CGIAR Collective Action News

• April 2010: Highlights from GCARD
  “Millions of people around the world are enduring lives of hardship and misery today. We are collectively and personally responsible for this tragedy. I am personally ashamed…However, I believe that here at the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD), we have begun the process to put the structures, activities, and programs in place that will enable us to end poverty in this world.” These were the words of ...Read More

 

• March 2010: Regional partnerships to strengthen the seed industry
  In early March, several CGIAR Centres were involved in discussions to formulate a new initiative, the Alliance for the Seed Industry in East and Southern Africa (ASIESA). The initiative will take a coordinated approach to addressing the constraints to developing a vibrant commercial seed industry in East and Southern Africa, with the aim of improving the use of quality seed in the region...Read More

 

• February 2010: CGMap Ongoing Research in Africa: Empowering, Informative, Exciting
  The CGIAR is making a concerted effort to coordinate many of its activities with the aim of collectively responding to common challenges. There were concerns that, for a number of years, CG Centers had continued to work independently, with research outputs and outcomes strewn across different media. The initiative titled “CGMap Ongoing Research in Africa,” seeks to provide a systematic way of collating, sharing and disseminating outputs and outcomes from the 15 CGIAR centers...Read more

 

• January 2010: REGIONAL COLLECTIVE ACTION: ACHIEVEMENTS TO DATE
  It has been three years since the establishment of Regional Collective Action in Eastern and Southern Africa, and in this issue of Collective Action News we look back at the achievements to date...Read more
  

 

• December 2009: Agriculture and Rural Development in the Copenhagen Climate Change Talks
  The recent United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) held in Copenhagen from 7th to 18th December 2009 ended with much disappointment because it failed to produce a legally-binding agreement. However, it was not all bad news: as reported in this issue of Collective Action News, there were some noteworthy successes for agriculture and rural development, and for forestry...Read more

 

• November 2009: Update on the CGIAR Reform Process
  This issue of CAN reports on the on-going CGIAR reform, providing an update from the Executive Council Meeting held 03-04 November in Rome. The meeting was attended by Carlos Seré (Director General, ILRI) and Dennis Garrity (Director General, World Agroforestry Centre) who share their views...Read more

• October 2009: Disaster Risk Reduction: Addressing the longer term issues
  The Horn of Africa is currently dealing with the aftereffects of one of the worst droughts in a decade. Although the recent onset of the rains has brought respite to many parched areas, food security continues to deteriorate throughout the region...Read more

• September 2009: Online consultations to enhance agricultural research for development
  Stakeholder engagement is crucial to successful reform. Where we often fail is in developing and cultivating the indispensable networks and connections that allow us to involve a representative range of stakeholders actively in the reform process. This is further exacerbated by deeply institutionalized perceptions, norms and behaviors in regard to other actors of change...Read more
  

• August 2009: Rising food prices in eastern and southern Africa revisited: Lifting trade barriers is still the answer
  Although the Global Food Price Index (FPI) of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) fell between June 2008 and February 2009, global food prices have been rising slightly since then. Changes in the Global FPI were matched by a persistent increase in FPIs in countries belonging to...Read more

 

• July 2009: Managing the fertility of Africa’s soils: the case for collective action
  Any business that loses an estimated US$ 4 billion per year clearly cannot sustain itself – the management would have been fired, the business taken over by more efficient competitors and the process of righting past wrongs would have begun. For Africa’s soils, which lose those dollar equivalents in nutrients, there is no such speedy redemption...Read more

 

• June 2009: Biotechnology, Bioinformatics and Food Security: Hype or hope? It is high time that the heroic simplification of the ‘GM crops are good for the poor’ storyline is finally laid to rest’, contends Dominic Glover in a thoughtful new paper on BT Cotton (see link below). He goes on to conclude that ‘The extravagant hype of GM crop advocates (and not only the alarmism of anti-GM campaigners) has unfortunately suffocated debate about this important new technological field...Read more

 

• May 2009: Priority actions on agricultural markets? Not easy at a market of ideas!
  The answer is clear: it is not going to be a single idea or initiative that will spark off the revolution we are all looking for in agricultural markets. Rather it will probably be combinations of many different ideas, pilot cases, innovations and experiences (to use a loose term) that will result in African agricultural markets accelerating the pace of development and the alleviation of poverty in Africa...Read more

 

• April 2009: Climate and agriculture in East Africa: The future is mixed
  Climate change will have significant impacts on agriculture, particularly in East Africa where there is such variation in topography and climate. Results of a recent simulation study suggest that crop yield reductions may be expected over 50% to 70% of...Read more

 

• March 2009: Food price rises: Global smiles, regional frowns?
  Globally the silence on food prices has been deafening in 2009. No wonder: not only have global food price indices dipped some 50 percentage points off their mid-2008 peaks, there has also been the financial crisis to worry about....Read more
  
   
• February 2009: Connecting the dots: Online maps for improved access to information on agricultural research projects
  A month ago if anyone wanted to get an overview of the research that the 15 international agricultural research centres of the CGIAR were doing in eastern and southern Africa it
  would have been a difficult, time consuming undertaking of uncertain outcome. Today, say the developers of the first ‘CGIAR research map,’ it is a matter of three clicks on the internet....Read more
  
   
• November 2008: Could 150 million thirsty livestock be efficient water harvesters? Nile Basin studies show how
  Livestock use and degrade much water in the Nile River Basin. New research suggests that integrated development and management of water and livestock resources will conserve water and increase the profitability and environmental sustainability of investments by governments, development agencies,and farmers.This research suggests that through understanding livestock water productivity, practical opportunities to enhance food security, reduce poverty, and foster benefit sharing can be identified.It also suggests that....Read more
  
   
• October 2008: Lessons from Kampala: Will urban farming make a difference?
  In the second issue of Collective Action News, we looked at how agricultural research can contribute to alleviating the impacts of various types of crises. In this issue, we focus on a report that delves into the role urban food production could play in moderating the global food crises - with examples from the CGIAR’s Urban Harvest Program work in Kampala (Uganda) and Nakuru (Kenya)....Read more
  
   
• August 2008: Where Science and Emergencies Meet
  In this latest issue we focus on the role agricultural research plays in dramatically increasing food security in disaster situations as well as economic development in their aftermath....Read more
  
   
• July 2008: Food price rises: Is regional trade the answer?
  In this issue we focus on the impact of the Food Price Crisis in eastern and southern Africa, as seen through the collective analysis of a group of researchers from several different organizations....Read more