4.1. Nature of the Issues Involved
4.2. Current Activity and Future Options for the CGIAR
No matter how good the quality of land, poverty cannot be addressed effectively if a perverse set of policies keeps people from meeting their potentials and effectively keeps them from taking advantage of opportunities to better themselves economically. The poor in MAs in most cases are not poor only because of the biophysical quality of their land resources. In fact, in many MAs, there are large pockets of land that are of quite good quality for agricultural production; but institutional or policy barriers keep the poor farmers poor.
The conceptual and analytical framework developed in Chapter 4 indicated that reform of policies and institutions is one of the three major areas of need that cuts across nearly all poverty situations for those living on the MAs of the world. In the present chapter we address this area of concern in terms of a) what it involves; b) what the CGIAR currently is doing to deal with it; and c) what the Panel sees as the options for the future for intensification of CGIAR effort in this area.
It is clear that research is needed to identify the specific types of poverty situations, and the poverty processes encountered in different geographical areas. Once such information is in hand, then research is needed on the policy options that best can remove the barriers that exist in specific poverty situations. This type of information is also essential for design of other research targeted to poverty alleviation where policy or institutional constraints are expected to persist.
The Panel considers that there are three basic categories of barriers to poverty alleviation in MAs: those related to availability of knowledge (people knowing what is right and possible to do, and how to do it); those related to availability of resources (people having the ability to take action, purchase necessary inputs, and so forth); and those related to existence of incentives to take action toward poverty alleviation (people having the motivation to do it).
To deal with these constraints, governments have three basic types of policy instruments: regulatory mechanisms; fiscal and financial mechanisms; and institutional mechanisms. An effective policy and institutional reform program must deal with all three of these in the context of all the barriers encountered. A holistic approach is essential, since all the pieces have to fit together.
Examples of targeted activities here are IFPRI's research projects on: (i) sustainable development of fragile rainfed lands; and (ii) policy, technology and institutional options for arresting deforestation and resource degradation in the forest margins of the humid tropics.
The first project expects to generate knowledge about fragile land management for a wide group of users including policymakers, aid agencies, development agencies, NGOs, researchers, farmers in Central American hillsides, East African highlands, Southeast Asian hillsides, West African Sahel and dryland India working on natural resources management and in promoting sustainable land management. The second project expects to produce a set of policy, technological and institutional insights of broad applicability to the problem of managing growth and resource use in the humid forest regions of developing countries. Those likely to use the knowledge include researchers and administrators in NARS and policymakers at all levels in developing countries and policymakers in aid and lending agencies. The ultimate beneficiaries of this research are small farmers and the communities they comprise, as well as larger farming operations and populations engaged in extractive activities.
As explored in Chapter 2, in many MA poverty situations, the key bottlenecks are related to weak institutions and perverse or ineffective policies. While the CGIAR System is addressing some of these issues, they need to be emphasized more, particularly in a poverty alleviation context.
However, a fundamental problem is lack of adequate data on the location, nature, extent, and causes of rural poverty in the MAL regions of the world. Thus, the Panel sees as a first priority the development of a useful data base that will help centres (and their partners in this poverty alleviation work) identify target populations and issues, assess which comparative situations should be addressed by CGIAR work, and design approaches to the research likely will be most productive. An example of CGIAR involvement in assembling baseline data and background diagnostic studies of institutional and policy issues in a broader problem-solving context is the Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn (ASB) programme. It is an example of how the System fits within the overall picture, focusing on the international public goods aspects (through the comparative studies of sites and through work with NARS that involves spillovers). It is also an example of how poverty alleviation, community stabilization, and environmental protection objectives can be brought together in an integrated fashion. Other Systemwide initiatives also have similar objectives for international comparative analysis of specific site studies, in some cases using the ecoregional approach, which the System presently is struggling to define and operationalize (cf. the ongoing Centre Directors' study to operationalize the approach).
The Panel believes that the added emphasis and focus on poverty alleviation as a direct target for research may help to add further focus, clarification, and logic to the ecoregional approach to institutional and policy research - an internationally productive and valid activity for CGIAR involvement, expected to lead to locally relevant results useful, both in terms of development of research processes and in terms of substance.
CGIAR research should be focused on understanding the processes by which poverty can be alleviated, particularly in the context of what is possible for the MAs on which the poor live. It should compare across countries the dynamics of MAs as they move in and out of that category; it should be comparing the potential contributions of crops, livestock, fisheries, forests and trees, of policy changes, of option for value added and off-farm employment, and of technology advancements under different country and regional conditions; and it should draw process oriented conclusions from such comparative research. Centres within the System should be working on improvements in the information base on poverty; they should be working on the means for improving constraint analysis on poverty, i.e., on the means for identifying the key constraints to poverty alleviation in given rural development contexts. Such process research (strategic or applied) should involve consideration of changes over time, comparability of results across ecoregional production systems, and mechanisms for translating results through adaptive research done by NARS.
