Kurzbeschreibung
(Englisch)
|
The world faces a major food security challenge. Population growth requires that farmers around the globe will have to increase food production, including livestock products, by more than 50% to feed some 2 billions more people in 2020.
Agricultural growth is critical to achieving the MDGs. As the vast majority of potential beneficiaries of the MDGs depend on agriculture for a living, higher agricultural productivity is a preconditions for achieving the goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. To a large extent, poverty is the result of unproductive agriculture, as the poorest countries in the world are also those in which agriculture employs the most people.
Agriculture is a key for reducing poverty and public investment in agricultural research is crucial for food security, the development of rural areas and environmental sustainability. In this context the overall role of international agricultural research is to provide International Public Goods (IPGs), to capture local knowledge and wisdom for adaptation of solutions, to generate knowledge and technologies through experiments and studies, to mobilise knowledge and share knowledge product, and to facilitate and coordinate research activities.
The public sector has been the main source of funding for research directed at small-scale agricultural problems and, the CGIAR System is recognised as the most successful partnership of donors' harmonised funding in the public research over the last decades.
Created in 1971, the CGIAR is a strategic alliance of countries, international and regional organisations, and private foundations supporting 15 international agricultural research centers that work with national agricultural research systems, civil society organisations and the private sector. The CGIAR mobilises agricultural and environmental science to reduce poverty, foster human well-being, promote agricultural growth and protect environment.
The CGIAR's research agenda focuses on both strategic and applied research. This agenda includes the entire range of problems affecting agricultural productivity and links these problems to broader development concerns such as the comprehensive development of rural areas, institutional capacity building and strengthening of national research systems. The CGIAR system has shown an impressive track record over the past years which has been documented in recently published impact reports.
SDC’s unrestricted programme support is assigned to those Centers which have a global mandate, are focusing on result-oriented and poverty-relevant research, are responsive to the CGIAR reform process, are partnership-oriented in their strategies, are transparent in their communication strategies, are covering SDC’s thematic priority areas for development, are contributing to SDC-supported priority regions and their specific research requirements and which are actively engaged in Challenge Programs (CPs). In addition, core support may be considered to Centers that have a specific mandate in Africa to strengthen and support the MDG focus on Africa (mainly SSA).
SDC plays historically an important role in the donor community supporting the CGIAR. Switzerland firmly beliefs that agricultural growth and increased farm productivity in developing countries creates wealth, reduces poverty and hunger and protects the environment. This support strategy is regularly reviewed in the context of SDC's engagement in the CGIAR and the evaluation and monitoring system in place.
Following the commitments of the previous year, a contribution of CHF 12 million is requested to core and special programme support of the CGIAR system in 2006.
|
Projektziele
(Deutsch)
|
Ziel ist, die nachhaltige Steigerung der Nahrungsmittelproduktion, um dadurch Ernährung und Wohlstand der wachsenden Bevölkerung in Entwicklungsländern zu verbessern. Dabei werden Ernährungssicherung, Armutsbekämpfung und Erhaltung der natürlichen Ressourcen als gleich bedeutend und nur als gemeinsam lösbar betrachtet.
|
Projektziele
(Englisch)
|
The overall goal of the research carried out by the CGIAR and its partners is to improve the livelihood of low-income people in developing countries through reduced poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition, and to foster better institutions, policies, and sustainable management of natural resources of particular importance to agriculture and poor people. The goal is fully compatible with the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) and is reflected in the new priorities for CGIAR research from 2005 to 2015 which have been adopted at the Annual General Meeting in December 2005 (Annex 3).
This set of 20 research priorities organised within five priority areas is guiding Centers' research from 2006 onwards. There all directed towards increasing productivity, strengthening national systems, protecting environment, saving biodiversity and improving policies and grouped in the following areas:
1. Sustaining biodiversity
2. Producing more and better food at lower costs through genetic improvement
3. Reducing rural poverty through agricultural diversification and emerging opportunities for high value commodities and products
4. Promoting poverty alleviation and sustainable management of water, land and forest resources
5. Improving policies and facilitating institutional innovation.
The system research priorities will open up new opportunities for longer-term impact through strategic research activities. Full implementation of these system priorities for CGIAR research is expected in three to four years after a transition period. The setting of priorities at system level will help to develop a more cohesive and better-focused, high quality research program to alleviate hunger, poverty and malnutrition. In this context, an important feature of CGIAR research priorities is the understanding to undertake Research for Development that means to move Centers away from activities which do not produce International Public Goods and, secondly, to move the Centers away from development activities with no research content.
SDC recognizes that the CGIAR's comparative advantage lies in international agricultural research. In this capacity, they are one important component in a chain of knowledge generation for development and they seek to interact on par and complement efforts of development organisations in rural development and related sectors.
|
