| Property | Value |
| Name | Natural Resources Management Research in the CGIAR: A Meta-Evaluation |
| Description | Operations Evaluation Department. 2003. Natural Resources Management Research in the CGIAR: A Meta-Evaluation. World Bank.First, NRM research is indisputably central to sustainable productivity increases in agriculture and to improvements to rural livelihoods worldwide. The CGIAR is correct to emphasize NRM and germplasm research as the twin pillars on which to base its program to enhance agricultural productivity. CGIAR NRM research has the potential to generate significant GPGs in the form of new knowledge, especially concerning core processes, analytical and measurement methods, and meta-data sets offering global coverage.Second, the CGIAR’s NRM research has made key intellectual contributions in several areas important to achieving the goals of improving rural livelihoods, food security, and agricultural productivity, notably related to problems of water management, tropical deforestation, characterization of agro-ecosystems, and sustainable NRM in marginal lands. These important past accomplishments not withstanding, the CGIAR presently falls short of realizing its considerable potential to generate significant GPGs, due primarily to System-level issues of focus and framework. Satisfactory resolution of these issues (discussed in detail in Section 4) would do much to push the CGIAR to the frontier of its potential.Third, and related to the preceding point, CGIAR NRM research programs sometimes appear to venture beyond the System’s core competencies without providing a compelling case as to why the research is strategically important. The CGIAR, perhaps through the new Science Council, needs to identify explicitly its core competencies and related areas of comparative advantage vis-à-vis other prospective GPG providers, and then to establish clear boundaries on the work that Centers and SPs undertake, even when leveraging core resources with additional, restricted donor resources. The early 1990s’ expansion of the System added scope without commensurate growth in real funding, thereby increasing the pressure to leverage resources and leading to drift in the research program. This threatens the traditional excellence of CGIAR science, NRM research included. 8. Fourth, the CGIAR has made significant, productive investments in training individual national agricultural research and extension system (NARES) scientists and, in a few cases, in helping develop NARES institutional capacity and regional networks and subregional organizations (SROs) related to NRM. Such capacity building seems to have declined in recent years, however, although the need remains acute. Given funding and personnel challenges facing many NARES, perhaps especially in the social science disciplines and in Africa, NRM-related capacity building poses a serious challenge that demands System-wide attention.Fifth, perhaps predictably, the resources-oriented Centers are generally doing more and better work in integrated NRM than are the more established, commodity-oriented Centers, with the ecoregional Centers falling somewhere in between. Although a few System-wide Programs (SPs) are making significant advances toward addressing global problems such as tropical deforestation, the SPs on the whole have objectives that far outreach their resources or authority, thereby limiting their effectiveness.Finally, and most importantly, NRM research has appropriately attracted considerable, increasing interest and resources over the past decade, although these have perhaps been insufficiently tightly focused on those topics and functions in which the CGIAR can make tangible, high-return contributions to GPGs: in contributing to sustainable agricultural productivity increases and to improving the livelihoods and reducing the vulnerability of the rural poor. The CGIAR’s NRM research can be justified by the System’s impressive, well-established agricultural impacts, but only so long as the NRM research portfolio stays true to the System’s core agricultural productivity agenda. Otherwise, impact assessment of the NRM portfolio becomes a reasonable demand of donors bearing a fiduciary responsibility for wise use of their resources. |
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| Created On: | 11/19/2008 10:39 |
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