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ICARDA's Research
Portfolio
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| ICARDA's Research Portfolio>Project4.1>Project4.2>Project4.3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ICARDA's Research Portfolio |
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Theme 4.
Socioeconomics and Policy
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Project 4.3. Policy and Public Management Research in West Asia and
North Africa
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A community-focused phase of the Mashreq/Maghreb project, which involves eight countries, was successfully completed in 2002. Target communities chose a number of appropriate technological, institutional and policy options, and evaluated them at the community level. Researchers in multi-disciplinary teams facilitated the process, and analyzed the project's results from many different perspectives. Innovative community models, which can be used by policy makers as a decision-making tool, were also developed. The communities themselves chose the 'best-bet' options for their development, and used these to develop their own Community Development Plans. |
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The
Mashreq/Maghreb project:
The Mashreq/Maghreb
(M&M) project (coordinated by ICARDA and IFPRI, and funded by IFAD,
AFESD, and IDRC) has recently used an innovative community-development
approach in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia
and Syria. Its overall aim was to foster the integration of improved
and sustainable crop and livestock production systems in low-rainfall
areas. The project addressed problems from a technical, socioeconomic,
cultural, institutional and policy perspective, with the full participation
of the intended beneficiaries and other stakeholders. It supported the
development strategy of selected communities—by addressing needs identified
by the communities themselves. |
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| comprehensive surveys of selected households. These data, and the results from Phase I of the project, were then presented at a community workshop. This led to the communities deciding that some of the technologies developed during Phase I should be dropped, while others should be selected for community-level testing. The communities identified the technological, institutional and policy options that would, potentially, be most beneficial to them, and that would also benefit from further research (Table 28). These options formed the foundations of a 'Negotiated Plan of Action' (Fig. 25), developed by each community. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Fig. 25. Community-level phase of the Mashreq/Maghreb project, which aims to develop improved and sustainable integrated crop-livestock production systems in low-rainfall areas. |
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| Table 28. Production systems used by the participating communities, and options chosen by them for community-level testing within the Mashreq/Maghreb project. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The selected combinations or 'packages' of associated technologies were
then tested by farm households, with the involvement of the local private
and cooperative sector, as well as other institutions and stakeholders
(such as local extension services, agricultural authorities and NGOs).
Because each community assumed ownership of, and responsibility for, its
own Plan of Action, the role of the M&M project's national teams was
capacity building and the facilitation of this evaluation process. To
help the community, by sharing experiences across all eight countries,
a project facilitator was installed in each village whose role was to
channel important information into the community and to channel feedback
to the project. The M&M teams monitored the evaluation process, in
order to devise corrective measures and/or make adaptations if necessary. As well as assisting in the adaptive testing of the technologies, researchers prepared community land suitability maps, after completing detailed agroecological characterization studies, and conducted policy, institutional and monitoring surveys. As part of the institutional analyses, researchers identified existing community and higher-level institutions whose involvement could be beneficial to the project communities (Table 29). Representatives of these institutions were, in some cases, elected to sit on the Community Steering Committees set up by the communities (with help from the M&M project). The project also assisted target communities in establishing new informal and formal organizations to facilitate and support the uptake of new technologies or management strategies. For instance, in Lebanon, specialized cooperatives for livestock producers were set up. |
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| Table 29. Existing local and partner institutions involved in the Mashreq/Maghreb project, and institutions created by the project in the selected communities. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Researchers assessed the adoption and impact of the various technologies
(see Project 4.2, this report), and carried out econometric analyses.
Innovative bio-economic community models were developed to evaluate the
technologies and to assess the potential impacts of policy reforms on
both the community's welfare and on different farm types. All these analyses helped the project's researchers identify packages of tested and adapted 'best-bet' technological, institutional and policy options. These options, and the project's results, were presented to the communities in further community |
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 Farmers discussing criteria for selection of barley genotypes with Mashreq/Maghreb project scientists. |
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| workshops. The communities chose the options they thought were most appropriate, and used them as the foundation of a 'Community Development Action Plan' (Fig. 25). Each Plan will also include non-agricultural priorities (such as education, health and infrastructure), and will have a lifetime longer than the M&M project itself. Each community's Plan can be used both to steer its own development and communicate its needs to development and government agencies in the future. Indeed, communities in Morocco, Jordan and in Tunisia, have already attracted outside funding for priorities they had identified. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||