1.1. The Need for International Forestry Research
1.2. The Evolution of CIFOR
1.3. Previous Internally Commissioned External Reviews
1.4. CIFOR's Planned Evolution Over the Medium and Longer Term
This First EPMR of CIFOR was conducted 20 years after the 8th World Forestry-Congress (held in Jakarta, Indonesia) began the debate on needs for new structures and support for forestry research, particularly in developing countries. Yet the Review was conducted only 5 years after the legal formation of CIFOR within the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) System; the preceding 15 years had seen a large number of initiatives, conferences and meetings organized by a range of agencies to discuss the context of forestry research and possible mechanisms to support it internationally. Despite this history of intensive effort and political change, the needs, types and locations of forestry research are still in a state of flux as the role and control of forests themselves are changing.
At the time of the 8th World Forestry Congress in 1978 the World Bank, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and several bilateral donors began to change their forestry support policies from industrial production, often export-driven (e.g., plantations; pulp and saw mills; tropical forest logging), to the generation of national and local social and environmental benefits. Many environmental groups began to criticise traditional forest services and forest management, generally forgetting that these institutions were merely pursuing government policies towards natural resources and economic development. Professional forest management and training began to change to accommodate social and environmental objectives as finally recognized at the highest political levels through the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), its Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF, now IFF, the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests), the Conventions on Biodiversity and Climate Change, and the UNCED Principles on Forests. Increasingly staff in disciplines that did not include professional training in forestry began to play larger roles in the debates and research (including anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and researchers in hard sciences and other departments outside forestry, e.g., biochemistry, biology, engineering, entomology, geography, pathology and soil science).
The importance of trees and forests in support of global and local environments, agriculture and development, and the continuing need for research, were recognized by the CGIAR in the acceptance of the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) and the creation of CIFOR; the former had existed for over 10 years prior to its incorporation into the CGIAR System and was seeking to establish (through a new Director General and Board of Trustees) its comparative advantage and strategic objectives within the overall CGIAR Mission. From the outset CIFOR made clear its "centre without walls" nature and its determination to build a constituency of active collaborating national scientists distant from Bogor.
The Director General (DG) and senior staff of CIFOR have played, and continue to play, a leading role in the international political processes affecting forestry and forestry research. In collaboration with FAO, IUFRO and other major forestry institutions, CIFOR is leading the debate on research in the IFF process and may need to change itself in the future to reflect international decisions.
Some 15 years of discussion in a range of international fora led to the creation of CIFOR. The historical background is summarized in Appendix III. This section summarizes the development of CIFOR since the first meeting of its Board of Trustees (BoT).
CIFOR's BoT had its inaugural meeting in July 1992, in Wallingford, UK, and agreed on criteria for selection of HQ host country and Director General. Developing countries in Asia were requested by ACIAR to bid for the headquarters of CIFOR and in 1992 Indonesia was selected as the host country. In February 1993 the Board selected a DG and in May 1993 it debated CIFOR's first MTP.
Following the signing of the Host Country Agreement with the Government of Indonesia, the new DG, Professor Jeffrey Sayer, moved to Bogor in May 1993 and set up a temporary office on the site of the Agency for Forestry Research and Development (now the Forest Research and Development Agency, FORDA). Recruitment of international scientists began.
The 1994-98 MTP was the product of broad consultation during 1993 with all identifiable CIFOR stakeholders. The MTP identified 27 specific research problems to be solved in the first five years, a distillation from over 1200 topics proposed to the BoT as "priority". The list had been set against the perceived comparative advantages of the CGIAR System and a degree of prioritization was possible. However, even at the time it was recognized that this was arbitrary and dictated largely by expediency.
CIFOR therefore began in 1993 with a sub-optimal research agenda; it approached the formulation of the 1994-98 MTP in the realization that it was only by tackling a sample of the identified pressing problems would it be possible to gather the experience necessary to achieve the sort of focused research agenda which is expected of a CGIAR Centre. The first years of CIFOR's existence were, therefore, a period of intense learning. A broad range of research problems were tackled with diverse partners and through a variety of collaborative mechanisms. A significant constituency amongst the forest research community in both the south and the north was built. Effectively CIFOR conducted a large scale experiment both on "what to do" and on "how to do it". The real challenge of CIFOR's early years was not to provide answers to the 27 questions in the MTP but rather to establish and consolidate a CGIAR Centre practising the emerging type of forest science (strongly grounded in partnerships with developing country scientists) whose applications will only begin to have relevance and impact in the twenty-first century.
At the time of CIFOR's establishment an accelerating evolution was taking place in forest research to deal with the complexity and uncertainties surrounding many aspects of science related to forests. The existence of these uncertainties made it necessary for CIFOR to allocate significant resources, in its early years, to defining its own strategic position. This was achieved by inputs from CIFOR's staff, further discussions with stakeholders and a series of Internally Commissioned External Reviews (ICERs).
In September 1995 CIFOR commissioned a comprehensive external review that considered strategic issues, its organizational structure, information acquisition and dissemination, and funding and donor relations. Following this review the organizational structure was changed. The five Research Programmes managed by Directors were changed to a series of clusters (= Projects) under one Deputy Director General (DDG) Research aided by a Chief Scientist.
CIFOR's first Strategic Plan was published in 1996. It went far beyond the horizons of the 1994-98 MTP approved by the CGIAR in 1993. It is on the basis of this Strategic Plan with its portfolio of 10 Research Projects that the 1998-2000 MTP was developed. Projects have evolved in the light of experience and reflect increasing emphasis on interdisciplinary needs to enhance the probability of success. The substance of the plan is dictated by the need to adapt to changing social-political circumstances and research capacities in the recipient countries and to changing capacities and perspectives of donor organizations. In preparation for the 1998-2000 MTP, and as part of the continuing strategic planning process, CIFOR pursued an intense dialogue with National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) partners throughout the tropics. This process of joint priority setting has continued in regional meetings with NARS held in Australia, Brazil, Central African Republic, Ghana, Indonesia and South Africa.
In February 1997 CIFOR moved from its temporary offices at the Forest Research and Development Agency to permanent premises in buildings constructed by the Ministry of Forestry on a 10 hectare site at Darmaga on the outskirts of Bogor. At the end of 1997 CIFOR employed a total staff of about 100 including 40 professional staff (scientists and senior administrators), of whom some were located in Cameroon, Costa Rica and Gabon; in addition plans were well advanced for CIFOR to establish staff in Brazil and Zimbabwe to support research in South America and in southern and eastern Africa.
Since 1994, CIFOR has had six Internally Commissioned External Reviews (ICERs) that have dealt with varying themes within the overall structure, programme and management of CIFOR: -
· Progress in the implementation of CIFOR's first MTP; J R Palmer (UK); 16 August-10 September 1994.· Comprehensive strategic review of CIFOR; J Anderson (World Bank), C Binkley (University of British Columbia), E Fasehun (University of Ibadan), D O'Hare (O'Hare Associates, USA) and G Shepherd (Overseas Development Institute, UK); 15-27 August 1995.
· CIFOR's gender staffing issues and approaches; D Merrill-Sands (CGIAR); 27 - 30 May 1996.
· Role of models in CIFOR's research programme; D H Bossel (Germany), J N R Jeffers (UK) and K Rennolls (UK); 2 - 7 December 1996.
· Biodiversity issues dealt with in CIFOR; J McNeely (IUCN) and N Stork, Cooperative Research Centre for Tropical Rainforest Ecology and management, Australia; 11-16 December 1996.
· Plantations related research; J Ball (FAO), G Leach (Stockholm Environment Institute) and Zheng Rui (Ministry of Forestry, China); 18-21 March 1997.
Given that these were of different durations and quality, CIFOR management has responded adequately to all these review reports. It was in general pleased with the 1995 ICER, although it was evident in hindsight that the resources allocated for the review were perhaps too modest in terms of the demands placed upon both the team and on CIFOR's staff. In particular, a longer duration would have allowed more opportunity for interaction between the team and management.
The same comment applies to the other reviews although the Panel found them useful; it believes the Centre was wise and innovative to commission such reviews early in its existence. The Panel examined all of these external reviews and the Centre's responses to them; a summary of responses to the 1995 comprehensive review is included as Appendix IV. Points that are relevant in the context of the current EPMR are considered where appropriate in the text that follows.
Any assessment of past ICERs of CIFOR research and operations has to be seen in the light of the rapidly changing conditions, staffing and organizational structure, and programme for research. As such, the reviews have to be looked at in the context of where CIFOR was at the time of the reviews. The same, of course, can be said for the present EPMR, which deliberately has emphasized assessment of CIFOR's intended future path of growth as well as its past, rather brief history of research.
Overall, the Panel feels that the content and usefulness of the past ICERs have been highly variable. The 1995 ICER did provide some extremely useful insights for CIFOR at the time that it was undertaken - a time that was quite different from the present. CIFOR has taken on board most of the recommendations and has evolved quite far in a positive direction since that ICER was concluded. Some of the suggestions have been adopted; time and change have proven that some of the others were not particularly useful, as is to be expected in this type of dynamic situation. The main message that CIFOR has picked up from the 1995 ICER is the need to maintain flexibility, but with increasing focus on setting in place adequate processes for priority setting, and for dealing with human resource issues such as performance appraisals, salary decisions, hiring and promotion decisions. These issues all are discussed in more detail later in this report.
The long and medium term vision for CIFOR remains as described in the Strategic Plan and MTP prepared in the past two years.
There is no intention at present that CIFOR's size, structure or modus operandi should, in the medium term, depart significantly from that portrayed in the 1998 - 2000 MTP. It is stated in that MTP that no further growth is expected in headquarters staffing or expenditures and that future growth will be in collaborative science programmes with partners in the regions. Within CIFOR's management and the BoT there is a strong consensus building around the need to deploy the regional investments in a way that is consistent with the CGIAR ecoregional approach. There will be a progressive elimination of ad hoc, opportunistic components of the programme and a strengthening of in-depth, multi-disciplinary work in the focal areas described in the MTP and Strategic Plan. There will be an effort to achieve greater intensity of effort and depth on a smaller number of research activities that are globally important and that appear to have a high probability of successful outcome; it is intended to eliminate or outsource the "component" or peripheral elements of the programme that were part of the start-up phase.
There is an expectation that CIFOR will be able to achieve its objectives with a greater allocation of resources to partner scientists, more staff based in partner organizations away from Bogor and research contracted out to research institutes with a comparative advantage in specialized research areas. This has implications for the profile of scientists and the skill mix required in Bogor. The current intention of the management, apparently supported by a majority of staff, is to retain a non-hierarchical structure of self-directed teams working on specific problems each with a 4-6 year time horizon. There will be broad participation of stakeholders, partners and the BoT in determining what is to be done and an appropriate level of discretion will be given to the research teams in determining how to do it. Bogor-based scientists will have to be leading specialists in their fields but they will also need to be people with a broad global vision of natural resource issues, a capacity to communicate, an ability to work comfortably with colleagues from a diversity of disciplines, languages, cultures, ages and gender and an ability to organize their work so that it contributes optimally to the overall goals of CIFOR. Collegiality, tolerance and an ability to subordinate personal agendas for those of the organization and its partners will be fundamental to the research culture.
The BoT has always intended that the intellectual critical mass at headquarters in Bogor should be augmented by a variable population of visiting scientists, doctoral and postdoctoral students and by the conduct of a high frequency of interactive meetings, dialogues and workshops on the premises in Bogor. The only increase in the physical infrastructure that is foreseen for Bogor is in residential accommodation for this visiting population and recreational facilities to encourage interactions amongst the visitors and between them and the resident staff. The target is to have zero infrastructure away from Bogor and to depend entirely on facilities owned by and shared with CIFOR's research partners. Part of the rationale for this is that CIFOR's commitments to its partners must be time-bound and collaboration must be output driven. The profile of partner institutions will therefore need to change in response to changing research needs, just as the mixture of staff skills will have to change as the demand for science changes.
CIFOR will progressively seek greater tropical developing country partnership. This will be achieved through the BoT, through the geographic balance of staff and visiting scientists, through partnerships and through the diversification of funding sources.
