FOREWORD

This report deals with the evaluation of the Systemwide Programme on Integrated Pest Management (SP-IPM). This final version of the report has undergone a number of revisions for mainly three reasons. Foremost, earlier versions of the report led to misinterpretations by representatives of those agencies to which we saw important linkages with the SP-IPM and who interpreted our observations as an attack on the policies and procedures of their respective agency. Secondly, earlier versions of the report may have suffered from some repetitive statements and some lack of focus. Thirdly, we would like to submit that reviews of systemwide programmes are faced with a number of methodological challenges that are far from being solved. This particularly holds true for an overall encompassing programme like IPM which according to a recent review of the individual centres' IPM programmes exist at varying levels of sophistication and development in all the Centres^[4]. This is probably why “CGIAR insiders” have repeatedly reminded us that our analysis overstepped the TORs given to us. The reason for that probably lies in the so far unmet challenge of how a comprehensive evaluation of a systemwide programme, in contrast to an individual centre programme, should be conducted. Based on the experience with this review and judging from the reactions to earlier versions of our report, we believe that the impact of a systemwide programme must be looked for not only in the participating Centres but also in those development organizations that deal with the very issues such a programme is trying to address. In the case of the SP-IPM it follows from one of its specific objectives: “...fostering public awareness of the advantages of IPM and a policy environment favourable to its wider implementation...”

It is clear that such objective can only be reached if SP-IPM goes beyond the boundaries of the Centres, because if otherwise, a global programme on IPM would simply be irrelevant.

There is also a need to say something about IPM up front: since IPM is so ubiquitous in the lexicon of government agencies, development organizations and chemical companies that there is a danger that its true meaning becomes blurred. If SP-IPM is to make an impact it must also be judged by its ability to foster that true meaning in the spirit of one of its earlier definitions:

“Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is ecologically based pest management that promotes the health of crops and animals and makes full use of natural and cultural control processes and methods, including host resistance and biological control. It uses chemical pesticides only where and when the above measures fail to keep pests below damaging levels. All interventions are need-based and are applied in ways that minimise undesirable side effects...”

The role of IPM in international agricultural development has become more complex with the emergence of modern biotechnology; in particular genetically modified (GM) crops. Most of the current GM crops in field trials and under commercial use are in the area of pest management. GM crops are widely touted as having an important role in fighting poverty and world hunger. For example, the outgoing Director General of the International Food Policy Institute (IFPRI) and this years World Food Price winner, Per Pinstrup-Andersen, said in a recent interview with the respected German weekly DIE ZEIT^[5] upon the question, where he would see the major contribution of GM crops in food security: “... in providing small farmers with seeds resistant to specific pests!” While GM technology is at the centre of the debate on food security and poverty reduction, IPM in sharp contrast, hardly gets mentioned in this context, although many GM crops are nothing more but a tool in IPM. It is this incongruity that pops up in many of the CGIAR documents and those of other important development organizations that has prompted us to go beyond our TORs and ask a few simple but, as we believe, highly relevant questions. We are well aware that some may find such questions disturbing, especially at a time when “solidarity” among agricultural scientists is being widely demanded. We are nevertheless prepared to take the bureaucratic blows for this.

The report is build up in three parts. In part I, we set the scene for the SP-IPM. We look at major trends in pests with a world-wide dimension, results of studies of crop losses on the global level and overall trends in pesticide use and at the institutional and policy situation as it affects IPM. In part II we address the questions as formulated in the TORs. We do this to the best of our knowledge and under the constraint of a rather sparse data and in view of the relatively short period that SP-IPM has operated. Finally, in part III we purposely overstep our TORs and argue for a future structure of SP-IPM as a programme with a technical and a policy dimensions on the global level. We do it as an appeal of those who are seriously interested in a better connection between the science of IPM on the one hand and policy on the other. We apologise to those who feel offended by offering the old adage: “it is always easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission...”

Andrew Paul Gutierrez, Berkeley
Hermann Waibel, Hannover

5 January 2001