Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in lowincome countries'

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Sustainable Agriculture and Global Issues
(SAGI) Lunch meeting, 8 september 2006Den Haag
Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in
low-income countries. Lessons learned the way
ahead
Reimund P. Roetter (project coordinator
SAGI) Soil Science Centre, Wageningen UR With
contributions from Marijke Kuiper, Gerdien
Meijerink, Jan Verhagen and Herman van Keulen
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Contents

• Introduction to SAGI

• Characteristics of DLO-IC Theme 2 projects

• Major lessons learned

• The way ahead ?

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Global local links
Climate change
Environmental agreements/ urbanization..
International trade
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Contributing to Millennium Development Goals

• 1 Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger
• 7 Ensuring environmental sustainability
• 8 Developing global partnerships for development

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Objectives of SAGI

• To draw lessons from the DLO-IC projects to
  stimulate discussions on and support
  identification of a future research agenda
• To contribute to future thinking about the
  contribution of agriculture to
• Poverty alleviation
• Natural resources conservation.
• Increasing food security

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Approach

• .Review of project documents (plans, outputs,
  follow-ups)
• Questionnaires to project coordinators and
  members of theme 2 projects
• Workshop with LNV and project members
  (scientists) joint evaluation
• Use of any other information provided by
  different stakeholders (North and South)
• Review literature ( future scenarios) to
  discuss future development-oriented research
  issues
• .. Write-up 6 chapters summary (Brochure)

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DLO-IC Theme 2 - Expected output

• Multi-stakeholder platforms established for each
  case
• study region

• Biophysical potentials, resource use and
  environmental
• risk assessed for identifying alternative
  technology
• options

• Farmers behavior analysed and innovative farming
  systems designed

• Decision support tools for land use scenario
  analysis to examine impact of technical
  policy changes at farm and regional levels

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Lessons from individual projects (SAGI synthesis)

• Scientific innovation (i) tools, processes
• Partnerships (i) science networks
• (ii) SH platf/impl coalitions
• Policy-relevance (i) governments South
• (ii) LNV multilateral fora
• Capacity building (i) individual, formal/on-job
• (ii) institutional

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LESSONS LEARNED (I)

• Lesson 1 Disciplinary science provides the basis
• Lesson 2 Solutions and new insights require
  multi-disciplinary and multi-scale approaches
• Lesson 3 Reinforce focus on resource use
  efficiency
• Lesson 4 Rural development is not equal to
  agricultural development

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LESSONS LEARNED (II)

• Lesson 5 Crucial decision level farm household
  (acknowledging that higher decision levels are
  also important for sustainable practices)
• Lesson 6 Agriculture and on-farm and off-farm
  biodiversity are tightly linked
• Lesson 7 Interaction (joint learning) increases
  impact
• Lesson 8 Invest in involvement of stakeholders
  (especially the less vocal and powerful)

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SAGI BOOK CHAPTERS

• 1) Problem statement
• 2) Policy issues in historical perspective
• 3) Food security
• 4) Agriculture and Environment
• 5) Rural Livelihoods
• 6) Lessons learned and the way ahead
• Annexes I and II (summary projects phase I and
  questionnaires on projects, phase II of DLO-IC)

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Number of Undernourished People in the Developing
World, 1990-92 and 1999-2001
817
798
FAO 2003
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IAASTD, CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Development Sustainability Goals

Decreased hunger and poverty

Improved nutrition and human health

Sustainable economic development

Enhanced livelihoods and equity
Strategies and interventions

Environmental sustainability
Strategies and interventions
Indirect Drivers
Direct Drivers

Economic (demand, markets,..)

Availability, management of

Demographic (urbanization,..)
natural resources, inc. land and
Strategies and Interventions

Education, Culture, Ethics
water, and biodiversity
Strategies and Interventions

Sociopolitical

Climate change

Infrastructure

Labor

Science and Technology

Energy

Agricultural
KST

AKST use
Access, control distribution
Research Policy
-
Extension / Dissemination
IPR
-
Credit/Capital/Assets
Local institutional
-
Access/Knowledge markets
generation of AKST
-
Inputs, such as agro
-
chemicals
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Key challenges to address in a new research
programme 2006-2010 and the MDGs

• With higher wealth and meat consumption food
  demand will increase gt agricultural systems
  face loss of/reduction in ecosystem services
• Urbanization, globalization and economic growth
  will aggravate competition for scarce land and
  water resources
• Globalization will produce winners and losers
  need to determine best national/ local poverty
  reduction strategies
• Next to land use change/soil degradation, climate
  change will pose an extra threat to the
  resilience and adaptive capacity of
  agro-ecosystems

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Research challenges societal demandsPossible
foci within the three key functions

• 1. Provision of affordable and safe food for
  active and healthy lives
• -- possible Focus Climate change and food
  security
• 2. Provision /Maintenance of environmental
  services
• -- possible Focus Globalization and environment
  Competing claims for scarce resources
• 3. Improving rural livelihoods /provision of
  exit strategies
• -- Rural livelihood strategies in low-income
  countries /less favoured areas