European face-to-face consultation for the GCARD 2010
European face-to-face consultation for the GCARD 2010 on 29th of September 2009 in Brussels, Belgium – a report by Alessandra Giuliani and Froukje Kruijssen for YPARD (www.ypard.org)
Introduction: the GCARD Process
Starting from 2010, the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) is organizing the biennial Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD). The Conferences will be an open and inclusive process for consultation and change to reshape agricultural research and innovation, to improve resources for research and increase its impact on development. The Conferences replace both the GFAR Triennial Conferences (2000, 2003, 2006) and the Annual General Meetings of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).The first GCARD will be held in Montpellier, France from 28-31 March 2010. Each GCARD Conference will be preceded by a series of consultations conducted at regional and global levels to capture the contributions and perspectives of all stakeholders in the agricultural research, education and development systems. After each GCARD a number of agreed upon steps will be put in place. That is why GCARD is considered a process and not only a single conference.
GCARD brings together all stakeholders engaged in the agricultural system to help reshape the global agricultural research system. Among others this is done to ensure that its outputs are accessible and relevant to the poor in developing countries, research is aligned with and driven by the development needs of the resource-poor, and funding systems are better aligned between research and development. GFAR will reach out to these stakeholders through its networks, namely the Regional Research Fora (FARA, EFARD, AARINENA, FORAGRO, APAARI,CACAARI), who represent National Agricultural Research Systems, the Alliance of CGIAR centres, FAO, IFAD, farmers’ representatives (IFAP), civil society, the private sector and donor agencies.
The main content of the GCARD 2010 will be decided in a consultation process that includes:
REGIONAL REVIEWS: Several consultants have already conducted regional reviews through a synthesis of existing national and regional studies and reports on agricultural research and development needs and priorities. These reviews provide a summary of regional research and development needs within the global context of agricultural research. The GCARD-Europe Review was completed end July 2009. The review reports (of Europe and some other regions) are already available from: http://www.egfar.org/egfar/website/gcard/updates/documents.
ELECTRONIC CONSULTATIONS: The outcome of these reviews was used to frame questions for the e-consultations at regional level that took place between 1st to 30th of September. These facilitated e-consultations should encourage wide participation and contribution of ideas and experiences of how and where, research has enabled agricultural technologies to help achieve development impact. The GCARD-Europe e-consultation was completed on 25 September 2009. A further e-consultation will take place for every Region. The second Europen e-consultation is planned for January 2010.
FACE-TO-FACE CONSULTATIONS: The next step in the process is the regional face-to-face workshops of which the European consultation was the first. The other regional face-to-face consultations will take place until mid-November 2009.
The European face-to-face consultation
In the European face-to-face consultation, held in Brussels on 29 September, about 55 participants took part.The workshop’s objectives were to identify prioritized agricultural research for development issues and improved research processes to facilitate greater development impact and poverty reduction in Europe and the developing world.
An attempt was made to reach as many different stakeholder groups as possible; an attempt that was only partially successful, mainly due to time constraints of the organizers and a lack of access to groups that are outside of the usual networks (mainly NGOs, CSOs and private sector). The workshop aimed to promote a ‘new way’ of agricultural research by including more stakeholders in the research process. Representatives of both the Directorates General Development and Research of the European Commission stressed the importance of this enhanced dialogue between stakeholders.
The first half of the day was devoted to background setting with an outline of the GCARD process and the results obtained up to now in all the regions (Paolo Sarfatti, IAO) and a summary of the regional review for Europe and the results of the e-consultation (Wyn Richard). A presentation of the CGIAR draft strategy and results of a survey on research priorities was also presented (Stephen Hall, Alliance).
Some highlighted issues:
• Importance of creating more impact by reaching a better translation of research results towards the end users.
• Roles and cultures within the agricultural research system need to evolve: from a linear worldview to a networked worldview, from thinking for (e.g. farmers, end users, the poor) to thinking with..., from donor sovereignty to donor harmonization, from autonomy to coherence
• Investments in agriculture need to be tripled now, later problems will not be fixable
• Poverty in (Eastern) Europe surprisingly high
• Reasons for weak knowledge transfer to end users partially lies in a lack of incentive structure. The product of research is a scientific journal article, which is unsuitable to communicate results of research to farmers. New incentives are needed in both educational and agricultural research to bring knowledge forward. The research system needs to learn from the private sector where budget is divided equally over market research to identify needs/demand, research implementation, and dissemination. In agricultural research, about 95% of financial resources is spent on research implementation.
The subsequent structured discussion aimed at discussing and clarifying some of the findings from the Regional Review and the e-consultation for Europe. Key recurring issues raised by the audience included:
• To convince policy makers in developing countries of the need for them to invest in national agriculture it is crucial that proof of poverty alleviation impact of these investments is delivered
• The importance of national farmer associations is still partially ignored. These can be used much better to disseminate research products and ideas.
• Present models of research funding do not allow for the protection of knowledge and the maintenance of the ‘legacy’ of the investments. This is important to prevent reinvention of the wheel.
• Research needs to be more demand (user/beneficiary) driven. ‘Ownership’ of research is important: Ex-ante question of who will use the outcomes of this research
• There is a need for greater focus by agricultural researchers and theirs donors on poverty issues in addition to productivity gains
• Research and development institutions need to work together more closely
• There is a need to involve a broader stakeholder base in agenda setting and research implementation, i.e. public and private sector institutions along the whole value chain between producers and consumers, including those dealing with the environment, natural resources management, governance etc.
In the afternoon, participants broke up into four working groups, each discussing one of the following issues:
• Global ARD priorities that are in shared interest of Europe and developing countries
• ARD for Europe in Europe: researchable issues and priorities
• How can European support for ARD in developing countries be made more effective and achieve greater impact?
• Why are new partnerships necessary and how should they be structured?
The subsequent plenary session provided much lively discussion on these and other related topics. It identified a number of substantive research areas and process issues in need of early change.
The issue of young professionals in ARD surfaced a couple of times. The perception is that in Europe the number of young people interested in working on agriculture in Africa is fast declining. There was no time to go deeper into this topic, but it raises the question of whether this is a good or bad thing (i.e. are Europeans still needed to work on African agricultural research). It would be interesting to explore this issue further.
A short synthesis of all three documents (Europe review, e-consultation and Workshop report) will be available for comment by the end of October. Finally, in the spirit of learning by doing, feedback from the Workshop attendees will be analyzed and provide lessons learned to the GCARD on the approach taken in holding the workshop
Some useful links:
GCARD on the GFAR website: http://www.egfar.org/egfar/website/gcard
GCARD process and results obtained up to now in all the regions: www.gcard2010.net
Regional review for Europe: http://www.egfar.org/egfar/website/gcard/updates/documents
Draft synthesis report of the European e-consultation: http://gcardblog.wordpress.com/
Note: Froukje Kruissjen and Alessandra Giuliani's participation was possible through kind support by CTA, EFARD, SDC, SFIAR.
Created:
Fri Oct 02 12:31:00 CEST 2009
by ramani
Last modified:
Fri Oct 02 12:38:07 CEST 2009
by ramani
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