5.1. Adjusting to a Changing Environment
5.2. Balance across CIAT
5.3. CIAT's Overall Impact
5.4. Assessment
Since the Brundtland Report 'Our Common Future' in 1987, increased awareness of environmental damage has galvanized the international community to serious discussion and some action. Environmental issues were an important focus for UNCED in 1992 and feature strongly in Agenda 21 and related international conventions on climate change, biological diversity and desertification. CIAT has been a leader in recognizing that agricultural technologies, when well-chosen and managed, can redress threats such as global warming, loss of biodiversity and topsoil, water pollution and, importantly, population migration. CIAT's 1991 Strategic Plan, published prior to UNCED in 1992, presents a research vision for the sustainable improvement of agricultural productivity as an important contributor to solving these burgeoning problems. In planning a balance between commodity improvement and research on natural resources management, CIAT was in the vanguard of adjustment to the wave of environmental awareness sweeping the world. The Panel commends the Centre for that vision and initiative.
Funding for the CGIAR System began to decline in real terms in 1990. While the decline affected all the IARCs, it has hit CIAT particularly severely, catching the Centre at the start of a radical reorganization. CIAT had planned for expanding funding, attracted by its innovative vision, to help manage its transformation from commodities to a research portfolio balancing these with natural resources management.
Falling funds were accompanied by donors making new demands, in part to gain leverage in their own domestic budget processes and preserve their CGIAR contributions, but also from a sense of the need to transform the system to meet new global and financial priorities. Directions were clear:
· Increase research on agricultural sustainability and environmental issues
· Improve efficiency:- remove duplication across centres
- exploit synergies on themes researched by more than one IARC
- widen partnerships to improve institutional coherence in addressing priority problems.
The CGIAR System has moved strongly to meet these demands. But the historical autonomy of the IARCs, and lack of mechanisms for systemwide operational planning, brought transaction costs. These have been compounded by two other developments. First, the new CGIAR perspective on NARS reaches beyond government research organizations (the traditional IARC partners), to the universities, NGOs and the private sector, all of which can increasingly play a role in developing country research. Second, ecoregional initiatives make demands on a range of in-country institutions from policy making to a variety of line ministries (e.g., environment, forestry and irrigation), to embrace the dimensions of sustainability beyond agricultural productivity. So in addition to the funding crisis, the pace, scale, diversity and complexity of the ecoregional and systemwide initiatives being pursued has further diverted managers from the internal needs of their centres. This has had particularly severe implications for CIAT.
The funding decline from 1991 precipitated massive efforts by CIAT's management and staff to find new sources to finance the rebalancing of programmes and the expansion of partnerships. In addition, CIAT has been assuming leadership of, or participating in, a growing number of systemwide initiatives. The effort these require has further diverted management's attention from the needs of internal reorganization and a change of culture. The number of initiatives, the need to interact with other centres Systemwide, and the transaction costs of negotiating agreements and plans with partner institutions varying tremendously in their ability to act and react, has proved almost overwhelming. There is a need to limit this burden for the moment and concentrate on CIAT's internal reorganization and the linkages required to operate its programmes effectively.
5.2.1. Programme Balance
5.2.2. Regional Balance
5.2.3. Women in Agriculture
As outlined in Chapter 1, with the publication of the 1991 Strategic Plan CIAT undertook a major reorientation of its programmes. The vision was to build up four natural resources management programmes to balance the existing commodity programmes. Despite declining funding, CIAT management retained that vision and speeded the downsizing of the commodity programmes releasing funds to expand natural resources management research. The constant changes over the five-year period, and the ongoing evolution of the new CIAT, preclude a proper assessment of Programme balance at this time. The staffing pattern from 1989 to 1994 is shown in Table 5.1.
The Bean and Rice Programmes have borne the brunt of the senior staff cuts. Most of the staff reductions in the Tropical Forages Programme have been transfers to the Tropical Lowlands Programme. Despite these heavy cuts, CIAT has fallen short of its 1991 Strategic Plan targets for the expansion of natural resources management research. The Panel's discussion on a future strategy for the evolution of natural resources management research is in Chapter 3.
Table 5.1: Staffing Pattern 1989 - 1994 Senior Staff
|
Operations |
1989 |
1990 |
1991 |
1992 |
1993 |
1994 |
|
Research Programmes | ||||||
|
Beans |
29 |
27 |
27 |
23 |
19 |
17 |
|
Cassava |
14 |
13 |
12 |
12 |
14 |
13 |
|
Rice |
8 |
8 |
9 |
7 |
6 |
4.7 |
|
Tropical Forages |
18 |
17 |
18* |
9.5 |
10.5 |
9.3 |
|
Forest Margins |
- |
- |
- |
1 |
3 |
- |
|
Hillsides |
- |
- |
- |
2 |
3 |
5.6 |
|
Savannas/Tropical Lowlands |
- |
- |
- |
6.5 |
6.5 |
7.4 |
|
Research Units | ||||||
|
Biotechnology |
2 |
2 |
2 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
|
Virology |
2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
|
Genetic Resources |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
- |
|
Land Use |
- |
- |
- |
2 |
4 |
5 |
|
Impact Assessment |
- |
- |
- |
- |
1 |
1 |
|
Research Management | ||||||
|
Research Management |
2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
|
TOTAL RESEARCH |
76 |
72 |
73 |
71 |
75 |
70 |
*The Tropical Pastures Group was split into Tropical Forages and Savannahs.
CIAT management established an Impact Assessment Unit in 1992 with terms of reference which included ex ante impact studies. The Unit is working towards the use of these studies in priority setting and acknowledges that refinement of the model being used will be an ongoing process. Calculations from the model do allow a comparison of expected benefits from each programme as a basis for comparison of research investments across programmes. The data suggest, as was the case in a similar exercise the 1989 EPR did, that the Bean Programme offers more modest returns to investment compared to the others. But while such comparisons carry conviction, they provide only part of the information needed for decision-making. The criteria embraced by such economic models remains limited. For example, such models do not weigh the relative strengths of NARS, nor the availability of alternative suppliers, both important factors in deciding CIAT's priorities. Similarly, externalities as a sustainability issue are not fully captured, nor is the important purpose of ecoregional programmes in evolving an effective approach for NARS to attack the sustainable improvement of productivity.
A working group on priority setting has recently reported to CIAT management. The report identifies criteria important to priority setting for CIAT and its stakeholders, including those exampled above. It will facilitate evaluation across the Programmes in the future. It also suggests a process which the Centre might follow in the future setting of priorities, including a quarterly routine for the comparison of project proposals to ensure that only those of greatest importance to the Centre's clients go forward to donors. The Panel commends CIAT for its efforts to improve priority setting and for a process which is transparent and involves scientists.
While the preponderance of CIAT's resources are applied within the LAC Region, its global mandates for cassava, tropical forages and beans take CIAT's activities outside the region. Table 5.2 shows the level of programme investments for each region, and includes the allocation of research expenditure at CIAT headquarters on projects to benefit the region.
Both Beans and Cassava Programmes show heavy expenditure for Africa, with the Bean Programme having 7 staff outposted there in 1994 and cassava one. Much of the cassava research done at headquarters has an African focus and is implemented in Africa by IITA with its African regional mandate for cassava. Data on expected benefits is only available for some regions in which CIAT is invested and so is inadequate for analysis of programme balance at the regional level. From available data, Beans and Cassava both show expected benefits in Africa at about 50% of the level for LAC. This suggests an overinvestment in beans in Africa though benefits for the poor, weak NARS and the fact that beans are the major source of protein for east and central Africa provide significant weighting in favour of the investment. Equivalent programme data are not available for 1990. The 1991 core fund allocations for CIAT as a whole show 17% to Africa and 8% to Asia, this total of 25% is close to the 27% percentage allocation of expenditure outside LAC in 1994.
Outposted staff were reduced from 25 senior scientists in 1989 to 18 in early 1995. Bean Programme outposted staff went down from 16 to 8 in total, and from 12 to 7 in Africa. Two additional staff were outposted in the Hillsides Programme. The number of junior scientists associated with these senior staff remained similar, at 83 in 1989 and 85 in 1994.
CIAT's country operations have consistently included participatory adaptive research in farmers' fields in collaboration with NARS and NGOs. This tradition has brought CIAT scientists the understanding that an effective farmer-back-to-farmer sequence ensures relevance, even in laboratory research. In part, this tradition gave the Centre the confidence to embark on ecoregional programmes. While it is clear that such local specific research in farmers' fields is to the potential comparative advantage of NARS, NGOs and the private sector, few of these institutions have that capability as yet and the Centres must continue to build it up, both by example and through training.
Table 5.2: Commodity Programme Regional Expendituresa in 1994
|
Region |
Cassava |
Beans |
Tropical Forages |
Rice & N.R.M.b |
Total |
|
LAC |
2,533 (53.6) |
3,087 (54.2) |
2,230 (74.7) |
6,923 (100.0) |
14.773 (72.53) |
|
Africa |
1,355 (28.7) |
2,584 (45.3) |
182 (6.0) |
- |
4,121 (20.23) |
|
Asia |
834 (17.7) |
28 (0.5) |
613 (20.3) |
- |
1,475 (7.24) |
|
Total |
4,722 |
5,699 |
3,025 |
6,923 |
20,369 |
|
CIAT Expenditure % |
(23.2) |
(28.0) |
(14.8) |
(34.0) |
(100.00) |
a. Expenditures are expressed in thousands of US$ Dollars. Numbers in parentheses indicate percentage of Programme expenditure.b. Natural Resources Management.
CIAT has been a pioneer in articulating women's roles in agriculture, another area in which the international community has made increasing demands over the last decade. In late 1991, a working group made recommendations to CIAT management on gender analysis for research and training at CIAT. These included the need to:
· sensitize staff to gender issues in agriculture
· strengthen in-house capacity to carry out client-oriented research, including gender analysis
· create external capacity through training
· strengthen the evidence on the importance of understanding the role of gender in agriculture.
The Centre deserves credit for: highlighting the role women play; the development of participatory approaches to research planning which allow full weight to whoever takes important agricultural decisions; and its work in demonstrating how organizing local farmers, including women's groups, gives poorer people a voice in research and development planning, and gives them ownership of programme implementation.
CIAT's participatory approach is being applied throughout Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, and training with materials from CIAT is revolutionising the way rural research and development is managed. CIAT's Bean Programme has used similar techniques to pioneer farmer involvement, particularly that of women farmers, in the process of varietal selection, with outstanding results. As elaborated elsewhere, government surveys show improved materials from CIAT present on almost half the farms in Rwanda, where beans are a women's crop. Similarly CIAT's Cassava Programme has outstanding successes in processing cassava through local associations in Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador, many of them based on women producers.
CIAT does not attempt to measure the impact of all technologies to which it contributes in development at the farm level. The cost of such a comprehensive assessment would be prohibitive. Further, the nature of the technology development, adoption and diffusion process is such that the full impact of a research finding is often best seen some 20 years later, so it is impossible in 1995 to measure the impacts from research done by CIAT's programmes since the 1989 EPMR.
Over the last five years the Centre has accelerated its measurement of both expected future impact, and the impact of CIAT's earlier research. It has assessed the impact of CIAT's research on consumer prices for food, on farmers' incomes, on the way other institutions (particularly national ones) do their work, and finally on science. The culture of the IARCs in general, and CIAT is no exception, is that scientists strive to see their results in farmers fields', scientific impact being regarded as a by-product.
Examples of impact in these categories can be found in the Centre's publications. CIAT estimates that, by 1990, consumers in LAC had benefitted from a 24 % decrease in the real price of rice and a 5 % decrease in that of beans as a result of CIAT research. Also in 1990, the internal rate of return (IRR) to CIAT's historical investments in rice research in LAC was calculated as 69%, and to bean research in LAC as 16%. A later study estimated that bean varieties either from CIAT, or based on CIAT material, are grown on 705,000 ha, and the extra benefits brought a 24.5% return to the investments in the Bean Programme over the period 1973-92. National-scale case studies of the adoption of improved climbing beans in Rwanda and cassava in Thailand have been completed since the last review as well as more localised adoption studies in a number of countries.
A novel 1994 contribution is an ex ante assessment of returns on research to prevent soil loss in LAC hillsides. This showed an IRR of 53% on the adoption of erosion control barriers, and an IRR of 34% for improved fallow. The model showed rapid and high returns from erosion barriers used to reduce downstream sedimentation where this is already an existing problem. The analysis highlights the importance of these externalities which puts a premium on the selection of sites where both on- and off-farm impacts of natural resources management interventions can be measured. A benchmark for this analysis is the fact that in the year 1994, 20% of the farmers in the Hillsides pilot microwatershed in Cauca, Colombia, established erosion barriers.
Less obvious are the impacts on institutions through training and collaborative research. Yet the sheer scope of CIAT's networking and consortia activities, and the enthusiasm of the NARS for CIAT's continuing participation, even after formal devolution of networks, speaks well for the Centre. Scientific impact is a secondary consideration in CIAT but is an indicator for which observers of a research institution have expectations. Perhaps the most currently topical impact on science is the better understanding of the potential for carbon sequestration by improved pasture forages, an achievement recorded in an article in 'Nature' in 1994. The data in table 5.3 is a more conventional measure. Drawn from the Information and Documentation Unit's database it shows the total number of publications each year since 1990, separating articles in refereed journals, non-refereed sources and CIAT's own publications.
Table 5.3: Publications by CIAT Scientists
|
Year |
1990 |
1991 |
1992 |
1993 |
1994 |
|
Senior Scientists* (no.) |
72 |
72 |
71 |
75 |
70 |
|
Refereed journal articles (no.) |
65 |
50 |
47 |
45 |
40 |
|
Refereed article per scientist (no.) |
0.80 |
0.67 |
0.60 |
0.58 |
0.56 |
|
Non-refereed articles (no.) |
115 |
78 |
67 |
136 |
84 |
|
CIAT Publications (no.) |
205 |
202 |
245 |
124 |
90 |
* Includes Research and Research Support Senior Staff
The table shows a consistent fall off in the number of refereed publications per senior scientist over the five year period. A CIAT average of 0.56 refereed papers per senior scientist for 1994 is low (there may be some unknown 1994 papers still to enter the database). In 1993 and 1994 there has been a marked fall-off in the number of CIAT publications with perhaps some compensation in the non-refereed category. Overall it has perhaps been a result of having to cope with the internal crisis and the mobilization of scientists in preparing funding proposals. Programmes have performed differently: the Bean Programme shows a marked increase, doubling its refereed output from a lower than average 0.67 per scientist in 1990 to 1.24 in 1994. The numbers for Cassava and Tropical Pastures (aggregating Lowlands with Forages for 1994) dropped, with Cassava showing a low 0.31.
The Panel have been impressed by the logic of the 1991 Strategic Plan, and, on the natural resources management front, by the care taken in the selection of the three priority ecosystems; the savannahs, the hillsides and the forest margins. The Panel encourages CIAT to continue to move towards the balance between commodity and natural resources management research set out in the Strategic Plan as an objective for the year 2001. However, the Panel is convinced that expansion of the natural resources management programmes at the expense of the commodity programmes has reached its limits. New reductions in staff would threaten cohesion and further depress morale within the commodity programmes, as well as requiring the sacrifice of important research areas. Over the next year or two the pace of expansion of natural resources management research will be dependent on whether new funds can be attracted.
The Panel believes that the performance of the existing natural resources management programmes, and the impression made on national and regional partners, will play a major part in attracting new funds. For this reason the Panel has suggested, in Chapter 3, that the human and funding resources presently employed in the natural resources management research be more closely focussed, notably by bringing the appropriate balance of necessary disciplines to bear at fewer sites. The Panel is confident this will improve the chances of early success and of an early, positive, impact on partners and donors.
As noted in section 5.1.2. the Panel is impressed with CIAT's efforts to develop a transparent and participatory priority setting process. It is acknowledged by management that the process needs refinement but its essentials seem to have support among scientists. When the Board have approved a process, the Panel suggests that its early application across all CIAT projects will provide a suitable opportunity to revisit questions of balance, between commodity and natural resources management programmes, and within the commodity programmes. The Panel believes that institutionalising a routine project evaluation process will bring greater coherence to project design and proposal submission to donors and will minimise the writing burdens on individual scientists. In similar vein there is a need, certainly over the next year or two, to limit new commitments to leadership in systemwide initiatives and to focus CIAT management on restoring communication and confidence with staff and with the external partners on whom its programmes depend for their effectiveness.
The Panel is impressed by the growing evidence of the impact of all CIAT's commodity programmes. The natural resources management programmes are relatively new, however the Panel are confident that the better understanding of the potential of carbon sequestration by improved tropical forages, and the rapid adoption of erosion barriers by hillside farmers, provide a foretaste of things to come. Over the last five years CIAT has made a great effort to develop information on the impact of its programmes. However, as is noted in section 5.3, the high cost and the complexity of measuring the impacts of all CIAT products, make a comprehensive exercise prohibitive. The Panel suggests that CIAT develop a cost-effective impact assessment strategy, from a Centrewide perspective, which will aid programme planning and satisfy its stakeholders as to CIAT's performance.
