Science Council Commentary
on ICARDA's MTP 2006/08
Research agenda
ICARDA has good rapport with a wide range of both national and international partners which has allowed the Center to set targets which are of a global nature, while others have a geographic focus. This is an excellent way to clarify in which programs ICARDA acts globally and for which programs it acts regionally.
ICARDA has responded to a recent CCER to realign and focus its programs into six mega projects (MP). The Center is to be complimented on the manner in which it has responded to the recommendations to provide more focus. Given the extent of the changes in structure last year (from 19 projects to 6 MPs) it is hoped that this year's MTP is a 'work in progress', and that future MTPs will address the concern of the high proportion of development-like activities. The SC recommends a further move towards strategic research with the additional opportunity of leveraging more interest from scientists in developed countries to address the problems of countries in dry areas. The SC recognizes that it takes time for new programs to work back from stated stakeholder wishes, and to identify the underpinning for more strategic research. The SC encourages the leaders of the mega-projects to continue to work on this aspect.
The Center is also to be complimented in the yet early stages of developing 'impact pathway analysis' for the outputs of the new programs. As these pathways become more clearly described, the Center is encouraged to focus on the research interventions resolving the complex issues for which the Center has a comparative advantage leaving much of the implementation and development work to others. For example the MP2 Integrated Gene Management: Conservation, Enhancement and Sustainable Use of Agro biodiversity in Dry Areas is of vital importance to global agriculture, the more so with the need to use modern genomic to identify drought and heat tolerant genes from the rich genetic resources of this region, while the MP4 Research on household investment patterns and analysis has a large amount of work at the local level and lacks an innovative research agenda.
ICARDA is due for an EPMR in 2006 and does appear to have completed all actions recommended in the last one. The Center is to be commended in conducting CCERs leading up to the next EPMR. The SC will encourage the Panel to comment on the concerns raised on this commentary.
Nature of research
A significant share of the activities proposed in the MTP fall outside what would be identified as IPG research, either because it is focused on development activities (e.g., developing plastic greenhouses in Yemen and Afghanistan; managing a program on "research in alternative livelihoods fund" for Afghanistan) which account for about 50 % of output targets, or because it is focused on country-specific research. The former detracts from the opportunity of the Center to focus on the more complex issues of systems in the region. In the case of the latter, the Center needs to make clearer how the work undertaken at the local level can contribute to new knowledge (in the broad sense) that is sufficiently robust to be extrapolated to other locations and used by others. A brief comment on each of the MP follows:
The SWEP for Central Asia and the Caucuses includes research, capacity strengthening, and development activities and the three seem to be well integrated. It can be argued that the central Asian region needs a great deal more capacity strengthening than the rest of the eco-region of interest to ICARDA. Thus, as long as the three components are appropriately integrated, there is a good case for a relatively high proportion of capacity strengthening and development oriented activities in this ecoregional program. However a number of the proposed activities are focused on national development (e.g. "four farmer field days on livestock and forest technologies organized in two countries") that presumably should be done by national institutions. It is not clear that ICARDA would have the comparative advantage in doing those kinds of things. They look more like a response to a request for consulting.
There are other examples of non-Priority activities for example in developing isolated seed systems in many locations. These activities do not seem to conform to the mandate of doing research and certainly do not appear to produce IPGs. But some of the work at the local level, if properly planned, can develop IPG for use for application elsewhere. For example, in MP5, output 1, there is explicit recognition of the selection of sites based on ' different agro-ecological and production systems' in three specified countries. This suggests there will be an analysis based on these differences from which new knowledge (in the broad sense) can be developed which is sufficiently robust to be extrapolated to new locations and used by others. This large effort in local country activities means that opportunities have been missed in the core competency areas of ICARDA.
In summary, ICARDA has a fairly broad agenda and is urged to focus on its core competencies for which it has the potential to become the preferred partner in the region. The preponderance of development activities detracts from this strategic focus.
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Research agenda
ICARDA has good rapport with a wide range of both national and international partners which has allowed the Center to set targets which are of a global nature, while others have a geographic focus. This is an excellent way to clarify in which programs ICARDA acts globally and for which programs it acts regionally.
ICARDA has responded to a recent CCER to realign and focus its programs into six mega projects (MP). The Center is to be complimented on the manner in which it has responded to the recommendations to provide more focus. Given the extent of the changes in structure last year (from 19 projects to 6 MPs) it is hoped that this year's MTP is a 'work in progress', and that future MTPs will address the concern of the high proportion of development-like activities. The SC recommends a further move towards strategic research with the additional opportunity of leveraging more interest from scientists in developed countries to address the problems of countries in dry areas. The SC recognizes that it takes time for new programs to work back from stated stakeholder wishes, and to identify the underpinning for more strategic research. The SC encourages the leaders of the mega-projects to continue to work on this aspect.
The Center is also to be complimented in the yet early stages of developing 'impact pathway analysis' for the outputs of the new programs. As these pathways become more clearly described, the Center is encouraged to focus on the research interventions resolving the complex issues for which the Center has a comparative advantage leaving much of the implementation and development work to others. For example the MP2 Integrated Gene Management: Conservation, Enhancement and Sustainable Use of Agro biodiversity in Dry Areas is of vital importance to global agriculture, the more so with the need to use modern genomic to identify drought and heat tolerant genes from the rich genetic resources of this region, while the MP4 Research on household investment patterns and analysis has a large amount of work at the local level and lacks an innovative research agenda.
ICARDA is due for an EPMR in 2006 and does appear to have completed all actions recommended in the last one. The Center is to be commended in conducting CCERs leading up to the next EPMR. The SC will encourage the Panel to comment on the concerns raised on this commentary.
Nature of research
A significant share of the activities proposed in the MTP fall outside what would be identified as IPG research, either because it is focused on development activities (e.g., developing plastic greenhouses in Yemen and Afghanistan; managing a program on "research in alternative livelihoods fund" for Afghanistan) which account for about 50 % of output targets, or because it is focused on country-specific research. The former detracts from the opportunity of the Center to focus on the more complex issues of systems in the region. In the case of the latter, the Center needs to make clearer how the work undertaken at the local level can contribute to new knowledge (in the broad sense) that is sufficiently robust to be extrapolated to other locations and used by others. A brief comment on each of the MP follows:
| MP1, (Management of Scarce Water Resources and Mitigation of Drought in Dry Areas) is well targeted and integrated into the CPWF. It will be important to keep the mega-project at the crop-field scales and use the CPWF (and the specialist skills of IWMI) for the integration at the basin level. | |
| MP2, (Integrated Gene Management: Conservation, Enhancement and Sustainable Use of Agro biodiversity in Dry Areas) is of vital importance to global agriculture, the more so with the need to use modern genomic to identify drought and heat tolerant genes from the rich genetic resources of this region. It is encouraging to see that MP2 gets the lion's share of the budget at 32.3%. The MP2 would benefit from, in addition to the current activities, focusing more attention on hypothesis testing and development of innovative modern methods rather than so exclusively on collection, identification and characterization. | |
| MP3, (Improved Land Management to Combat Desertification) has the important task of developing a holistic approach to diversification. ICARDA is to be commended for proposing a holistic, integrated natural resources management approach. This is the heartland research for ICARDA. However, the MP needs to be clearer on defining the nature and extent of the main objective: "understanding the causes and driving forces of land degradation including regional assessments of the location, extent, impacts and consequences of actual and impending desertification". One might have thought that the program on desertification, which has been active for several years, would already have acquired some degree of understanding in this regard. It is essential that the proposed research describe the added value of the expected output, over and above what is now already known about land degradation in these selected regions. | |
| MP4, (Research on household investment patterns and analysis), taken at face value, is a vital part of ICARDA's agenda. But, as for many other outputs in this MTP the strategic research agenda is not clear; ICARDA plans to evaluate a number of 'innovative options' most of which have been developed elsewhere. | |
| MP5, (Poverty and Livelihood Analysis and Impact Assessment in Dry Areas) will focus on understanding and then developing "pathways out of poverty" around which agricultural research can be targeted. This work is conducted with a shared appointment with IFPRI and can provide a useful means for developing a better focus by ICARDA on pro-poor interventions from agricultural research. | |
| MP6, (Knowledge Management and Dissemination for Sustainable Development in Dry Areas) seems to be the weakest of the mega-projects in terms of likely IPG output. Yet, ICARDA proposes to spend close to 14% of its budget on the activities described in this project. A number of sub-projects do not seem to meet the requirements for system Priorities (including efforts to develop plastic greenhouses in Yemen and Afghanistan and contract research with DFID to manage a program on "research in alternative livelihoods fund" for Afghanistan). |
The SWEP for Central Asia and the Caucuses includes research, capacity strengthening, and development activities and the three seem to be well integrated. It can be argued that the central Asian region needs a great deal more capacity strengthening than the rest of the eco-region of interest to ICARDA. Thus, as long as the three components are appropriately integrated, there is a good case for a relatively high proportion of capacity strengthening and development oriented activities in this ecoregional program. However a number of the proposed activities are focused on national development (e.g. "four farmer field days on livestock and forest technologies organized in two countries") that presumably should be done by national institutions. It is not clear that ICARDA would have the comparative advantage in doing those kinds of things. They look more like a response to a request for consulting.
There are other examples of non-Priority activities for example in developing isolated seed systems in many locations. These activities do not seem to conform to the mandate of doing research and certainly do not appear to produce IPGs. But some of the work at the local level, if properly planned, can develop IPG for use for application elsewhere. For example, in MP5, output 1, there is explicit recognition of the selection of sites based on ' different agro-ecological and production systems' in three specified countries. This suggests there will be an analysis based on these differences from which new knowledge (in the broad sense) can be developed which is sufficiently robust to be extrapolated to new locations and used by others. This large effort in local country activities means that opportunities have been missed in the core competency areas of ICARDA.
In summary, ICARDA has a fairly broad agenda and is urged to focus on its core competencies for which it has the potential to become the preferred partner in the region. The preponderance of development activities detracts from this strategic focus.
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