From the Director General
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When ICARDA's founding fathers wrote its charter, they saw the Center playing an important role in alleviating hunger and poverty in the dry areas in peaceful times. But, ICARDA, since its inception, has had to respond to the need to rebuild agriculture in countries affected by war, conflict, and natural disasters. This important dimension of the Center's work has remained much less known.
In the Central and West Asia and North Africa (CWANA) region, which constitutes the bulk of ICARDA's geographic mandate area, conflicts have taken place in Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Algeria, Kuwait, Jordan, Iraq, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Cyprus, Yemen, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Tajikistan in the last 25 years. Several of these countries have been hit by drought during the same period.
Besides taking lives, war destroys food and water supply sources. Biodiversity and seed systems are damaged or destroyed. Shortage of seed after war can cause widespread starvation. In addition to the direct and indirect disruptive effects on agriculture, longer term environmental effects may linger from land mining, deliberate flooding, and the degradation of soil from chemical warfare.
It is a massive task to rebuild agriculture in countries affected by conflict and/or natural disasters. This is largely because agriculture is not just growing crops; it is interlinked with several other sectors, such as transport, marketing, pesticide, fertilizer and irrigation equipment industries, infrastructure and human resource development, farmers' cooperatives, policy and property rights, and others. Although ICARDA's mandate is research and training, rebuilding goes beyond this to development. This is where complementary activities with partners who address the link between research and development are very important.
Our rehabilitation strategy is, therefore, built around three key elements: partnerships and networking, rapid needs assessment surveys, and program development for the medium and longer term. ICARDA's approach to partnership is to provide a broad platform and create an enabling environment for a variety of actors to play their roles.
This issue of Caravan provides examples of activities undertaken by ICARDA and its partners to address challenges of rebuilding agriculture in the aftermath of conflicts and natural disasters, particularly in Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Eritrea, Sudan, and Ethiopia.
The cycle of conflict, poverty, hunger and drought can be broken with application of cutting-edge science to ensure nutritional and food security. ICARDA is playing a vital role in encouraging advanced research institutions to collaborate in technology development, capacity building, technology transfer and policy research that will provide livelihood options for the millions caught in the consuming web of poverty and conflict.
International donors have been supporting these efforts, but rebuilding agriculture requires a substantial increase in donor support. I hope the highlights of some key achievements presented in this issue will be useful in gauging the value of efforts and investments in the massive task of rebuilding agriculture after conflict and natural disasters.