CHANGE AND THE CGIAR: A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS?
by SUSANNE GURA
Seedling September 2001
The world's largest organisation of public agricultural research centres continues to struggle to find its direction. Participation of civil society in the work of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is broader than ever before, but does not seem to be achieving much. The CGIAR decisions that might lead to further centralisation of governance reached in May in Durban, South Africa, will be elaborated at its Annual Meeting in Washington at the end of October. This article points to the challenges the CGIAR continues to face after a decade of calls for environmentally sustainable agriculture, for an approach to science that acknowledges farmers' research, and for defending public goods from corporate appropriation.
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (see box), which brought about the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, has faced institutional and financial crises since the mid-1980s. With lack of impact in Africa and ever-increasing donor pressure for sustainability, equity and participation, the crisis continues. This has resulted in programme restructuring, a reduction of the number of CGIAR centres from 18 to 16 and some significant staff cuts.
In an attempt to address the stagnating financial situation and calls for research that is envir-onmentally sustainable, a high-level Ministerial meeting was convened in 1994. Under new leadership from Ismael Serageldin, then the World Bank's top official on env-ironmentally sustainable development, hopes were high that the meeting would provide the impetus for a full restructuring of the CGIAR. The process launched at the meeting which aimed to redirecting and reorganise the CGIAR, known as the "Renewal," turned out to be little more than window dressing and an endorsement of the status quo. While it failed to bring in more funds, the Renewal did arrest a further decline in funding and served to boost the low morale already reigning amongst staff within the CGIAR.
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WHAT IS THE CGIAR?
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is an informal association of 58 members (22 developing countries, 21 industrialised countries, 3 private foundations, and 12 regional and international organisations). It was established in 1971 by Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the World Bank; the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) are co-sponsors. Over the last decade, its annual budget has been about US$ 340 million. The mission of the CGIAR is to contribute to food security and poverty alleviation in developing countries through agricultural research, capacity building and policy support. It operates through 16 international agricultural research centres, which now call themselves the "Future Harvest" Centres and which have more than 8,500 scientists and support staff working in more than 100 countries. The members of the CGIAR have traditionally held review and planning meetings twice yearly, at International Centres Week (ICW) each October in Washington and at the Mid-Term Meeting (MTM) each May. MTMs will be abandoned as of 2002 and replaced with more frequent meetings of the smaller Executive Council (ExCo). The agenda of the CGIAR centres evolved in the 1970s to include roots and tubers, legumes, livestock, genetic resources, research in dry areas; in the 1980s to include institutional strengthening and food policy research; and in the 1990s to include agroforesty, forestry, natural resource management and aquatic resources. Over the decades, the scientists moved some of their research off station and did trials in farmers' fields. Some began to move beyond commodity research into Farming Systems Research. The Centres are autonomous institutions but they began to collaborate in System-Wide Programmes on topics such as participatory research, integrated pest management, and communal action and property rights. They also began to seek research partners outside the CGIAR system, mainly with national agricultural research institutes, but sometimes also with non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
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A second chance to find direction
Between 1997 and 1999, the CGIAR was pushed, mainly by donors and civil society organisations, to undergo an evaluation, the first in seventeen years. This evaluation, known as the "Third System-Wide Review" was time-consuming, expensive and supposedly amb-itious. Everything except for the number of Centres was to be questioned by the 19-strong panel: mandate, governance, research strategy, and finances (see Seedling, December 1998).
But the review did not score highly in terms of consultation with farmers or NGOs. Eighteen months of talking to scientists and policy makers and US$ 1.5 million later, the panel's much awaited report was not much more than another green light to keep things the same, and it provided little help with regard to governance. While the Renewal had cherished the CGIAR's collegiality and informality, and voted against establishing a formal organisation, the System Review recommended the contrary. A legal entity that would serve as central body was proposed. Three reasons were given for increased centralisation:
· To ensure proper stewardship of the intellectual property developed within the CGIAR; not coincidentally, one thing the review highlighted was the reality of the growing biotechnology portfolio of the CGIAR and its increasing orientation towards the private sector.
· To secure funding from a broader variety of sources.
· To take positions on behalf of the CGIAR. The most important of these are Farmers Rights and Intellectual Property Rights.
CGIAR members rejected the central body proposal; instead, a Consultative Council was established to draft CGIAR policy. This means that the main donors meet more than twice yearly, and in a smaller circle.
Since the Review had failed to help the CGIAR find its direction, another process was initiated to attempt to do so. That process involved more people than the Renewal or the Review, but they were mostly insiders. This latest direction-finding initiative was led by the Rome-based Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), which presented its Vision and Strategy at the CGIAR's Mid-Term Meeting in May 2000 in Dresden. The key points of this strategy laid out at the meeting were:
· Focusing on issues related to poverty alleviation and hunger
· Bringing 'modern' science to bear on issues related to poverty and food insecurity
· Priority to sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
· Regional approach to research planning and implementation
· Seeking new partners to improve problem identification, research and dissemination of results
· Adopting a task force approach to address priority issues
· Serving as a catalyst within the global agricultural research system.
The TAC's new strategy was given the green light in Dresden and was adopted by the CGIAR later in the year, along with plans for a regional approach to agenda setting.
GFAR -co-operation or co-option?
The Dresden meeting was accompanied by the first major meeting of a CGIAR-spun initiative, the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR). Co-operating with the prospective users of international agricultural research has been a constant challenge for the CGIAR. Scientists within the CGIAR have become increasingly interested in co-operating with NGOs, but mainly to extend the results of their research to farmers.
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GFAR 2000's OBJECTIVES
· To develop a Global Shared Vision on Agricultural Research and Development |
Participatory research has been developed only in a strictly limited way in CGIAR Centres, rather as a showcase than as a mainstream approach. Setting up NGO and Private Sector Committees in 1995 broadened participation in CGIAR governance, but farmers remained unrepresented.
GFAR is an experimental, loose forum which brings together advanced research institutes (ARIs) in the North, national agricultural research institutes (NARIs) in the South, donors, industry, non-governmental organisations and farmers' organisations. The rationale for GFAR goes like this: the CGIAR budget covers only 4 % of global agricultural research. The remaining 96% is done by, decreasingly, national agricultural research institutes and universities, and, increasingly, the corporate sector. The idea is that all of them are part of a global system, and should share a forum to discuss and set priorities. NGOs are pushing for GFAR to play a formal role in determining the work plan for the CGIAR, but it is not clear whether this vision is shared by the CGIAR.
Some of the 100 NGOs and farmer repres-entatives from 35 countries who attended the GFAR in Dresden were skeptical, while others were hopeful that the participatory and multi-stakeholder nature of GFAR would bring about genuine change. GFAR is narrowly focused on research with little attention to development (see box). During the Dresden forum, discussions revolved around technological solutions, ignoring more fundamental issues such as landlessness, access to and control over natural resources, Farmer's Rights, food sovereignty. Small farmers (represented by Via Campesina) were only given a chance to speak at the last minute, after a request from civil society organisations. The output from GFAR was supposed to be a "Global Shared Vision" to be endorsed by all participants. But civil society groups were unable to endorse the statement, because of concerns over GFAR's promotion of genetic engineering and market liberalisation, in the world of agriculture, and its far-reaching openness to private sector influence on public agricultural research. Despite NGO protests, GFAR Chair RS Paroda repeatedly stated that all stakeholder groups had endorsed the Global Vision. This move fuelled civil society groups' fears that GFAR was more interested in co-option than co-operation.
GFAR's first tentative steps into the real world have added to such concerns. Its first pilot study in Meso America has met with local resistance. Representatives from eight small farmer organisations, eight NGOs and two universities from the region recently met in Costa Rica to discuss the priority-setting pilot study set up by GFAR and its Regional Forum (FORAGRO). Their Declaration of Guacimo states that GFAR/FORAGRO's study is supposed to widen participation, but up to now has excluded the voice of peasants, indigenous people, NGOs and universities. They call for the project to be restarted in a truly bottom-up manner.
Another day, another strategy
As calls for restructuring and change in CGIAR governance continued, a Change Design and Management Team (CDMT) was set up at International Centres Week in October 2000.. It drew up concrete proposals on governance, organisation and structure to be tabled in the CGIAR Mid-Term Meeting 2001 in Durban, South Africa. All sides commended the process for being unusually open and inclusive, but the results did not inspire NGOs that they were being listened to any more than before.
CDMT proposals may lead to more centr-alisation and in fact ruled out the TAC's proposals for regionalisation. The Rural Advancement Foundation International and the German NGO Forum Environment and Dev-elopment proposed an alternative region-alisation strategy. Were the CGIAR to adopt a regional governance strategy, they contested, the CGIAR could dramatically reduce the costs of the Centres. They suggested cutting staff levels internationally to about 500 people by creating regional clusters of scientists to act as catalysts, animators and researchers in par-tnership with farmers' organisations, NGOs and other groups.
In this way, CGIAR could reduce running costs to US$ 60 million annually, freeing up about US$ 290 million a year for regional and inter-regional programmes. Together with increased commitment and support for the GFAR, especially the Regional Fora, many of the longstanding governance and financial prob-lems could be solved. At the same time, national and regional collaborations could be stimulated.
African NGOs present at the Durban meeting found little overlap between their agricultural research priorities and those of the CGIAR (see box). NGO calls for regionalisation were ignored. Four major decisions were reached by the delegates, in line with the CDMT proposals:
· Creation of a smaller Executive Council and replacing the twice-a-year meetings with a once-a-year general assembly. Participation is an issue since not all members will be represented in Council meetings. Farmers' organisations were again sleighted by the absence of a seat for them on the Council, and salt was rubbed in the wound when the Chair suggested that farmers comprise the largest part of the private sector.
· Transformation of the TAC into a Science Council.
· Creation of a Systems Office, to be housed in Washington, encompassing functions of the CGIAR Secretariat, public relations (PR) and fund-raising activities. Launch of a series of Challenge Programs (CPs) to redirect the CGIAR's research agenda. These aim to establish linkages and broaden external partnerships with the NARS, GFAR, and regional organisations in the hope of creating a demand-driven, bottom-up process to define and identify CPs.
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AFRICAN NGOS CALL FOR FARMER-LED RESEARCH
The quest for farmer-led research and development dominated the NGO and smallholder farmer discussions during the recent CGIAR meeting in South Africa. Some 30 representatives from east and southern African organisations contended that research efforts to date have ignored the needs of poor and marginalised farmers. The research issues of central importance to the poor are the ones that should be addressed first. This means including a development element to the CGIAR's research agenda. In this context, the CGIAR was challenged to:
· Move towards eco-regional issues as opposed to commodity-based issues; NGO delegates recommended a collaborative relationship between the CGIAR and the NGO community. This seems logical since, at least in theory, they work towards the same end - poverty alleviation and improving people's livelihoods. To do this, farmer-led organisations must be given equal status with other committees and participants in CGIAR discussions. NGOs must also make themselves more knowledgeable about farmer-led research in order to be effective in feeding into the CGIAR system through the NGO Committee. Challenges for researchers include technology generation based on local knowledge integrated with relevant scientific knowledge, increased respect for local knowledge and its dynamics, and collaboration with other development actors. Research institutes must ground their work in local realities. Although the CGIAR claims to have made considerable progress, very little has helped increase the food security of east and southern Africa, nor the cash income of the resource-poor farmers whose poverty it should help alleviate. Perhaps the most important question posed to the CGIAR and not answered during the Durban meeting was, "Who do you listen to in setting the research agenda and why?" Source: Mutizwa Mukute, PELUM Association. PO Box MP1059, Mt Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe. Tel: (263-4) 744117/744237/744509, Fax: (263-4) 744470, E-mail: [email protected] |
These proposed changes may further centralise power in Washington. They go in the opposite direction of NGO proposals for regionalisation.
If the proposal for the CPs is followed, an initial two or three programmes will be identified and funded by new money. This will be followed by 50% restructuring of the System's research agenda in five years' time. Whether or not this move will bring in new and more money remains to be seen.
Some donors are not eager to donate new money for the CPs. Instead, they would prefer to shift their current funding to CPs, if only to force the centers to restructure and collaborate more closely with national and regional agricultural research systems in the South. But some observers suggest that existing suggestions for potential programmes do not seem to be any more rooted in regional priorities than any other CGIAR programmes. They argue that regional priority setting seems to be a theoretical exercise without providing much incentive for parti-cipation. What role the CPs will play vis-à-vis GFAR's regional programmes is not clear. How all of these decisions will be put into practice is still not clear and will be decided at this year's Annual General Meeting in Washington in October. An Interim Executive Council was tasked to come up with specific proposals on how to develop and implement the CP approach, the composition and working procedures of the Executive Council, the functions and modalities of the Systems Office, and the Science Council.
The future legal status of the CGIAR System including the germplasm in its genebanks, its policy on patenting and intellectual property rights (IPRs) was not adequately dealt with in Durban. The CGIAR and public research in general will greatly benefit from the adoption of the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources forthcoming during the FAO Conference in November, and should lobby FAO members to ratify it. But whether and how the CGIAR centers that engage deeply in public-private partnerships with unclear objectives and terms can sustain their standing as producers of international public goods remains questionable. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) downplayed the Golden Rice it had been so eager to announce to the media only three months earlier. Instead, it issued a press release focusing on IRRI's largest project, Poverty Elimination through Rice Research Assistance in Bangladesh, which is presented as farmer-led, participatory and GM-free. Progress is being made in PR, if not IPR.
Conclusions
It is striking how much time, energy and resources have been invested into refocusing the CGIAR over the past seven years. Renewal, Review, Global Forum, CDMT, all written in capital letters and welcomed with fanfare, have had minimal impact on the CGIAR. Hardly anything of substance can so far be detected in terms of change. At best, some organisational juggling has been achieved, and on occasion the CGIAR has started to venture out of its almost secret small circles into the public arena. But the CGIAR has also developed a disturbing habit of cultivating participation from civil society, but ignoring its input and acting unilaterally as before.
Many NGOs and farmers' organisations have already given up on the CGIAR because of its unwillingness to address their issues and concerns. But the CGIAR is not a monolith. NGOs can find considerable support among some key decision-makers within the system for the ecologically-oriented, people-oriented research and development they are advocating - and these donors see NGOs as valuable allies. NGOs have been admitted into the committees where decisions are taken. Some CGIAR members are at least considering possibilities of a Farmer Committee, farmer panels for assessing relevance of research topics and proposals, and farmer and NGO representatives in Steering Groups of the Challenge Programs. This is the result of the continuing advocacy of NGOs within and outside of the NGO Comm-ittee. However, NGOs are rarely listened to. Unless it acts soon, the CGIAR is in danger of cutting itself off from the donors and NGOs that have been patiently tapping it on the shoulder over the years to help it find its way. Without their support, the CGIAR will surely be leading itself towards obsolescence.
Susanne Gura is Project leader of the Inter-national Agricultural Research Project German NGO Forum Environment and Development, Bonn, Germany. Phone: (49-228) 948 06 70; Email: gura@forumue.de; Web:www.forumue.de
Main Sources
· CGIAR (1995), Renewal of the CGIAR. Ministerial-Level Meeting, Lucerne, Switzerland, February 1995. Summary of Proceedings and Decisions, CGIAR, Washington DC. www/cgiar/org
· German NGO Forum Envi't & Dev't (2000), Food without Farmers. Agricultural Research Needs a Profoundly Changed CGIAR, May 2001. Available at: www.forumue.de
· CGIAR (1998), Shaping the CGIAR's Future. The CGIAR System Review Report, Sept. 1998.
· GRAIN (1998), "The CGIAR System-wide Review," Seedling, December 1998.
· RAFI and German NGO Forum Env't and Dev't (2001), In Search of Common Ground II. CDMT - Can Dinosaurs Make Teammates? May 2001.
· German NGO Forum Env't & Dev't (2000): Food For All - Farmers First In Research. Workshop report, October 2000.
· Ann Waters-Bayer (2001), Update on Change in the CG System: Interim ExecutiveCouncil Meeting, Bonn, 7-8 September 2001, unpublished paper.
Reference for this article: Gura S, 2001, Change and the CGIAR: A contradiction in terms, Seedling, Volume 18, Issue 3, September 2001, GRAIN Publications
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