April 2002

GFAR Secretariat News

Editorial

Highlighting 2001

• Contribution to EFARD
• 
  
• IFAD-GFAR Workshop
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• 2001 GFAR Meetings

7^th Management Team Meeting

The Relaunching of EGFAR

GLOBAL.RAIS

Facilitating Units

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Editorial

The Show Must Go On: SDR's Farewell Speech to Fernando Chaparro

The Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) was formally established in 1996 by an agreement among stakeholders of agricultural research as an initiative to promote cost-effective partnerships and strategic alliances in this area of research, and to provide a forum for the discussion of strategic issues of interest to them.

At its establishment, GFAR had two secretariats: the GFAR Secretariat, based at the World Bank, whose main function was the development of an electronic Global Forum on Agricultural Research and Development (EGFAR); and the NARS Secretariat, whose main mandate was to assist NARS in articulating their views and contributions to the global agricultural research agenda. The hosting of the NARS Secretariat by FAO was formalized in a Letter of Agreement signed on the 17 July, 1998, by FAO and GFAR. It provided that the NARS Secretariat would be a distinct organizational unit within SDR. FAO would provide office space, equipment and supplies, and relevant inputs through the ongoing RP activities of SDR.

Following the first general GFAR Conference in Dresden, Germany, in May 2000, the decision was taken by GFAR to merge the two secretariats. FAO responded positively to the request that the unified secretariat, the GFAR Secretariat, be based at FAO. Fernando Chaparro was the Executive Secretary of the NARS Secretariat and later of the merged GFAR. His activities within FAO expanded beyond the hosting Division to include other technical units.

His enthusiasm, energy and multiple activities have been valued by all. While we can certainly recognize his significant contributions at FAO, the main beneficiaries of Fernando's work at the GFAR are not present here with us today! I speak of the national stakeholders and regional organizations with whom he worked very closely since 1998. A close look at the increased and meaningful participation of NARS in influencing the international research agenda for agriculture and sustainable development is a good indication of his successes at GFAR.

We congratulate Colombia for gaining back a son that can and will make a difference in the agricultural arena.

On behalf of SDR, we wish Adriana and Fernando all the best in the new assignment!!

Ester Zulberti on behalf of Dietrich Leihner,
Director, FAO-SDR

Highlighting 2001

GFAR Contribution to the Regional Priority Setting (RPS) Exercise

Since October 2000, regional and sub-regional fora have been conducting priority-setting exercises and formulating strategies for agricultural research and development. This process has led to the emergence of regional networks and new forms of regional/sub-regional cooperation. GFAR has supported these activities and ensured the participation of non- traditional stakeholders in them, such as NGOs, Farmer Organizations and the Private Sector. The CGIAR is incorporating the updated and refined agendas into its own global agenda, in order to best respond to the needs of developing countries.

The importance of involving all categories of stakeholders in regional priority setting is that it ensures a participatory approach and integrates every stakeholders' contributions and concerns into a region's agenda. This is particularly important in the case of civil society as they are the users and clients of research and development. The participation of civil society reflects the role that NGOs, the Private Sector and Farmers' Organizations are playing in the increasingly diversified institutional infrastructure of agricultural research, which has traditionally consisted of NARS, IARCs and ARIs.

The European research community and the European Forum on Agricultural Research (EFARD) have also contribute to develop the Agricultural Research for Development (ARD) dimension of the European Research Area (ERA-ARD) as a component of the 6^th Framework Programme. EFARD has used the preliminary results generated from the regional RPS exercises, which were collected and consolidated by the GFAR Secretariat. This information was compared to the research interests and priorities that are being identified by the European National Fora and the subsequent analysis resulted in the proposal that EFARD will submit to the European Commission for consideration at the Ministerial Meeting. This process has stimulated the interest of many stakeholders and discussions are underway on possible collaborative arrangements at the inter-regional level.

Another contribution of these exercises is the valuable learning process that is taking place. Four important issues are being addressed and acknowledged: (a) the distinction between development priorities and objectives and research priorities, which are now being expressed as issues that are researchable; (b) the importance of a focused analysis of research priorities and a better understanding of the value added by using the various analytical units that are available for their determination, such as ecosystems, NRM constraints, technological constraints, biodiversity management issues, socio-economic concerns, commodity-chains, the role of new areas of science, etc.; (c) the integration of diverse stakeholders into the research process and the importance of developing an inter- stakeholder dialogue on research priorities; and (d) the value of ensuring a link between regional priority-setting, major development efforts and investment processes as it can greatly contribute to placing agricultural research in national and regional agendas.

O.O.

Highlighting 2001

IFAD-GFAR Workshop on Methodologies, Organization and Management of Global Partnership Programmes

This workshop was an important stepping stone in the ongoing dialogue among a growing number of stakeholders on how to build stronger partnerships in agricultural research and development. Its main success lay in the discussions where the participants raised critical questions and offered solutions to the challenges that were identified.

Building on the "Strengthening Partnerships" theme of the GFAR 2000 Conference, GFAR and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) sponsored a Technical Workshop on Methodologies, Organization and Management of Global Partnership Programmes (GPPs) on the 9-10 of October, 2001 in Rome, Italy.

The objective of the Rome Workshop was to take stock of the progress made towards building GPPs since 2000. Several case studies were discussed in terms of how to build stronger agricultural research and development partnerships in order to facilitate the emergence of GPPs. An early conclusion of the workshop was the need to involve, as much as possible, more stakeholders in this type of dialogue and to initiate similar discussions at national, sub-regional and regional levels, aimed at improving the understanding of how to participate in or initiate a GPP.

Lessons Learned

The case studies presented and analyzed highlighted the importance of multi-stakeholder participation and the various means of formulating and managing partnership programmes.

The discussions included many innovative proposals and suggestions for building effective partnerships in ARD and GPPs. The importance of a "real" involvement by as many stakeholders as possible was stressed, as it ensures the close link between social and technological innovation that is required for research to achieve development objectives. Participants also suggested that the number, type and roles of partners be dynamic throughout a research partnership programme, and noted that unconventional partners such as local governments, innovative farmers, and the private sector can be key to the success of the programmes. Capacity building and knowledge sharing were identified as vital components for the motivation and empowerment of all stakeholders, as well as the sustainability of partnerships.

Regarding the formulation and management of GPPs, participants stressed that programmes should build on existing activities, and on the felt needs and enthusiasms of those who recognize the potential in partnerships and interaction. As such, the research and development agenda of GPPs must be influenced by community problems as well as by researchers' suggestions. GPPs should be stakeholder-led initiatives and address the social, institutional and political dimensions of the theme they cover, the social utilization of the knowledge they generate. Participants highlighted the importance of fairly shared governance and responsibility between partners who formulate and manage a partnership program. They also recognized the need for a champion or leader who would play a catalytic role in a GPP, particularly in the early stages of its development. This catalytic role however, must be shaped such that all stakeholders have ownership of the GPP.

Research Partnership Programmes and the Role of the GFAR

During the workshop, participants agreed that all agricultural research, including that carried out by the International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs), should be development-oriented, and that regional priority-setting should feed into international agricultural research agendas. GFAR is ensuring that the process is multi-stakeholder and is facilitating and supporting GPP initiatives.

Global Partnership Programmes are built on decentralized initiatives and as such facilitate interregional linkages, cross-fertilization of experiences and a rapid spread of research results, as well as avoiding unnecessary duplications and overlaps in research agendas. They offer the possibility to explore new means of communication and dialogue between stakeholders. They also encourage scientists and other actors in research and development to consider new and unconventional ways of working together that go beyond existing institutional mandates.

The primary role of the GFAR in GPPs is to facilitate the creation of fora involving multiple stakeholders at different levels as well as the creation of effective local, sub-regional, regional and global partnerships. GFAR is therefore an added-value "service" encouraging and testing innovative approaches, methodologies and spaces to build research partnerships. In this context the GPPs, which are developed from the bottom-up and with emphasis on stakeholder involvement, could also significantly contribute to achieving some of the development aims of the Challenge Programs. The participants suggested that, particularly with the increasing involvement of all stakeholders including the CGIAR, GFAR take full advantage of the synergies that are developing among its stakeholders.

Funding GPPs

The participants of the Rome Workshop reviewed the possible funding mechanisms for GPPs and some strategies to initiate them. The following points were highlighted:

• The funding strategy for GPPs should build on the specific strength of stakeholder-led initiatives and on the added-value that they bring to international agricultural research. That is, the main characteristic that makes GPPs attractive for donors must be emphasized: GPPs are built on stakeholder demands and on stakeholder-driven processes. As such they can facilitate the adoption of social innovations that complement technological innovations and effectively increase their development impact. The mobilization of stakeholders and their commitment to a "shared research and development agenda" leads to a higher efficiency of research and development investments, since it generates more impact per dollar invested.
• Most programmes involving global activities depend on a dynamic mosaic of funding from different sources and a large component of cost sharing between partners. It should be understood however, that not all partners who should be involved can mobilize the same level of resources.
• Besides cost-sharing, other potential sources of funding are Regional Development Banks, the private sector, bilateral funding through embassies (although this could involve high transaction costs for regional or global programmes), competitive grant schemes (although some concerns were expressed that these may not be suitable for applied agricultural research) and national and international donors interested in supporting development-oriented and stakeholder-led research partnerships.
• Many donors do not have the flexibility to fund regional cooperative programmes and should start looking at ways to support sub-regional, regional and global partnerships.

Follow up Actions

Three follow-up actions to the Rome Workshop were discussed during the meetings and were further articulated by the Technical Advisory Group. The follow-up actions are to: (a) continue and deepen the learning process of how to build stakeholder-led GPPs; (b) further develop and launch the GPPs that were discussed at the workshop; and (c) strengthen the collaboration between the GPPs and other global initiatives, such as the Challenge Programmes of the CGIAR. These three points coincide with the three expected outputs of the workshop, which were thus fully achieved.

The full proceedings of the workshop, including the texts of all case studies, presentations as well as the summaries of the discussions can be accessed at the GFAR Website.

A minidisk including the final report and key studies is also available on

O.O.

Highlighting 2001

Main Decisions of the GFAR Meetings held in October 2001 in Washington D.C.

The GFAR-SC Meetings that took place in Washington D.C. in October 2001, covered a number of important items. The GFAR and NARS Steering Committees looked into: the status of the GFAR Business Plan and Programme of Work 2001-2003, with a focus on the regional priority setting process and the development of Global Partnership Programmes (GPPs); strengthening the stakeholder constituencies of Agricultural Research for Development; the work of the GFAR Secretariat in facilitating the participation of stakeholders in the emerging Challenge Programmes (CPs); and preparations for the GFAR 2003 Conference.

The following paragraphs summarize the main issues that emerged from the discussions:

1. After each region presented their respective regional priority setting (RPS) exercise, it was agreed that action should be taken to ensure that regional priorities are taken into consideration in both the emerging GPPs that GFAR is facilitating and the CPs that the CGIAR is developing. The RPS activities will continue to be pursued following an iterative process.
2. After presenting the results of and activities resulting from the GFAR/IFAD Workshop on GPPs it was decided that a concise and clear statement of the complementarities and differences between GPPs and CPs be issued. A two-page paper was produced (with the help of an inter-stakeholder working group established for this purpose) and presented in both the GFAR and the CGIAR meetings.
3. GPPs and CPs, as two modes of collaboration in ARD, play a different but highly complementary role in the global scientific community of ARD; they are part of the same global system and pursue the same development objectives. As such, their complementarities will provide a synergism and their differences will broaden opportunities for stakeholders.
4. The GFAR 2003 General Conference will take place at the same time as the FARA meeting in Senegal. The proposed general theme of the conference is "Linking Research, Rural Innovation and Development: From Regional Priorities to Global Action." Preparations for the conference are underway; a Task Force is being established (constituted by one representative from each stakeholder constituency) that will co-ordinate the organization of the conference.
5. Two particular aspects of the GFAR Business Plan and Programme of Work /2001-2003, were discussed: (a) Advocacy for ARD in order to place agriculture and agricultural research back into the national, regional and global agendas; and (b) identification and discussion of key strategic policy topics of agricultural research, aimed at strengthening the capacity of all stakeholders of ARD to cope with the changing environment of agricultural research.
6. The question of how to strengthen stakeholder constituencies and increase their participation in ARD at the national, regional and global levels was raised. The discussion focused on the participation of farmers' organizations, NGOs and the private sector in particular. Also discussed was how to improve the "representation function" in heterogeneous constituencies of stakeholders, especially considering the key and increasingly important roles that farmers' organizations NGOs and the private sector are playing. The GFAR Secretariat was requested to work closely with the respective stakeholder representatives in the GFAR Steering Committee in order to see how to further advance this process and strengthen stakeholder participation. The importance of stakeholder participation was also raised in the CGIAR meetings in the context of how to include these three stakeholders in the formulation and implementation of CPs.
7. The CGIAR AGM-2001 meetings approved 12 recommendations (with some modifications), which were presented in the CGIAR Interim Executive Committee Integrated Report. Three important decisions were made that have a direct impact on GFAR activities: (a) the selection of GFAR to be a permanent member of the Executive Committee (ExCom) of the CGIAR; (b) increasing stakeholder participation, particularly in terms of looking at options to strengthen the participation of farmers' organizations in ARD and in the discussion of the emerging CPs; and (c) collaboration of the GFAR Secretariat in facilitating the participation of stakeholders in the emerging CPs.

O.O.

7th MTM

7^th Management Team Meeting in Rome, 24-25 January 2002:
Three Critical Issues

GFAR Budget

The GFAR budget is being programmed on a three-year cycle. The shortage of immediately available funding for 2002 however, requires that GFAR pay particular attention this years' budget and expenses. Dr. Paroda, the GFAR Chairman, highlighted the necessity to decrease costs such as those related to travel.

Selection of the NARS Senior Fellow

Samuel Bruce Oliver has been selected to be the GFAR NARS Senior Fellow following a screening process by the GFAR Management Team. GFAR Secretariat has received an official statement confirming his secondment to the GFAR Secretariat. He is expected to join us in Rome in June 2002.

New Plan of Work of the GFAR Secretariat for the interim period

Jean-François Giovannetti has been designated as officer in charge for the interim phase. He will be supported by an Interim Executive Committee composed of Dietrich Liehner, Rodney Cooke and Henri Rouilled'Orfeuil.A collective process will be launched within the GFAR staff and the IEC in order to define a new plan of work for the next coming months, until the arrival of the new Executive Secretary.

JF.G.

Relaunching e-GFAR

Where We Are

A mock-up of the new GFAR Website is finished and exists as a static set of HTML pages. EGFAR is still under construction and some further steps include building databases in order to develop a back-office mechanism. The "experimental issue" will be accessible soon. Comments and suggestions on the site are welcomed so that they may be incorporated into the final version.

Fulvia Bonaiuti is GFAR's Web Publisher and is taking charge of building the new site. Miss Bonaiuti works for GFAR through the Italian APO Programme and was previously working within IAO, in Florence, Italy.

JF.G.

GLOBAL.RAIS

Strengthening the RAIS Through EU Funding

In November of last year, the GFAR Secretariat designed and submitted a proposal in response to a call for projects for the Accompanying Measures of the European INCODEV Programme: GLOBAL-RAIS. Global.RAIS hopes to launch regional workshops in the five following regions: WANA, CAC, LAC, SSA and Asia and Pacific to discuss each regions' agricultural information system. An inter-regional workshop will follow these regional consultations so as to define a strategic agenda at both the global and regional levels, and to promote economies of scale and synergism between the involved stakeholders.

This project has received a preliminary positive response from the DG Research, with a pledge of e 80,000.
As soon as the notification is available, the GFAR Secretariat will approach each RAIS Manager to co-build a provisional agenda for this project. Co-operation will be sought with WAICENT outreach and with advanced RAISs such as Infosys in Europe and Infotec in LAC.

JF.G.

Facilitating Units

Workshop Montpellier 6-7 June 2002
Global Programmes for Commodity Chains
Results and Prospects

Background

The Global Forum identified commodity chains, both major crops and under-utilized species, as one of its priorities to facilitate research cooperation and promote partnerships. The proposed approach is based on the concept of a Global Programme.

Building its approach on lessons learnt from PROMUSA, a global programme developed by INIBAP, the GFAR Steering Committee mandated IPGRI to study the feasibility of establishing global programmes for commodity chains, and CIRAD offered to cooperate on the topic of major commodity crops (citrus, cocoa, coconut, coffee, cotton, oil palm, pineapple, rubber and sugarcane). In September 1999, they jointly established a small facilitation unit, with an expert in commodity chains seconded by CIRAD and based at INIBAP headquarters, in Montpellier, France. The Facilitation Unit reported regularly to the Steering Committee and will present a synthetic report of its work during the Committee meeting due to take place in May 2002.

A scientist has recently been appointed by Germany to coordinate and facilitate activities on Under-utilized and Orphan Crops at the global level. She will work from the IPGRI headquarters in Rome.

Objectives

After two and a half years of activities, the workshop aims at reviewing and discussing the work done by the Facilitation Unit in order to set up the ways to further the initiative. Based on a synthesis report prepared by the Facilitation Unit, and following the comments made by the Steering Committee in May 2001, its objectives are will be as follows:

1. To discuss the results of the Facilitation Unit, including the achievements, the problems faced and the lessons learnt from the activities relating to information on commodity chains - gathering and dissemination-, contacts with the stakeholders and assistance with the establishment of global programmes;
2. To discuss the way to move forward, especially on the institutional aspects, partnerships and funding mechanisms. This point will include commodity crops as well as UOCs;
3. To discuss and agree on the next steps to further the initiative.

Expected Outputs

The expected outputs are:

• Comments of the Stakeholders on the work done by the facilitation unit, the problems faced and the lessons learnt,
• Agreement from the various stakeholders on the way to move forward this initiative,
• Proposals for the next steps.

JF.G.

GFAR Secretariat
c/o FAO, SDR, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla - 00100 Rome, Italy
Tel. +39.06.5705.3413 Fax +39.06.5705.3898
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