Earlier commentary identified the role that poverty alleviation and protecting the environment played as TAC assessed the options presented by the centres. It is important to note that the two goals are not independent, that there are interactions between the two. First, as many have noted, poverty is the agent driving much of the degradation of the agricultural environment and, in the longer term, in greater or lesser measure, the state of that environment will, through its impact on productivity, affect efforts to alleviate poverty.
Centres submitted their proposed 1996 budgets to TAC in early March 1995 It should be recalled that this is several months earlier than in the past and reflects the changes in scheduling for CGIAR events agreed to at ICW'94. The funding requested exceeded the 1995 budgets by some US$ 41 million. Some of this pertained to centre activities only. some to Systemwide or ecoregional activities. Consider first the centre budgets only.
Centres requested US$ 21 million more in 1996 than in 1995, And even this does not fully reflect the demand for financial resources among the centres as their requests were significantly influenced, and clearly limited, by the guidelines laid out by TAC and the CGIAR Secretariat. The guidelines reflect an earlier decision to base the 1996 proposals on the 1995 allocations (themselves based on the 1994-98 Medium-Term Plans, see Annex I for an overview of these plans). Two considerations shaped that decision. The first was that the System has not yet finished the analysis required to translate general interests, e.g., in natural resources, to specific allocations, e.g., to water quality, and then on to new medium-term plans (but see Section 4). The second was that, even so, the TAC should be receptive to requests that are clearly congruent with changes in the Group's priorities or with changes in science, with their implications for what is possible.
Meanwhile, as a part of the process of renewal, efforts were made by the CGIAR Chair to ensure that the distinction between core and complementary activities would become a programmatic distinction and not one based on the source of funding. Therefore, and given agreement by those funding the activity, core like activities funded through special projects, were transferred from the complementary to the core programme where they became additions to the planning envelope.
Before reflecting on the various tables which follow, it is appropriate to relate the discussion to that on the Research Agenda as it was endorsed at the Lucerne Meeting. The Lucerne Paper was based on five undertakings: increasing productivity; protecting the environment; saving biodiversity; socioeconomic, public policy and public management research; and fortifying NARS. It was argued there that each undertaking relates directly to the overarching goals of the System. The following figure gives some insights into that assertion.
The discussion here is built around 12 sets of activities, each of which can be related to one or the other of the five undertakings. These make up the first 12 columns of the matrices presented in the following tables. For brief descriptions of the 12 activities, see Appendix II.
Returning now to the tables, the various changes between the 1995 and 1996 core-funded, centre activities are reflected there. Table 1, column 2 shows the 1995 budgets allocated to each centre exclusive of the amounts allocated to support efforts in Systemwide or regional work. Column 3 shows the amounts added to the 1995 budgets because of developments in science or because of perceived congruence with the expressed interests of the Group. Column 4 shows the amounts transferred from complementary to core budgets for each centre.
Table 1. 1996 Research Agenda
Explanations of proposed changes in 1996
|
|
1995 Financing Plan Base |
Changes in 1996 |
|
|
Program Increases |
Reclassification of Complementary |
||
|
CIAT |
27.51 |
|
|
|
CIFOR |
7.6 |
|
|
|
CIMMYT |
26.5 |
0.2 |
1.0 |
|
CIP |
16.21 |
|
2.8 |
|
ICARDA |
17.6 |
|
|
|
ICLARM |
5.8 |
1.0 |
2.5 |
|
ICRAF |
16.2 |
0.6 |
|
|
ICRISAT |
26.9 |
|
0.2 |
|
IFPRI |
9.5 |
|
5.0 |
|
IIMI |
7.6 |
|
|
|
IITA |
23.31 |
|
|
|
ILRI |
25.1 |
|
|
|
IPGRI |
11.9 |
1.0 |
|
|
IRRI |
29.4 |
|
1.8 |
|
ISNAR |
6.8 |
|
2.9 |
|
WARDA |
7.0 |
|
0.4 |
|
Total |
264.9 |
2.8 |
16.6 |
1 Excludes external review costs.
On this last point, the transfer from special project to core activities, it should be noted that outcomes emerged from discussions among centres, TAC and the CGIAR Secretariat aimed at identifying activities pertaining to important international public goods. While a considerable amount was transferred, a larger amount remains in special projects associated with complementary activities. Subsequent discussion might reveal other activities that should be transferred. What is not transferred, of course, will be that which does not meet the criterion, i.e. that does not pertain to important international public goods.
While 10 centres requested increases of various kinds in their centre core budgets (note that we defer until later discussion of requests for support of Systemwide and ecoregional activities) six centres maintained their 1995 levels. Each budget request was reviewed in terms of the criteria described above. (Commentaries on individual center core budgets is treated in Annex III.)
Consider now the proposals for Systemwide and ecoregional work. TAC received 20 such submissions for 1996. Given the myriad of proposals and the variability that appeared to exist among the concepts and terms employed, TAC sought to establish clear principles and criteria to underpin its analysis and deliberations. Its pursuit was notably assisted by the report of an inter-centre consultation held in Rome in December 1994 at IPGRI. TAC suggests that the term Systemwide Initiative refer to the start-up (the initiation) or design phase of an ecoregionally or globally focused activity, while the term Systemwide Programme refers to work already underway. These are justified on the basis of, or established to achieve, one or more of the following: to take advantage of potential complementarities among centres, to avoid duplication of activities among centres, to encourage specialization among the centres involved, to take advantage of economies of scale in activities, or to spread costs more widely.
TAC's rationale for recommending an activity, whether "initiative' or "programme", was based upon the criteria of the previous paragraph. As well, TAC pressed on the question of whether the value added through a Systemwide effort, over and above what could be expected through individual centre activities, would cover the accompanying increase in transaction costs.
TAC recommended support for 15 Systemwide initiatives (dealing with the design phase) and programmes (dealing with implementation) for a total of US$ 10.8 million during 1996, including -albeit with caveats - programmes on livestock and water management research (see Table 2). TAC had hoped to incorporate in this analysis the findings of the CGIAR task forces on sustainable agriculture and the ecoregional approach. These reports reached TAC too late to be fully reflected in the 1996 deliberations. They will, however, be taken into account fully at the July TAC meeting, which is focused on planning for the future.
Work in support of Systemwide programmes is also supported directly out of centre budgets, e.g., in the case of the "rice/wheat" programme both CIMMYT and IRRI invest from core funds in the coordinated activity. So as to get a complete picture of the amounts committed through Systemwide programmes at this time, TAC asked the centres to report on such amounts under one or more of the relevant programmes and to deduct the same amount from the appropriate place among their centre oriented activities, e.g., a transfer from the Biodiversity column to the Systemwide Programme on Genetic Resources. The sum of those two sets of numbers - the first reflecting Systemwide activity funded through a lead centre and the second reflecting direct centre investments in Systemwide programmes - is reported for Systemwide Programmes in Table 3 on page 9. In its final column, Table 3 reports the amount committed to the design phase of Systemwide work.
Erratum to "The 1998 CGIAR Research Agenda"
Document No. SDR/TAC: IAR/95/10
Table 2. Systemwide Programs and Initiatives: 1996 Recommended Funding
|
|
Convening Center |
Allocation ($ m) |
|
Systemwide Programs |
||
|
Genetic Resources |
IPGRI |
1.60 |
|
Rice/Wheat (Asia) |
ICRISAT |
0.20 |
|
Latin American Hillsides |
CIAT |
- |
|
Alternatives to Slash and Bum |
ICRAF |
0.50 |
|
Sustainable Mountain Agriculture |
CIP |
0.15 |
|
Subtotal |
|
2.45 |
|
Systemwide Initiatives |
||
|
Soil, Water, Nutrient Management |
CIAT |
0.30 |
|
Coastal Environment |
ICLARM |
0.30 |
|
Desert Margins (Africa) |
ICRISAT |
0.50 |
|
Research Indicators |
IFPRI |
0.67 |
|
Property Rights |
IFPRI |
0.20 |
|
Integrated Pest Management |
IITA |
0.20 |
|
Humid Tropics/Inland Valley (Africa) |
IITA |
0.50 |
|
Humid/Subhumid Asia |
IRRI |
0.70 |
|
Subtotal |
|
3.37 |
|
Tentative Allocation to Proarams/lnitiatives1 |
||
|
Global Livestock Program |
ILRI |
4.00 |
|
Global Water Program |
IIMI |
1.00 |
|
Unallocated Reserve |
|
|
|
Subtotal |
|
5.002 |
|
Total Systemwide Programs and Initiatives |
|
10.822 |
1 The tentative allocations to Global Livestock and Water Programs are in anticipation of the development of suitable proposals during the course of 1995 for activities in 1996.2 TAC also expects that suitable proposals for up to US$ 2.5 million will emerge from other areas during the next few months.
For convenience the five programmes are briefly described below Again, recall that these descriptions apply to work already on the ground involving more than one centre in an agreed programme of work that seeks to exploit the advantages of each participating centre.
The 'Alternative to Slash and Bum Agriculture Programme' is a worldwide research and development project convened by ICRAF with two main targets: (i) reclamation of already deforested and degraded lands into sustainable production systems; and (ii) prevention of further deforestation.The Systemwide genetic resources programme includes all the individual centres' work aimed at long-term conservation of genetic resources, in addition to the specific activities for this programme of the Convening Centre, IPGRI. This does not preclude individual centres from having their own genetic resource units, to support their germplasm enhancement and breeding work.
The Latin American hillsides programme is a collaborative venture now featuring CIAT and CIMMYT to improve farming systems, especially those involving maize, in the hillsides of Latin America.
The mountain agriculture programme for which CIP is the Convening Centre, aims at promoting the research base for sustainable mountain development in the Andean region, the East African highlands and the Himalayas region. ICRAF participates in this programme, while ICIMOD is intending to do so
The rice-wheat programme aims to form an alliance of scientific and technical experts of NARS with experts from IARCs to address major issues of sustainable productivity in rice-wheat based farming systems in the Indo-Gangetic Plain. ICRISAT is the Convening Centre, while IRRI and CIMMYT are the two lead centres involved. They are joined by national programmes of the region.
What emerges from the preceding discussion is a matrix (see Table 3) with 18 columns of which 12 columns pertain to centre activities, 5 to the Systemwide programmes described immediately above, and a final column pertaining to initiatives. The last column entitled "research programme design" refers to the nine initiatives which are currently in the design phase and to which a total of US$ 4.2 million has been assigned. The last row labelled 'others' provides information on contributions by others, where available, to Systemwide programmes. These refer mostly to investments by NARS.
Table 3. 1996 CGIAR Research Agenda ($ million)
Because of the amounts of money involved and the modus operandi employed, we want to give extra attention to the Systemwide livestock initiative. TAC has strongly endorsed this initiative and has recommended allocation of up to US$ 4 million to this work during 1996, ILRI is using an innovative procedure to allocate the resources, featuring a process of competitive bidding by ecoregional consortia. and evaluation through an external peer review mechanism. While it is expected that parts of the programme will be implemented during 1996, selection of projects will not occur until end 1995. Given that the work is still in the design phase, it is not possible to be more specific about Systemwide efforts in this matrix beyond that part included under column 18 and that part attributed to ILRI in its core activities.
As it is hoped that some of the programmes currently under design will be implemented during 1996, TAC recommends a fund of US$ 2.5 million to be allocated after TAC review of proposals. TAC also recalls the high priority it assigns to a Systemwide initiative on water management to which it tentatively allocates US$ 1 million. Later during 1995, IIMI is organizing a major planning conference which is expected to result in a firm research programme starting in 1996. Further proposals are, for example, also expected from ICARDA on an ecoregional programme for the WANA region, and from CIAT on an ecoregional programme for Tropical America.
Annex III provides an overview of TAC's commentaries on each programme and budget proposal that was submitted for consideration at TAC 66.
Table 4 illustrates the share of CGIAR core resources allocated to each of the programmes during 1996. Overall, it seems that in comparison with TAC's 1992 recommendations on CGIAR priorities, the System is further expanding its efforts in protection of the environment (15 versus 10%), and in biodiversity (10 versus 8%). It has, however, reduced its involvement in germplasm enhancement and breeding (from 22 to 20%), in production systems work (from 29 to 23%), and in fortifying national programmes (from 20 to 18%). It should be noted here, however, that much of the reduced investment in centre programmes on production systems is now being undertaken through the Systemwide and ecoregional programmes (5%). The allocation to socio-economic, policy and management research is equivalent to TAC's 1992 recommendation (11%).
Table 4. CGIAR: Funding Allocations (in $ million and percentages)
The increase in the work on natural resources management is notable as is the decrease in the work on production systems. Taken together the two are nearly on the TAC recommendation endorsed by the Group in 1993, Some wonder about the two, whether perhaps the rapid rise in work on natural resources might not simply reflect relabelling old wine in new bottles. While TAC has not studied the possibility in detail, it has noted that the kind of work undertaken in the one is quite different from that in the other with work on natural resource management aimed at different questions, involving longer periods of time, and in relying on different forms of statistical analysis than does the usual work on production systems.
Table 4 also reflects the changes that have taken place between 1991 and 1996 in the profile of centre and System activities. Here the changes are really quite notable, indeed a testimony that the System is responsive to the changing needs of the Group. While germplasm improvement has stayed near its 1991 level, production systems has declined notably with the result that work aimed at mostly productivity themes has declined by 12 percentage points, or over 20 percent. Meanwhile investments in protecting the environment have increased by 8 percentage points and over 100 percent, that on biodiversity is up by 4 percentage points and nearly 70 percent, while that on policy is up by 22 percent. Balancing that off is the reduction in fortifying NARS by 6 percentage points and 25 percent. Viewed from a slightly different angle, note that a change of one percentage point is a change in funding of roughly US$ 3 million. TAC concludes that there is little evidence to support a perception that the "System "is unresponsive to changing needs.
