Summary
The purpose of the Review was to assess the experiences that have been gained by the CGIAR Centres and their partners since 1994 in implementing the Systemwide Programmes with an ecoregional approach. The Review was conducted by analysis of programme documentation, surveying stakeholders' opinions and selective field visits.
The ecoregional approach is aimed at the sustainable improvement of agricultural productivity. It is conceptually holistic, combining human and technical dimensions and linking productivity and natural resource management (NRM) concerns.
The eight ecoregional programmes reviewed were: (i) Desert margins programme for sub-Saharan Africa (DMI); (ii) Programme for the warm humid and sub-humid tropics of sub-Saharan Africa (EPHTA); (iii) Programme for the humid and sub-humid tropics of Asia (Ecor(I)Asia); (iv) On-farm water husbandry programme for West Asia and North Africa (OFWH); (v) Programme for rice/wheat based cropping systems in the Indo-Gangetic plain (RWC); (vi) Programme for enhancing agricultural research effectiveness in Tropical America (CIAT's); (vii) Alternatives to slash and bum agriculture programme (ASB); and (viii) Sustainable mountain agricultural development programme - now Global mountain programme (GMP). About half the activities had commenced, or were in an advanced stage of planning, when the CGIAR initiated its ecoregional programmes. It is on these activities that the Panel's assessment is mainly based.
The Panel's most important conclusion is that the principles underlying the ecoregional approach are valid and of continuing high priority for pursuing the sustainable improvement of agricultural productivity.
This summary presents, firstly, an assessment of the performance of the programmes against the terms of reference of the review, then some other conclusions, and finally the Review Panel's proposals for the future.
Sustainable Improvement of Productivity
The longer-existing programmes have conducted very significant research in relation to the problems of tropical deforestation, of sustaining high food grain yields in Asia and of providing more sustainable management practices for endangered environments like the hillsides and mountains of Latin America.
Important new research has been done by programmes to characterize their regions and research sites. Another valuable achievement has been their publications, particularly of conference/workshop proceedings, annual reports, reports to donors and popular literature. Practical benefits have been gained from enhanced technology transfer and adaptation.
The Alternatives to Slash and Bum Programme has gone further than the others in relating its research sites to the whole area over which the problem occurs, and in scaling up to the global level its findings on the trade-offs between carbon sequestration and biodiversity on the one hand, and agricultural productivity on the other. This is very helpful for the global debate on sustainability issues.
But the full power of the holistic ecoregional approach to research, especially its human and policy dimension, has not been fully explored. The programmes judged to have come closest to the ideal are the Alternatives to Slash and Bum, the programme for enhancing agricultural research effectiveness in Tropical America being mainstreamed into CIAT's research agenda and the Rice-Wheat Consortium. In general, there is scope for greater investment in innovative strategic research on NRM.
The Panel found good evidence of effective NRM and productivity linkages in the research of several of the reviewed programmes, particularly at the applied level.
Outside the research in the eight ecoregional programmes, the work of the natural resource Centres (CIFOR, ICLARM and ICRAF) seems to embody ecoregional principles more completely than that of other CGIAR Centres. For example, CIFOR deals holistically with one of the world's most extensive natural resources, tropical forests, which are also a major source of environmental services, particularly water resources.
Value Added by the Programmes
The programmes have made excellent progress in developing partnerships with national agricultural research systems. There is considerable potential to build on this good foundation in the future. The facilitation units of collaborative research consortia have played a vital role in developing partnerships in several of the programmes.
The most successful ecoregional programmes have been the ones with a clear focus on a major problem, strong leadership at the top capable of articulating a vision of how a problem should be addressed, plus effective facilitation of collaboration at the research level.
The Review Panel was unable to obtain hard data on value added. Its collective judgement was that the cost effectiveness of implementation of the programmes has been increased significantly by the participation of a range of partners, which has brought with it complementary resources, capabilities and expertise.
Other Conclusions
A number of useful lessons can be learned from the experience of the first five years of implementing ecoregional programmes. Many of the deficiencies seem to have stemmed from the lack of a clear general understanding of the meaning of the ecoregional approach.
Despite this uncertainty, the principles of the ecoregional approach have taken a firm hold in the CGIAR community. This is extremely positive for the future.
The Future
The Panel's advice for the future is directed largely to NRM issues. The Panel strongly advocates continued implementation of ecoregional principles by the CGIAR, and offers suggestions and makes recommendations for updating the conceptual framework, without spending too much time on definitions, and for giving a more pragmatic problem/opportunity focus to the System's natural resources research.
A revised framework has been proposed for NRM research, organized around major problems or opportunities, using a holistic systems approach and measuring progress against specific output indicators. The framework should be applicable to all CGIAR research on the sustainable improvement of productivity.
The Panel recognizes that much further work is needed to develop the framework and to provide specific guidelines for its implementation. It recommends the commissioning of a multidisciplinary task force of experts to assist TAC in this purpose.
Other recommendations deal with: evaluating the performance of collaborative NRM research programmes through the CGIAR's external review processes; strengthening strategic research and social science research; addressing methodological issues of scaling within benchmark sites and of extrapolation from them; and conducting workshops for the regular exchange of information, experiences and lessons learned in collaborative NRM research.
The Panel believes that the greater part of the natural resources research in the System can be managed and supported at the Centre level in future. The traditional strength of the CGIAR has been in leadership and management at that level. Only in the few exceptional cases, where the research problem or opportunity is of major importance on a global or regional scale, should the CGIAR support a combined System effort. Special action will still be required in those cases to overcome the communication and funding problems identified by this Review
Recommendations
Three of the recommendations relate to operational matters and the remaining ten to what the CGIAR might do in future, especially in natural resource management (NRM) research.
Operational Matters
1: That future reviews of the non-ecoregional Systemwide Programmes examine the extent of their interaction with pertinent Ecoregional Systemwide Programmes.
2: That the CGIAR Secretariat, in consultation with TAC and Centre Directors, provides clear rules to Centres for accounting for all financial and other resources committed by Centres and their partners in collaborative programmes, and for the allocation of costs between co-ordination and R&D activities.
3: That financial estimates for selected Systemwide natural resource management activities be included as additional columns in the budget matrices of the CGIAR, as part of a co-ordinated approach to donors.
The Future
4: That the CGIAR reaffirms research on the sustainable improvement of productivity as being a high-priority activity, which should include providing leadership on selected aspects of research on major NRM problems.
5: That the CGIAR and its Members adopt a revised framework for NRM research comprising three elements: (a) research should be organized around major problems (or opportunities) of sustainable NRM that are of international relevance, (b) it should use holistic systems approaches that combine human and technical elements to address the problems on multiple scales, and (c) it should provide for its progress to be measured against specific performance indicators.
6: That the principles underlying the revised framework be applied by all CGIAR Centres involved in NRM research for the sustainable improvement of productivity.
7: The CGIAR's external review processes should explicitly focus in future on how well the revised approach has been mainstreamed into the work of Centres. System-level activities should be subject to special external reviews and in-depth 'sunset' reviews.
8: That TAC commission an expert task force to assist it in developing and implementing the revised conceptual framework for NRM research in the CGIAR.
9: That a special effort is required to strengthen collaboration with strong partners in strategic research on biophysical and social science and policy aspects of NRM. The frequently observed imbalance between biophysical and social science research must be redressed.
10: That, in relation to methodology, special attention should be given to harmonizing the inter-related issues of scaling within benchmark sites and of extrapolation from them. Robust techniques are needed that can be applied within the financial and human resource constraints of national systems, using minimum data sets.
11: That regular workshops should be arranged under the aegis of the Centre Directors' Committee for the exchange of information, experiences and lessons learned in NRM research, especially that conducted within collaborative research consortia. In addition, attention should be given to filling gaps amongst NARS partners in the special skills needed for conducting research on NRM.
12: That three criteria be adopted for the selection of programmes to be supported at the System level: (a) the problem (or opportunity) is of major importance in relation to CGIAR goals, (b) no single Centre has a natural advantage in terms of its mandate, and (c) there is a high potential for efficiency gains from the combined efforts of two or more Centres.
13: If guidelines have not been fully developed in time, a preliminary selection of Programmes that merit continuation at the System level should be made by TAC in March 2000, when it reviews the Research Agenda for 2001.
