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August 2003
Issue 7/2003
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Editorial

Pre-GFAR 2003 CSO Workshop

Keynote Addresses

From Dresden to Dakar

Roundtable Discussions

Poster Session

Side Events

Sub-plenary Session on GPPs

Stakeholder Consultations

GFAR 2003 Conference Evaluation

 

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List of Acronyms 

 

Roundtable Discussions

Roundtable Discussions

The deliberations arising from 17 roundtables during the first day of the conference were synthesized and reported to plenary on the second day. This synthesis tries to capture all the differing themes and proposals emerging from all the roundtables, for input into the GFAR Business Plan 2004-2006 and the Secretariat Plan of Work (PoW) 2004-2006. The work of GFAR, which is represented by the output of all of its stakeholders facilitated by the Secretariat under the direction of its Steering Committee, is encapsulated in a three-year business plan. The work carried out by the GFAR Secretariat supports and facilitates the work of GFAR and is prepared annually.

There was general consensus in all the roundtables on the potential value-adding role that can and should be played by GFAR in supporting ARD globally and in facilitating the work and efforts of the Regional Fora and the respective Sub-Regional Fora and NARS to develop stronger and more integrated agricultural research and development programs and projects. The regional forum in Europe (EFARD) and an emerging one in North America (NAFAR) are both set up to support ARD in developing countries. There is a need, however, for clarity of the role of GFAR as a global entity with its Secretariat vis-�-vis the roles of the RF/SRF to avoid duplication and confusion. In essence both GFAR and the Regional Fora are facilitators, and almost all ARD implementation is conducted at sub-regional and NARS levels and below.

In roundtables, participants were requested to address the following questions, and present their assessments, opinions and recommendations: What should be the goals of GFAR? What should be the strategic priority roles of GFAR? What insights does GFAR have to five key questions: (1) Should agricultural development activities include crops, livestock, forestry and fisheries sectors? (2) In what thematic areas should GFAR be promoting/doing more? (3) What are the top five priority ARD issues for GFAR? (4) Is GFAR doing enough, in terms of efforts to build capacity of RF/SRF and CSOs? (5) What strategies can GFAR employ for improving horizontal communication among stakeholders?

Goals of GFAR

  1. GFAR should be a global platform for advocacy, dialogue, information-sharing, fund-raising, policy-making and facilitating the advancement of issues of global concern in ARD, such as intellectual property rights, production of global public goods, impact of globalization (related to equity, trade and marketing), and appropriate use of biotechnology by its stakeholders
  2. GFAR should promote participatory action research mechanisms through coordination, facilitation and support of capacity-building for all of its stakeholders at community, national, regional and international levels, thereby strengthening NARS and their RF/SRF in the process.

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Strategic Priority Roles of GFAR

GFAR should be seen as a platform for representation and advocacy for ARD at the global level, especially in support of the RF/SRF. Advocacy, and fund-raising, can be attained by establishing or maintaining existing links with political groupings such as G8 and the African Union, and initiatives such as The Hunger Task Force, NEPAD, the Millennium Development Goals and the Convention on Biodiversity. Other organizations with potential for support are all Ministries of Finance, the World Bank and IMF, the Inter-Academy Council and Academies of Science, and UN agencies such as UNDP, FAO, ILO, UNEP, UNESCO and UNICEF. GFAR should also engage with civil society, and assist it to play a role in validating the relevance of priority issues on which GFAR plans to focus.

GFAR should be a forum to bring agricultural scientists and stakeholders from different regions of the world together, to focus on major issues of global importance that influence agriculture. In this context, GFAR should promote sharing of information and experiences across the regions of the world, thereby helping to strengthen the global knowledge pool and furthering the use of ICT. EGFAR can be the gateway, particularly to strengthen the RAIS of the RF/SRF.

GFAR should promote partnership development across disciplines, across institutions and organizations and across regions and continents of the world through all its stakeholders, especially bringing together the public and private sectors.

GFAR should facilitate change in agricultural research worldwide in the context of the new emerging paradigm and objectives of agricultural innovation based on a participatory approach, such as shifting from product to producer focus, from food to nutritional security, from land ownership based programs to holistic community-based programs, and from poverty alleviation to sustainable livelihoods and quality of life improvement.

GFAR should enable the expansion of agricultural research through partnerships with the community, private and public sectors.

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Strategies and Themes for GFAR

In order to guide the 17 simultaneous roundtable discussions a number of issues and questions (Box 4) were formulated by the GFAR Secretariat based on the report on gaps and the way forward from the GFAR Executive Secretary. The participants were asked to respond to each of the five questions and the results are summarized as follows:

Question 1: Should agricultural development activities include crops, livestock, forestry and fisheries sectors?

Answer: Yes, but in an integrated manner and not as independent components. Suggested strategies include: using systems concepts that integrate all these sub-sectors with technical, socio-economic, policy and institutional aspects at all levels (sub-regional, regional, national); using integrated, multidisciplinary approaches that facilitate interactions across all components, and using an agro-ecosystem approach.



Question 2: In what thematic areas should GFAR be promoting/doing more?

Answer: A wide range of responses to this question was given by roundtable participants, with an emphasis on enabling research on often currently neglected political, social and economic aspects of ARD. GFAR should endeavor to promote participatory planning at all levels to overcome the growing disconnection between research objectives and the heterogeneous needs of farmers. Participatory information-sharing and knowledge-sharing, including utilizing indigenous knowledge, should be encouraged at all levels. Similarly, GFAR should engage more actively in the inclusion of often disadvantaged actors, including women, youth and the elderly, and promote agricultural development through, for example, more study of agriculture as an integral part of the curriculum in basic education in rural areas.

GFAR should continue to focus on water, energy, health, agriculture and biodiversity (WEHAB) thematic areas, and interactions across and between them, and encourage policy debates on issues such as IPRs, biotechnologies, biodiversity and GMOs, particularly in consideration of the consequences of ARD on societies of the future.

A reassessment of current research focus is needed to take into consideration the difficulties that developing countries face with new treaties, issues and regimes such as phyto-zoo sanitary standards, food and biosafety and subsidization of agricultural produce. Related to this is a requirement for more attention to research on policy analysis, natural resources management and the environment (agro-ecosystems).

GFAR should also promote the integration of small-holder resource-poor farmers into local, national, regional and global markets including fostering regional trade and establishing a more level playing field for north-south trade. This would enable GFAR to respond to the long-term agriculture research challenges posed by increasing poverty in some areas of the world, an anticipated doubling of the population, and equity concerns with 20% of the world's population having 80% of its wealth.

As for areas in which GFAR should be doing less, it was the opinion of stakeholder participants that GFAR should reduce its involvement in implementation of research projects, and should shift its focus on single-component issues in agricultural research and development to a broader research paradigm.

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Question 3: What are the top five priority ARD issues for GFAR?

Answer: A recurring issue in the roundtable discussions was involvement of all stakeholders in setting research priorities, so that RF/SRF needs are addressed. It was also felt that GFAR should advocate decentralization of research to enhance its relevance to RF/SRF. Within that framework, the following specific issues should be given top priority by GFAR: (1) genetic resources management, biotechnology and biosafety, IPRs; (2) natural resource management and agro-ecology; (3) commodity chains and underutilized species from production to consumption with more attention to socio-economic research; (4) policy analysis and management, and institutional development; and (5) sustainable financing mechanisms.



Question 4: Is GFAR doing enough, in terms of efforts to build capacity of RF/SRF and CSOs?

Answer: Some progress has been made but more needs to be done. For example, GFAR should be seen to be proactive in creating the necessary environment for stakeholder engagement in GFAR activities, especially for the currently less involved CSOs and private sector. One suggested activity is for GFAR to develop specific criteria for certain activities, particularly for CSOs and/or private sector partnerships, and in some cases leadership (special grants could be created for this type of partnership).

GFAR should foster more attention and focus on equity issues across regions. This should include the language issue, as well as recognition of special situations across different regions.

GFAR should give special attention to promoting capacity-building, including: (1) addressing the need for a new paradigm for capacity-building; (2) strengthening both the demand and the supply sides of capacity-building; (3) promoting regional collaboration through Centres of Excellence; (4) facilitating access to advanced research facilities to capitalize on inter-regional (south-south) differences in development, modeled on Brazil's Virtual Laboratory Abroad (LABEX) approach; (5) promoting an enabling environment to reduce the brain-drain and make use of the skills of those who have left; and (6) providing an information exchange/sharing on capacity-building activities across RF, SRF and NARS.



Question 5: What strategies can GFAR employ for improving horizontal communication among stakeholders?

Answer: Good progress is being made, but more focus is required in this area. GFAR should facilitate access to telecommunications for research and development in different regions of the world. This can be done through advocacy, which should include fund-raising for this purpose, at the highest level. EGFAR should function as a gateway to strengthen links to all the RF/SRF and help build and set standards for all the RAIS. Other regional organizations should be encouraged to join GFAR, and to have their information channels linked to EGFAR. GFAR could use a client-oriented information dissemination approach, adapting information to the local context and specific needs of stakeholders.

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Box 4. Guidelines for the Roundtables

The roundtable sessions are designed to maximize interaction among the members of the different GFAR stakeholder constituencies in discussing (a) various perspectives on the contribution of agricultural research and innovation to sustainable development and (b) the emerging priorities around which new lines of action can be developed and articulated in the next GFAR Business Plan 2004-2006.

Practical Arrangements

There will be 17 simultaneous roundtable sessions. The roundtable groups will be designed in order to strike a stakeholder and regional balance, and in recognition of the need to have fairly manageable groups. This will be done through a list, which will be distributed to participants to indicate their roundtable group, its participants, venue and timing.

Roundtable Mechanics

The management of the roundtables is left to the groups themselves. To facilitate the preparation of a synthesis, the groups must nominate a facilitator and rapporteur.

  • The facilitator will ensure that the objectives are met and that all participants from different stakeholder groups will have an opportunity to express their views and opinions. It is important that he/she is able to elicit concrete recommendations from his/her group on each topic discussed
  • The rapporteur will be responsible for capturing the salient points of the discussion. He/she will have to make sure that issues raised and agreements reached are clearly documented
  • All rapporteurs will meet in the evening with the conference organizers to synthesize discussion outputs which will then be presented the following day in Plenary Session III. Facilitators may also join the synthesis session.

A set of questions is given to guide the discussions. As it will be difficult for the synthesis group to analyze and capture the richness and diversity of discussion in each roundtable, it is critical that each group follows the same guidelines and reports the results of its work in the same format.

Guide Questions Based From The Keynote Addresses

The keynote papers - one from the global, and one from the African perspective - drew conclusions from the many pressing challenges facing us from globalization, liberalized trade, population increase and the Millennium Development Goals. In this context, both papers place particular stress on public private partnerships. Has GFAR done enough to encourage more private sector participation? What more can be done to further encourage private sector involvement in GFAR programmes?

Partnerships must provide a level playing field for contributions by both developed and developing countries on issues such as trade barriers, access to science and technology, and IPRs, so what contribution can or should GFAR make to advancing debates in these spheres. WSSD stressed the WEHAB concept, which will provide action on these five key areas of sustainable development; so what contribution should GFAR make in this regard?

Since a key step to moving towards global sustainable development will be concern for Africa to solve its problems through NEPAD, we need to strongly support this initiative in concert with other new initiatives coming on stream in Africa. The NEPAD paper brings up issues in development and transfer of germplasm, particularly relevant for rice, cassava and banana. Is GFAR doing enough here and are there other commodities from the crop, livestock, forestry or fisheries that might provide big benefits from more attention ? Soil and water management are key issues, and not just in Africa; mention is also made of small-scale water harvesting techniques, soil fertility improvement through agroforestry, crop/livestock integration, use of fertilizer and minimum tillage techniques. Roles of public and private sectors, particularly FOs are mentioned concerning seed multiplication and all aspects of input supply, processing and marketing. There are many institutional and policy concerns in all of the above; and the papers also draw our attention to the more disadvantaged sectors of women and youth.

Summary of Issues Raised

  • Public-private partnerships
  • Policy issues on trade barriers, IPRs, seed multiplication and GFAR's role in WAHAB
  • Development and transfer of improved germplasm
  • Soil and water management issues, and holistic approach to farming systems, with crops, livestock, agroforestry and fisheries
  • Input supply, value added through processing and marketing; and the interface here between farmer organizations and the private sector
  • The cross-cutting issue of women and youth.

Both papers raise a number of questions on which we need to reflect, discuss, agree priorities and see where GFAR stakeholders can and should focus in the next business plan, and better collaborate in innovative global or regional partnership programmes.

Guide Questions Based from the Report of the GFAR Executive Secretary

1. As GFAR stakeholders, do we still accept and subscribe to the concept enunciated in the Global Vision formulated in GFAR 2000 that our agricultural development activities should include crops, livestock, forestry and fisheries sectors, while striving to address these components in an integrated manner. If yes, what strategies can we put in place to ensure that we develop a balanced portfolio of projects. If otherwise, why, and what strategies can we suggest to address these two neglected sectors of forestry and fisheries?

2. In view of the pressing issues in sustainable development raised by the keynote speakers which may critical in the near future, should we place more emphasis on one or the other thematic area? (What thematic areas should GFAR be promoting more of?)

3. What are the top five priority ARD issues that GFAR should be concentrating on in the next three years? How can GFAR stimulate its various stakeholders to contribute to the global knowledge pool on these issues? How can it facilitate the fruitful exchange of ideas facilitated across regions and across stakeholders, followed by effective and targeted dissemination of the outputs in order to have some impact on the global agenda for ARD.

4. In terms of our efforts to build capacity of RF/SRF and CSOs are we doing enough? What strategies, approaches and mechanisms can we, as GFAR implement to improve our performance? What can be the role of each stakeholder in contributing to this endeavor?

5. What other strategies can we adopt to further improve horizontal communication amongst the different GFAR stakeholders, and how can we further enhance the decentralized and subsidiarity aspects of EGFAR. What other services can EGFAR offer to further improve access to information and knowledge?

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