation over large areas. These approaches are highly consistent with benchmarks, watershed and other regional approaches. Finally, many of the molecular tools, including use of marker genes are increasingly being used to characterize soil flora and fauna. The Centres can make significant contributions through the characterization and tracking of soil processes in this production system over time and space.
For too long, research on water issues has been disjointed, based on traditional disciplinary sciences without crossing boundaries, focused on short-term issues, and lacking coordination and cooperation among potential partners. Surface waters were treated separately from ground waters; water quality, independently from water quantity and each sector of users (i.e., agriculture) was ignorant of all the others. This approach to research often led, not surprisingly, to inadequate policies that were not well suited to solve the problems addressed.
A consequence of the research approach described above is that progress in some disciplines has been lagging behind relative to others, and in some cases, they have been largely ignored in much of the research on water issues. It is now evident that research in the social sciences has not contributed sufficiently to the development of new knowledge in the water area, and that the progress made in the biophysical and engineering sciences, have not been matched by that made in social sciences research. Yet, it has been evident for some time that science and technology are just two components of the solution to most water problems, and that the economic, social, institutional, and cultural aspects of water are essential determinants of its use and management.
Improving the efficiency of water use in all sectors is a major challenge now and in the future. This is particularly important in agriculture where the focus should be in conducting research on the improvement of water productivity, the ratio of yield to the water consumptively used. It is very difficult to increase WP in the short term by changes in the genetic make up of crops. However, biotechnology offers new possibilities that, combined with the expertise that several CGIAR Centres have in crop adaptation and performance in adverse environments, should open an important avenue for research in the medium term.
One critical problem worldwide is the lack of reliable hydrologic data, either because of lack of monitoring programmes or because many of the programmes designed in the past for field data collection have deteriorated. One result of the inadequate data collection programmes is the unreliability and uncertainty of water supplies caused by the lack of precision in hydrologic forecasting. The problem is particularly critical in the developing countries where the absence of data even prevents hydrologic forecasting and rational water resources planning.
The last decades have seen a decline in the quality of water due to anthropogenic activities. Surface water quality deteriorated first but now, evidence of the lowering of groundwater quality is becoming apparent in many world areas. We need a better understanding of the physical, chemical and biological processes that determine the long-term changes in water quality, particularly in groundwater, which is expected to be an increasingly important source of supply in the future. Much progress has been made in recent years in the development of simulation models of contaminant transport in soils and water but more efforts are needed in producing means for preventing pollution, in assessing the capacity of environments for processing contaminants, and in predicting impacts of water quality changes at the ecosystem level.
Many more research challenges could be listed but regardless of the problem tackled, what is most important is to approach it with the correct framework and focus. It is time to consider simultaneously water quantity and quality; to analyse jointly surface and groundwater; to bring into the analysis at the start, all the social, environmental, and health components that are relevant to the problem under consideration. To summarize, it would be hard to find an area of research where multidisciplinary approaches would be more effective that they can be in the area of water.
Major portions of the world's population of poor (as many as one billion people) depend on aquatic products for the main part of their animal protein. Yet projected requirements are considerably beyond projected supplies of aquatic products for human consumption. Many millions of people depend on fish and fishing as their source of income; and the numbers are growing. Aquaculture production of the world alone now contributes around US$ 47 billion per year (including aquatic plants). These numbers will increase further as other sources of protein stabilize or become more scarce. Other statistics also indicate the immensity of the dependence on aquatic resources by poor people. The basic point is clear: This is a major and important sector in meeting humankind's need for food and other products; and it is a major, important area in which the CGIAR should be involved.
It also is clear that research related to LARM is at a very early stage in terms of application of the tools of modern science; and there is every evidence that expanded research in this area could have significant payoffs in terms of the goals of the CGIAR. Past research shows the promise that lies ahead if LARM research gets the necessary boost to bring it up to its potential. Thus, while capture fisheries have reached a plateau of production (around 90 to 100 million tons) and are mainly in need of sound management to avoid future declines, the technical potentials for aquaculture expansion have hardly been tapped.
The aquaculture sector is the fastest growing major food production sector, increasing at an estimated annual rate of about 9%. And most important from the CGIAR's perspective, aquaculture production is particularly important in the low-income food deficit countries (LIFDCs). The species base potential for aquaculture is enormous. Relatively few species are being used for culture. Increased aquatic food production can benefit from further research on candidate species representing different trophic levels. The potentials for gain are widespread.
Approaches to fisheries management, which are based on massive state appropriations of natural resources, centralized administration, policing, and heavy demands on financial resources, have proven to be generally ineffective and increasingly obsolete. Current management initiatives, such as co-management and user-based fisheries management, which are development-oriented, people-centered and based on traditional approaches, promise to be more effective for sustainably managing fisheries. These approaches depend on a broad approach to NRM, i.e., an INRM approach that considers coastal management in a more systems oriented framework that integrates fisheries, tree and forest management (e.g., mangrove management), with associated crop and livestock management.
Whatever the revolutionary changes that will be taking place in technology related to travel, communication, trade, agriculture, medicine and industry - and the corresponding positive changes that will take place in many people's lives, the fact is that 10-20 years from now there will still be hundreds of millions of poor rural inhabitants; as in the past, they will depend centrally on forests and trees for essential ingredients for living and for gaining access to better lives. The CGIAR has to continue to be concerned with this component of the overall rural poverty challenge to find the ways to make the evolving technological opportunities work for the rural poor and forest-dependent people.
The Alternatives to Slash and Burn Systemwide Programme is a good example of where forests and agriculture - the main business of the CGIAR - come together. Some of the most critical environmental/INRM challenges are at the forest margins - those vast areas on all tropical continents where living for the poor depends both on agricultural technologies for oftentimes nutrient depleted fields and on technologies for gaining maximum sustainable food, fodder, fuel and timber for survival and for bringing people out of poverty. Research on forests and forest communities provides a unique opportunity to complement the more traditional CGIAR research related to farming systems and agricultural and livestock crops. The CGIAR has shown in many ways the strong, beneficial complementarities that exist; and in the process, it has provided strong continuing justification for continued involved in forestry research.
In addition, there is an expanding role for forests in production of global environmental services. Several CGIAR Centres have shown how systems of realistic payments to poor farmers for environmental services can help both in production of such services and in bringing poor people out of poverty. The same types of complementarities exist in the case of research related to watershed management, a theme that cuts across several resource systems.
Throughout the world, forestry is changing in concept and in practice. Countries are changing their policies and objectives; stakeholders are changing their management methods; and new values, such as the global environmental ones associated with forests (e.g., biodiversity, carbon sequestration, water and soil quality) are coming to the forefront. Devolution towards participatory management and sharing of benefits, the privatization of forestry, and the global awareness of the values of the local environmental and social benefits of trees and forests require research of new types, with new approaches and methods, and the collaboration of scientists from both biophysical and social disciplines, many from outside forestry research institutions. The CGIAR, working with its partners, is in an advantageous position to contribute to this research.
Farmers have been blending trees with annual food crop production and livestock management for thousands of years ago, probably because they could obtain closer to home a better, more appealing diet from fruits and nuts and enjoy the shade of trees, as well as other direct, visible benefits from trees on their farms. In many areas, agroforestry started with people introducing annual crops in among trees, rather than introducing trees into agricultural fields. In the early days of agroforestry, population pressure was not a problem in most areas, and shifting cultivation was the norm, rather than the exception in the tropics. Fallows could be as long as needed, because the pressures on land were slight. Fuelwood and building poles were available nearby. In sum, agroforestry in the early days likely was a response to quite obvious direct needs and wants that trees can satisfy. Only later did agroforestry become popular as a means of taking maximum advantage of the biophysical conditions of the soil and the climate.
The CGIAR, led by ICRAF, has evolved in its agroforestry research towards activities related to the introduction of new institutional and policy approaches, watershed and landscape level systems studies and, more fundamentally, improved understanding of all the components along the research to development continuum. These areas of research are needed to complement the more field oriented technical agroforestry research that is being undertaken by individual countries and smaller research groups.
While there always is the need for more and better technology research, the CGIAR recognizes that much of the technology already on the shelves of research institutions is far ahead of practice and the ability, resources and motivation of local agencies and farmers to adopt it in the fields. There is a need to discover why this is so and do research on how to overcome the barriers to adoption of new and improved systems. Oftentimes, the barriers prove to be quite amenable to research, and the constraints small and easy to solve through research and development support.
There is need to continue:
Developing more dynamic planning processes that will permit analysis and prediction farther into the future of NRM needs and potentials related to agroforestry. Many different types of input are needed in addition to the traditional farm-level biophysical research inputs. Large scale simulation modelling, trend analysis tools, GIS input and social science research to analyse trends and predict developments, are all needed. ICRAF and other CGIAR Centres already have in place many of the skills that will be called upon; and they have linkages with ARIs interested in these issues.
Increasing landscape and watershed level research to understand NR interactions in agroforestry systems. Such research requires significant resources, interdisciplinary approaches, long term presence at sites, and concern for understanding externalities - all conditions that the CGIAR can meet but most others cannot or will not meet. The Systemwide programme, Alternatives to Slash and Burn, is a good example of this type of longer term, international collaborative programme.
Expanding policy research to help countries set the context for agroforestry development. The incentive for countries is that agroforestry can contribute both to increasing rural welfare and to the broader national objective of environmental enhancement and protection, particularly related to soil conservation and prevention of downstream damages from poor land use.
Increasing CGIAR understanding of the enabling components and conditions along a successful research to development continuum. Research and technology development are only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, if the ultimate goals are poverty alleviation, food security and environmental enhancement. From technology development through research to adoption and successful implementation is a long way, as evidenced by past experience. The CGIAR needs to continue expanding its understanding of the appropriateness of varied dissemination and adoption pathways under different social, cultural and environmental conditions.
The INRM perspective on sustainable development is essential in agroforestry research and will become more so as the linkages between resource utilization, management, and conservation practices become stronger and more direct. The integrated framework involves inter- or multidisciplinary research. The Panel's view of this approach is one where the partners from different disciplines come together to understand the issue(s) being addressed and the roles of each discipline in a common framework as contributed to by all the disciplines involved. Each discipline then goes off to do the components agreed upon. In a simplified sense, the partners then come together again to reach consensus within the common interdisciplinary framework on the issue(s) addressed. In reality, this is an iterative process of successive approximations as the team moves towards acceptable solutions and advancements in terms of the common INRM context.
The five NRM components listed above exist in the CGIAR at present to a greater or lesser extent than needed. In order to focus on strategic issues, it is necessary to cut across these with discussion of the role of different disciplines in social, economic, ecological, biological, and physical sciences. In putting forth suggestions for operationalizing INRM more effectively and efficiently within the overall CGIAR research framework, TAC also needs to come back to the four sets of linkages that it defined in its previous work on NRM, and to bring those together in a perspective on the appropriate way ahead along the research-to-development continuum. This means considering explicitly the impact pathways from INRM problem/opportunity identification, to priority and agenda setting, to project formulation, implementation and dissemination, to support in application and implementation, and finally on to impact monitoring and assessment. Moving ahead in this area will not be a neat sequential process, but rather an interactive one of successive approximations as the projects, centres and System as a whole searches for the operational INRM paradigms most relevant for the CGIAR in moving towards its goals.
As INRM problem sets, priorities and potential impact areas are identified, an appropriate research and development (impact) processes must be developed through stakeholder interaction and consensus. Examples of focal areas and NRM components for INRM focus are given above. TAC has laid out below the elements and processes for developing an operational framework for any given problem or opportunity set addressed. The properties of concern will certainly include an operational plan to deal with scale. The process framework should begin with a minimum set of interacting parameters for scope, and then make provision to add or delete parameters as the problem set changes, progress is made, project resources change, or scientific breakthroughs occur. Stakeholder interaction, NRM coverage, (implying which disciplines are needed) and a host of other factors will vary with problem/opportunity type, geographic scale and with time as the project progresses. The points and intensity of integration also change.
TAC's role in all of this is to monitor the process, assess adequacy of the emerging applied frameworks, assure that the appropriate science is being accessed, that science quality is acceptable, that the objectives are appropriately matched to project resources, and that potential impact justifies the cost.
The CGIAR is focused on resource-poor farmers in poor countries with uncertain and often unstable social, institutional and physical infrastructure, farmers who deal with production systems which depend on resiliency as much as productivity. In this case, the location of expertise for INRM integration within the scientific community, reside with the centres, and with researchers who have many years of experience in dealing with such complexity. The role of a Science Council in that process must be carefully thought through. Wisdom is as much knowing what you don't know and should not do, as much as knowing what you do know and should do.
It is stressed again that the outputs of INRM research will need to be relevant for the small-scale farmer or land user, since every day such land users deal with INRM issues, by taking advantage of the synergies between all the components in the farm environment, and in the context of the broader institutional environments they face in their communities. The truly successful farmers are the practitioners of INRM.
Finally, it needs to be stressed again that the CGIAR should not lay claim to dominance in INRM research. It needs to focus on the international public goods dimensions of the subject, leaving the more site specific, complementary activities to be led by its partners. Effective partnership is the order of the day, which implies a productive marriage of ideas, activities, actions, and resources and responsibilities. The result is communication and understanding of mutual benefits, but not necessarily resulting in equal roles and responsibilities for all. The CGIAR brings a number of special skills and advantages to the table; but these should always be considered in the broader context of complementarities or synergies that can be developed with other groups - NARS, private and public organizations in developed countries, NGOs, and farmers groups.
The elements and processes essential to effective INRM programmes and projects have been spelled out in many of the documents reviewed by TAC (Evolution of NRM Concepts and Activities in the CGIAR, 2001) and in notes, reports and papers from the Bilderberg, Penang and Cali meetings convened by the CDC task force.
Most of the elements are common to high quality research programmes in any setting, but understanding the integrative nature of target ecosystem processes, and the regional nature of stakeholder problem identification and priority setting within them is a particular strength of Centre experience and programmes that is reflected in outcomes from these recent meetings. TAC suggests the following framework (Figure 1) guide to programme planning and structure as well as monitoring and evaluation. The details of most elements and processes will change with each programme and geographical area of application.
Framework Summary
The framework for INRM/sustainable production projects or programmes has five elements, linked and integrated through a series of researcher/developer interactive processes:
1. Partnerships:
These are created beginning at a local/regional level, consisting of stakeholder and partners in the research/development process. There is a growing CGIAR literature on roles and effectiveness of CGIAR partnerships, particularly with a regional focus. Partnerships should begin at benchmark sites with farmer collaborators.
2. Scientific structure of the programme:
There are four components to structure:
Location and scale, which covers temporal dimensions, particularly for the natural resources components, and scale for both production systems and their natural resource base. Geographical scale must be built in at the design phase. It has scalar elements as shown in Figure 2, with function and partnerships changing at each level. The activities of CGIAR Centres is maximum with respect to those of other partners at the benchmark sites, where most of the field research is done as shown by the shaded areas at each level. Other partners have a much greater share of the work at other levels. The nature of the work changes at each level as well. Benchmark sites are chosen to provide key data prints along gradients of ecosystem or socioeconomic process and interaction. A site may be made up of multiple communities, watersheds or cluster of smaller units.
Social and policy domains
All land and aquatic resource use systems operate within and are highly governed by social and policy environments. They should be outlined for each system, with critical elements which influence the production ecosystem targeted for attention.
Social interaction and public policy nearly always interact with and influence the biographical relationships between production system and natural resource status.
The process of programme integration through stakeholder and partner interaction to identify problem focal areas and their boundaries is critical to a programme's scientific structure. Priority setting is a dynamic process, changing with success, new opportunity and new problem occurrence. The farm family is both the manager and primary beneficiary of the production ecosystems.
Production system and their associated NRM domains are subsets of broader agroecosystems. Much of present INRM discussion centres around the characteristics, processes and components of these agroecosystems. Elements of biodiversity, resiliency and sustainability are fundamental at this agroecosystems level. Conceptual models derived in Penang, 2000 pertain in particular to crop-dominated agroecosystems. Those with major forestry, fisheries or livestock components may show differences. It is felt by agroecosystems scientists that most systems have from 3 to 5 "drivers" of process which are continuous across gradients of environmental change, and which are key to their improvement and productivity.
Production system focal areas are chosen within the framework of integrated production systems. The focal areas must be elements of limiting technologies, and where CGIAR Centres have component technology expertise and advantage. They should be identifiable problem areas where there is reasonable scope for improvement.
INRM domains
These are natural resource constraint areas for water, soils, biodiversity, soils or other resource - limitations and problem focal areas. They occur within broad land/resource management systems (production systems). Any given resource will have interaction patterns with human management practices and production system type. A Programme can start with either an NRM or a production system problem set.
3. Governance of the programme must reflect a local and regional priority-setting and blending with stakeholder priorities up to the global level. Governance must be cost-effective and have clear responsibilities and lines of accountability. It must be dynamic, driven by both resources and scientific progress.
4. Financing must be of reasonable duration and at a level consistent with programme objectives.
5. A process of programme tracking should follow the systems of logframe benchmarks and outputs. Impact expectations must be clear. Any programme must impact people's food security and their well being, in addition to having (usually) longer-term positive impact on the resource base.
This framework contains elements essential to improving any sustainable production system or natural resource domain. TAC suggests it as an operational framework within which programmes evolve. The specifics of any production system and natural resource domain must be articulated at a regional level to be of any practical usefulness. The process of regional priority setting is as important as the eventual priorities chosen.
This suggested is an outline for programme structure. Nested within this are operational frameworks for the production ecosystem itself and for each domain within it. These will change with each ecosystem type (i.e., aquatic, forest, watershed, etc.). The domain framework can occur at the component level, the operational level or at the level of underlying flows and processes. The programme structure framework suggested here is a general model which exists as a top-level, with structure, operational and process frameworks arrayed in descending order beneath it. The programme planner or evaluator must clearly understand that hierarchy and where each conceptual framework fits within it. Many of these models are spelled out in various reports coming from the INRM meetings at Penang and Cali. The project component diagram only is presented here for clarity and simplicity.
The success and eventual impact on the lives of rural people and on the resource base will very much hinge on appropriate and effective scientific structure and focus of the programme. It is a given that management processes must be appropriate and in place. The complexities of problem identification and scientific or technical solutions across gradients of change to achieve large-scale impact is not simple. The conceptual models must be relevant, limiting factors clearly understood, and priorities for change evolved through stakeholder involvement at relevant scales.
The Science Council should assume a research and science oversight role, at least in the early years, during programme planning, early implementation and programme evolution for the CGIAR challenge programmes in particular. While the framework remains constant, regional and specific agroecosystem requirements will demand significant flexibility. Advanced laboratories may be excellent sources of component science, but they are of little help in the integrative science and processes effected for the new programmes.
Experience in the CGIAR with integrated systems research has repeatedly demonstrated that the weakest link in the process is nearly always a lack of focus on a clear problem set and on areas for potential impact over wide areas. The Science Council should focus squarely on both the quality and relevance of science in stakeholder-identified focal areas.
If water and climate change are to be early programme candidates, the Science Council should mobilize or play a key role in task forces to evolve regional priorities and foci within appropriate agroecosystem types and assure that an appropriate scientific structure and focus is embedded within effective programmes.
Figure 1: Framework for Programmes Sustainable Production Systems and INRM
Figure 2: Functional activities and responsibilities at each level of scale
Source: Workshop on Integrated Management for Sustainable Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Cali, Columbia, August 2001. Working group report on Frameworks.
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[6] The CGIAR has a role to
play in research related to securing poor farmers with payments for
environmental services. This is evidently coming rapidly in the picture in many
countries. Not only forestry, but also agroforestry, agriculture and livestock
have roles to play. Payments which are a relatively modest source of income on a
per hectare basis for developed country farmers may be significant contributions
to income for poor farmers. There are important technological issues in which
the CGIAR has been involved and could get more engaged, both to enhance the
supply of services and to monitor delivery. An INRM focus would be useful since
poor farmers need to design the delivery of environmental services as an
integral element of their farming systems and livelihood strategies. [7] Some of the ideas below are adapted from those put forth in recent EPMRs, where such seemed relevant to the discussion. [8] Framework here is defined as a process with common elements of design, procedure and verification that applies to the fullest range of INRM project sizes and problem focal areas. |
