The Global Conference on Agricultural Research and Development (GCARD3) took the opportunity of the event ‘Rural communities, No longer left behind: Rural and regional development in the South and North Mediterranean and the new Neighborhood Policy’ held October 4-6, 2015 in the ExpoMilan to carry out a regional consultation on the Middle East and North Africa.
The regional consultation was woven into the ongoing dialogues being organised for the main event with a key opportunity on Monday October 5th 20015 for CGIAR entities to share on the work and future plans of CGIAR in the region and to interact with key regional players to understand the main priorities, ongoing activities and possibilities for synergy with CGIAR programs.
A background note and agenda for the whole event can be found here.
CGIAR was represented by ICARDA, IFPRI and CIMMYT and the respective CRP’s on Dryland cereals and legumes, PIM and wheat.
A report by Richard Thomas CRP-Dryland Systems Director after the event provides good insights and information resulting from the event. The text below comes from Richard’s report:
About 80 participants gathered in Varese and ExpoMilan, Italy to develop common themes for a rejuvenation of rural communities in the MENA region (Mediterranean basin) as a contribution to the GCARD3/GFAR process. The CGIAR was invited to participate mainly as observers, in the culmination of 4 preparatory workshops that were held in Greece, Egypt, France and Morocco in 2014 and 2015.
Participants came from civil society, research organizations, regional networks, NGO’s, farmer groups with too few from the policy/decision making arenas. Women and youth were strongly represented and were a welcome addition to the debates on the future of rural communities in the MENA region.
Opening statements emphasized the need to address the challenges of rural communities particularly with respect to the current crisis in Europe over migrants and refugees from war-torn countries where civil unrest has resulted in the displacement of millions of people. Poverty was the predominating factor in the movement of people with a host of other driving factors related to specific contexts and countries.
The 4 reports had some common challenges despite an emphasis on the diversity of Mediterranean rural areas. These were
- How to maintain an active rural population along with the environmental services provided by rural areas.
- How to achieve sustainable agricultural livelihoods and their production systems particularly in relation to evident climate change.
- How to preserve knowledge, cultures, heritage and biodiversity in agro-ecosystems.
- The need for a new approach to territorial planning, governance and management.
Much emphasis was given to the need for a bottom up approach participatory action approach, a focus on social capital and identity, people x environment impacts, understanding trade and increased local, national and international market access, better multi-sectoral public policies and decentralized governance especially on land ownership and access, rural areas for innovation, need to greater cooperation, connectivity and capacity development amongst all actors and sectors, greater involvement and attention given to women and youth. All of these pointed towards a holistic systems approach to rural poverty alleviation and development.
The awareness of greater cooperation and connectivity was summed up by the co-president of the Foundation, Ms Fatima Malki Bensoltane, who described it as ‘my neighbour before my home’ – a translation of an Arabic saying. Mark Holderness GFAR, defined it as “more than just agriculture and ‘putting the culture back into agriculture”.
To address the issues the conference was divided into 4 working groups on; innovations in agriculture and natural resource management, resourcing the investments, employment and infra structure, opportunities for women and opportunities for youth.
The CGIAR representatives focused on working group one on Innovation in agriculture, natural resources and food security
Proposed solutions to these challenges that can involve the CGIAR included:
Innovations/actions that can be taken over the next 15 years
IAR4D/Ag Research-related
- Paradigm of agriculture being secondary, industrialization is primary and will benefit agriculture
- Improve water use and allocation coupled with water use efficient production systems (drought tolerant seeds).
- Encourage rewarding better land stewardship (improving ecosystem services).
- Extend climate change work to MENA as a hot spot of impacts.
- Regional approach to trans-boundary animal movements.
- Reduce post-harvest food wastage; focus on the value chain.
- Increase access of farmer to market information (eg through cooperatives). Encourage add value processes at farm and other levels.
- Encourage micro-credit schemes, revitalize agricultural lending banks (chambers of agriculture in Turkey)
- Linking farmers to export markets
Broader rural development-related, including nutrition/health, youth
- Understand what has worked/not worked in rural development in MENA especially related to attracting youth back to rural life.
- Most needy are the less favoured lands without market access (local, national and international). So a positive policy action is needed to help these communities and increase market access.
- Invest in additional non-agricultural activities.(complementarity with agricultural production)
- Develop clear business case for investing in marginal areas.
- Increase communications, public awareness of challenges and opportunities.
- Case studies of rural innovation, dissemination and capacity development.
- Identify potential growth sites involving all actors, territorial actions plans.
- Link private sector to public sector for investments in capital, infrastructure
- Encourage certification/standards in MENA countries.
- Increase Health/nutrition education and public awareness with a focus on mother/children.
- Encourage consumer ‘clubs’ campaigns along with regulations to cut back on sugar, salt food industries.
- Improve education systems in MENA.
- Create dialogue platforms /places bringing actors together.
- Use ICT to attract youth.
- Evidence-base information re-packaged into modern communications, social media.
It was highlighted that the CGIAR is currently actively working on several of these innovation areas and that any future action should build upon these ongoing activities. For example, the CGIAR Policies, Institutions and Markets Program (PIM) is supporting work on foresight modeling related to climate change adaptation (with ICARDA), improving value chains (with IFPRI) and on providing better information for better lives through the Arab Spatial Food and Nutrition Security Knowledge Hub (with IFPRI, IFAD and UN-ESCWA). MENA region stands out globally in terms of high per capita wheat consumption, center of durum wheat production and high wheat import dependency.
At the closing session the CGIAR was represented by Dr Kamel Shideed speaking on behalf of Dr. Mahmoud Solh who explained some of the benefits and impacts that CGIAR research had brought to the MENA region, building on the presentations by Dr Richard Thomas, CRP-DS and interventions from Victor Kommerell (CIMMYT) Wheat CRP and Clemens Breisinger (IFPRI) PIM on the new CGIAR CRP portfolio.
The EC was represented by Emma Udwin (Deputy Head of Cabinet) substituting for the EU Commissioner, who introduced the new Neighbourhood Policy to be published on Nov 18th. (Note: Current EU DG Neighbourhood funding for agricultural research/R4D is minimal). She emphasized that around 87 million people were rural inhabitants in the Southern Med, suffering from severe poverty, malnutrition and lack of opportunities (the latter especially for young people). The main change here is a differentiated approach to be taken for each individual country of the Southern Mediterranean basin in recognition of the diversity that exists there. There is to be an emphasis on agriculture + business enterprises, on- and off-farm income opportunities with agriculture remaining a powerful but not only driving force. Better water use and management was also key to the region but efforts on water needed to be considered at local, national and regional levels, with policies and interventions to be designed based on the aspirations of local people. Her main message was that modernization and diversification of agriculture was needed (fully consistent with a more holistic systems approach to be taken by the new CRPs) as part of a major effort to stabilize the MENA region through efforts on employment and employability of the young.
A conference declaration is expected to be published.
