Report of the CGIAR-NGO Committee to MTM 99 (Beijing, May 24-28, 1999)

Report of the CGIAR-NGO Committee to MTM 99 (Beijing, May 24-28, 1999)

During MTM 99, the NGOC met on May 22 and 23 to discuss issues related to the re-structuring of the committee, to evaluate past activities, and to plan future activities. The following is a summary of the key points presented by the NGOC chair to the general CGIAR assembly:

1. NGOC Re-structuring Proposal: In discussing its restructuring, the NGOC redefined its overall role: "to assist CGIAR and associated IARCs to achieve their poverty eradication, food security, and sustainable agriculture goals by channeling civil society perspectives and NGO accumulated experiences, so that small-poor farmers directly benefit from international agricultural research". Objectives of the NGOC include:

to advocate priorities, interests, and concerns of small-poor farmers and NGOs so that these are reflected in the international research agenda,

to establish effective and mutually beneficial partnerships among NGO-farmers, organizations, and agricultural research centers to mobilize research to benefit the rural poor in less favorable environments,

to enhance the IARCs’ capacity in areas where NGOs have a comparative advantage such as rural development, local governance, sustainable agriculture, NRM, agroecology and participatory methods.

Keeping within the same allotted budget, the NGOC proposes to have a size of eleven members, maintaining a geographical balance ( 2 from Asia, 1 from China, 2 from Africa, 2 from Latin America, 2 from Europe, and two from North America), and a fifty-fifty gender balance. Obviously, maintaining high standards of professional quality, the NGOC proposes that one NGOC member serve in the GFAR, one in TAC, and one in the ad-hoc consultative council. In addition, members will bring complementary expertise-skills ranging from policy advocacy, agroecology-NRM, participatory methods, social organizing, etc. Each member will also have several networking connections with various organizations including NGOs, farmers’ organizations, environmental groups, policy advocacy groups, research institutions, etc.

2. Past Activities: During the period ICW 98 to MTM 99, several NGOC members engaged in a number of activities:

Workshop on "Agrobiodiversity in the Andean and Amazonian regions" (November 23-25, 1998) involving NGOs, universities, and CIP which explored three main themes; i) biodiversity and food security, ii) biodiversity and the market, iii)and policies for the conservation of biodiversity.

NRM consultation in Indonesia (March 1999) involving NGOs, farmers and indigenous representatives and staff from ICRAF and CIFOR. Discussions revolved around the importance of local input in defining the research agenda of IARCs and on how to establish effective and mutually beneficial working linkages with centers.

Africa IPM Workshop Organized jointly by the NGOC and IITA-Benin (March 29 - April 3, 1999) with participation of representatives of NGOs, national agricultural research and extension systems and IARCs from 14 African countries. The workshop concluded with the development of a four-point resolution towards more effective implementation of IPM in Africa, which includes:

lobby governments to adopt IPM as a national policy

increase participatory approaches (i.e. farmer field schools) in IPM programs

strengthen IPM collaboration through multidisciplinary research

create mechanisms for sustainable networking between researchers and NGOs

create region specific directories of personnel, institutions and projects as reference points for IPM collaboration on current issues

create inventories of IPM field guides, handbooks, manuals, etc. for wider distribution.

International Conference on Sustainable Agriculture: evaluation of old practices and new paradigms, Bellagio, April 26-30, 1999. NGOs and members of FAO, CGIAR, and northern universities examined several case studies of sustainable small farm development and concluded that much of the needed food can be produced by small farmers located in marginal environments in the developing world. In fact, new approaches and technologies spearheaded by farmers and many NGOs around the world are already making a significant contribution to food security at the household, national, and regional levels.

China NRM consultation was co-organized by the NGOC and the Center for Integrated Agricultural Development (CIAD) of China Agricultural University, with the participation of twenty five Chinese colleagues from several provincial academies who presented their work on NRM in rural communities. NGOC members were surprised by the similarity of concepts and compatibility of perspectives shared by Chinese scientists, especially the high emphasis on participatory research methods in rural development and the importance of indigenous knowledge in sustainable agriculture.

3. Future Activities: The NGOC will soon publish and distribute the full reports of the Indonesian, Peruvian, Bellagio and China workshops. In addition, NGOC members will continue assisting the CGIAR in defining its NRM research agenda and hope to have an input into the CDC-CSE NRM workshop to be held in Wageningen next September. Similarly, NGOC members are interested in contributing to the discussion about the potential of biotechnology in enhancing food security in LDCs, during the planned pre-ICW 99 CGIAR biotechnology conference. Some members of the NGOC will also participate in a conference in Mulheim entitled "Research against hunger? International Agricultural Research from a critical NGO perspective" organized by a coalition of German NGOs in preparation for MTM 2000. Our approach will be to attempt at bringing a constructive dialogue between European NGOs and the NGOC so that we may bring their perspectives to the various CGIAR stakeholders.

Members of the CGIAR/NGOC and IITA IPM Africa task force will implement part of the IPM plan of action by developing and widely distributing an English-French IPM reader highlighting concepts and practices directly applicable to solve pest problems affecting small farming systems in environmentally sound and cost effective ways. A few pilot projects will also be established to demonstrate already proven and effective IPM systems relevant to resource poor farmers.

The NGOC will also provide technical and limited financial support to a series of training courses for capacity building of Latin American NGOs in the areas of agroecology and sustainable agricultural development to be held in Colombia (September, 1999), Chile and Bolivia (October, 1999) and Brasil (November 1999) in collaboration with a series of NGOs (CLADES, AGRUCO, CET, IMCA, AS-PTA).

Prior to ICW, the NGOC will hold an expert consultation on methodologies to scale-up sustainable agriculture projects that have proven successful at the local level. The proposed workshop will analyze a series of existing successful case studies promoted individually or collectively by NGOs, IARCs, and other international as well as national organizations to address, not only the constraints (bottlenecks) that limit the scaling-up process, but also the methodological challenges for scaling-up a set of successful cases. Major lessons and principles underlying the success of local initiatives will be systematized and subject to analysis to see if it may be possible to apply them in wider contexts in order to spread benefits of local sustainable agriculture beyond project boundaries in both space and time.

4. Perspectives: The NGOC will continue supporting the CGIAR in defining and implementing its pro-poor NRM strategy in marginal lands. Yield increases in such environments are possible using technological approaches based on agroecological principles that emphasize diversity, synergy, recycling, and integrated and social processes that emphasize community participation and empowerment.

The CGIAR should strengthen its international role of stewards of publicly accessible genetic resources and concentrate only on biotechnological innovations directly relevant to the poor (i.e. drought tolerant varieties), thus dropping research on transgenic crops over which the private sector has already gained comparative advantage. The CGIAR should adopt a ‘precautionary principle’ in relation to the biosafety aspects of biotechnological innovations and be aware of the potential ecological impacts that may result from the deployment of genetically modified crops, trees and animals.

Through the years, the CGIAR has produced a vast amount of scientific information directly relevant to NRM (i.e. CIAT’s work on intercropping in the 70s, IRRI’s green manure research, IITA biocontrol projects, etc.) that is not well known but useful. Such work should be quickly subjected to an environmental-small scale farming screening and then packaged for massive dissemination for use by organizations that work directly with small-poor farmers. Finally, the CGIAR should shift its focus from benchmark sites where researchers put in place systems for research and demonstration, to lighthouses or sites where successful cases of sustainable agriculture already exist but that need to be documented and then spread or scaled-up to reach thousands of farmers.