Overview of The SANREM CRSP Program

1
Integrating Biodiversity Conservation
andAgriculture Challenges, Opportunities, and
Future Directions
2
CRSP Perspective

• Who we are and what we do?
• Importance of research in development
• Challenges
• Opportunities
• Future Directions

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______________________________________ Biodiversit
y Conservation in Agriculture Symposium Punta
Cana, DR May 31-June 2, 2006
3
Who we are and what do we do?

• We are a component of the congressionally
  mandated Title XII program that was created to
  work in partnership with USAID to achieve the
  international development goals of the United
  States.
• We conduct agricultural and NRM research in
  counties with USAID Missions to improve
  livelihoods.
• We are educators we have educated thousands of
  host country graduate students over the past 25
  years, many of whom are now leading scientists
  and policy makers.

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______________________________________ Biodiversit
y Conservation in Agriculture Symposium Punta
Cana, DR May 31-June 2, 2006
4
Who we are and what do we do?

• We build host country institutional capacity by
  creating, nurturing, and developing long-term
  institutional partnerships with host country
  institutions involved in agriculture and NRM.
• We provide US students and faculty with
  international research and development experience
  .
• We provide knowledge that is shared globally and
  benefits both developing and developed countries.
• We publish and disseminate the results of our
  research successes and failures so that others
  can easily benefit from our activities.

__________________________________________________
______________________________________ Biodiversit
y Conservation in Agriculture Symposium Punta
Cana, DR May 31-June 2, 2006
5
Importance of research in development

• The developing world is littered with well
  intentioned but failed development projects.
• Experts estimate that over 50 of the foreign
  donor water supply and sanitation projects in
  developing countries fail within 5 years.
• I dont know the statistics, but I would assume
  that failure rates are similar or possibly higher
  for agricultural and NRM development projects.
• We are not talking about millions of wasted
  dollars but tens of billions of dollars and the
  associated lost opportunity costs.

__________________________________________________
______________________________________ Biodiversit
y Conservation in Agriculture Symposium Punta
Cana, DR May 31-June 2, 2006
6
Importance of research in development

• Why are failure rates so high?
• Developers have been slow to learn from and to
  share the knowledge generated through their
  unsuccessful experiments.
• Focus on the short term and insufficient in
  country capacity for long term management.
• Properly designed research identifies the causes
  of failure and success, and the dissemination of
  this knowledge improves future success rates.
• Research provides new tools for development and
  identifies the conditions under which these tools
  are likely to be useful.
• Research should be a component of every
  significant development project, unless it is
  based on proven and accepted technologies and has
  little risk of failure, so that we can learn from
  the success or failure of the project and improve
  future project success rates.

__________________________________________________
______________________________________ Biodiversit
y Conservation in Agriculture Symposium Punta
Cana, DR May 31-June 2, 2006
7
CRSP Challenges

• CRSP research costs increase due to inflation
• CRSP funding decreases in real and inflation
  adjusted terms.
• There is a perception that we are being asked to
  do more with less.
• Better communicating what we do and how it can be
  used to improve agricultural development and NRM
  (including biodiversity and other ecosystem
  services).
• Biodiversity and ecosystem services research is a
  long-term proposition. Long-term research
  support and horizons are essential.

__________________________________________________
______________________________________ Biodiversit
y Conservation in Agriculture Symposium Punta
Cana, DR May 31-June 2, 2006
8
CRSP Opportunities

• Researching and documenting the causes of
  agricultural and NRM development project success
  and failures.
• Improving the success rates of traditional
  development projects by widely disseminating
  knowledge on the causes of project success and
  failure.
• These research/evaluation components would be a
  small portion of project funding but the payoffs
  could be huge in terms of future cost efficiency.
• Research/evaluation methodology must be a
  component of project design.
• Ag/NRM impact biodiversity/ecosystems services
  we are part of the solution.

__________________________________________________
______________________________________ Biodiversit
y Conservation in Agriculture Symposium Punta
Cana, DR May 31-June 2, 2006
9
Future Directions

• Biodiversity Conservation Code research is an
  appropriate for some CRSPs and CRSP activities
  and impractical for others.
• Successful and sustainable agriculture and NRM is
  dependent on soil quality/soil biodiversity.
• At a minimum, CRSPs need to insure that the
  technologies we develop support and improve soil
  biodiversity.
• We need to pay more attention to carbon
  sequestration.

__________________________________________________
______________________________________ Biodiversit
y Conservation in Agriculture Symposium Punta
Cana, DR May 31-June 2, 2006
10
Future Directions

• We need more of a systems approach in some of our
  activities that includes biodiversity
  conservation and ecosystems services.
• There will always be new research and capacity
  building needs. We must maintain and increase
  our host country building activities so that some
  day we are not needed (as much).
• We need to share our knowledge via public domain
  journals/sources.

__________________________________________________
______________________________________ Biodiversit
y Conservation in Agriculture Symposium Punta
Cana, DR May 31-June 2, 2006