"Identifying significant opportunities for CGIAR research on INRM?"

Results of Working Group 1 " Highlands" (Rapporteur: Josh Posner)

• Multifunctional role of agriculture and natural resources management:
  How to create economic and ecological opportunities that result from managing natural resources and environmental services?

• Design and testing of organisational models for compensation for ecological services

• Develop diverse land use options to provide new income streams, making use of high value products (mushrooms, flowers, medicinal plants, organic food and services (ecotourism, value added processing)

• Introduction and use of options that are specialised on the local level but diverse at landscape level

• Analyze effect of climate change on risk, inventory risk reduction practices

• Principles and factors that determine successes in sustainable management of natural resource management (afforestation, better use of commons etc.)

• Organizations
• Institutions
• Infrastructure
• Market access
• Population density
• Resource endowment
• Level of degradation
• Availability of technology
• Policy

Results of Working Group 2 "Humid Tropics" (Rapporteur: Ken MacDickens)

Optimizing land allocation/use for products and environmental services

Problem: Competition for land among stakeholders at various spatial and temporal scales often results in conflict, production inefficiencies and the loss of environmental services.

Objective: Raise productivity of goods and services to optimize total system utility at landscape level.

Research issues:

• Participatory negotiation/valuation of environmental services
• Trade-offs between production of goods and environmental services
• Solving soil quality constraints across gradients of institutional density
• Fragmentation effects on biodiversity and other environmental services
• Multiple uses of water
• Utilization of biodiversity

Problem: Difficult to sustain system production over time, land tenure ambiguities limit long-term investments, food security and nutritional quality of food produced often decline during the transition.

Objective: Produce different trajectories for transition to optimize tradeoffs between productivity increases for commercial markets, risks and environmental services.

Research issues:

• Identify trajectories
• Policies to improve transition production and use of NR along gradients of increased population pressure, market access, etc.
• Environmental and other consequences of changes in the scale and diversity of production systems

Problem:

• Intensive commercial production systems may tend to degrade environmental quality (on and off-site) and have high energy requirements.
• Total factor productivity is declining.
• Soil salinity, ground water depletion, pesticide and nitrate contamination increasing
• Negative habitat fragmentation effects on fauna

Objective: Capture/maintain production potential by optimizing efficiency, while maintaining the resource base and reducing environmental loading.

Research issues:

Synergies from combining:

• IPM at landscape level
• Integrated gene and nutrient management
• Improved water management and cultural practices

• Social/institutional elements of all of the above
• Expanding the management of other biological resources (e.g., soil micro-organisms)
• Communication of knowledge-intensive technologies to users
• Policies to encourage INRM

Results of Working Group 3 "Semi Arid- Sub Humid "

(Rapporteur: Jimmy Smith)

1. Improving livelihoods of resource poor farmers through better management, organic matter and nutrients
2. Managing land to reduce conflicts over resource use
3. Improving the capacity of poor farmers to cope with risk
4. Managing scarce water resources for sustainable production

Results of Working Group 4 "Aquatic Systems" (Rapporteur: Clara Cohen)

• A medium in which fisheries, aquaculture, and coastal resources are exploited
• Habitat for biodiversity, e.g. reefs, mangroves, riparian ecosystems
• A resource for irrigation, hydroelectric power, household use
• A corridor (the watershed) that links upstream and downstream activities through water quality and quantity

Implications of land use in zones of influence on coastal ecosystems, through understanding of individual and combined effects of relevant factors and design of appropriate solutions and strategies:

• Forestry
• Urbanization
• Pollution
• Agriculture
• Watershed management
• Fisheries
• Tourism
• Aquaculture
• Institutional/policy level influences
• Tenure systems; common property resource issues

WATERSHED MANAGEMENT

The implications of land use in zones of influence on watersheds, through understanding of individual and combined effects of relevant factors and design of appropriate solutions and strategies:

• Forestry
• Urbanization
• Agriculture
• Fisheries
• Aquaculture
• Tourism
• Institution/policy level influences
• Land tenure issues, water rights
• Human health
• Water interactions with plants, people, microorganisms, and animals
• Engineered water management (hydropower, irrigation)
• Aquifer recharge (subsurface waters)
• Water scarcity (Drylands)

• Global climate change effects on coastal zones (sea level increase, loss of coral reefs, rainfall changes)
• Biodiversity overexploitation; loss of habitat
• Aquatic health
• Sedimentation, eutrophication, and consequent declines in tourism and biodiversity

• Global climate change
• Biodiversity
• Aquatic health
• Human health
• Landscape patchiness/mosaic
• Conflict over water among urban, agrarian, and natural systems
• Differences in access and control over resources among stakeholders

Results of Working Group 5 "Drylands" (Rapporteur: Richard Tutwiler)

Research Issues

1. Agro-ecosytem fragility

• Balance of utilisation and conservation
• sustainably increasing productivity
• Multifunctional landscape management

2. Resource degradation

• Water (quality, quality, productivity)
• Soil degradation (erosion, salinity, physical and biological)
• Biodiversity (plant and animal genetic erosion; vegetaion erosion)

3. Climate change

• Variation
• Contributing factors: dust, CO2, land degradation
• Mitigation and adaptation

4. Social and economic pressure

• Demography and poverty
• Lack of economic opportunities

5. Indigenous knowledge

• Recognition, augmentation, utilisation

6. Institutional mechanisms

• Effectiveness and management capacities
• Levels of social organisation

7. Policies

• Appropriateness and flexibility

8. Political and economic transitions

• Market development and globalisation

9. Migration

• Urbanisation and feminisation of agriculture
• Investment and consumption pattern

10. Income diversification

• Agro business and local processing
• Value-added products
• High value crops (e.g., medicinal, figs, olives, dates)
• Crop diversification

11. Participation and partnerships

• All stakeholders
• At all levels

12. Support to national and regional institutions

• Action plans for CCD, CBC, CCC
• INRM capacity

1. New Science and technology

• GIS / RS, modelling, ex-ante analysis
• Decision support and expert systems
• Biotechnology

2. Representative benchmark sites

3. Integrated water shed management

4. Community-based aporaches

• Resource-user heterogenity
• Institutions
• Cross-community comparison

5.  Bio-economic models

6.  Renewable energy resources

• De-salinasation
• Solar, wind, bio-gas
• Mechanisation for water harvesting

7.  Anticipatory research approach

• Long term trials and participatory monitoring

8.  Behavioural studies

• Characterisation and typology
• Risk management
• Coping and investment strategies of the poor