Southern research communities; up to now, EFARD has developed a strategic research agenda, set up an ERA-ARD and established a strategic alliance with the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA); and
• In North America, progress is still underway to link NA Agricultural Research Institutions (ARIs) with a vested interest in Agricultural Research for Development to GFAR; also, the PROCINORTE19 cooperative program could join the other "PROCIs" (PROCIANDINO, PROCISUR, PROCITROPICOS and PROCICARIBE) under the umbrella of the Latin American and Caribbean Forum: FORAGRO (http://www.iica.int/foragro/).
Therefore, GFAR provides an ideal platform for addressing issues of global concern, where the participation of a broad and diverse set of actors is required. One of its obvious added values is the increased exchange of information, experience and best practices between regions.
This relatively recent initiative can rightly claim significant results in AKST (identification of knowledge needs; knowledge generation, dissemination, access, adoption and use) within and between the less developed regions in the world. The best evidence of GFAR success was the official support it received at the G-8 Summit of Evian in 2003, seven years after its official launching.
However, despite previous efforts in NAE, it seems more difficult and challenging to mobilize the different categories of stakeholders in the NAE region:
• In Europe, EFARD has succeeded in mobilizing the different stakeholders for some specific tasks but its legitimacy is based on the existence of an active and truly representative national forum; however the situation varies greatly from one European Member State to another: for example, Denmark and Switzerland have established active and successful national fora (http:// www.sfiar.ch/ and http://www.netard.dk/) whereas Germany, after a strong launching phase, could not maintain its national ARD forum; France, in spite of being the first ARD contributor in Europe, has yet to establish its national ARD forum; and
• In North America, the different categories of ARD stakeholders seem to be working even more in isolation than in other regions, particularly universities. So far, NAFAR has not succeeded in convincing stakeholders of its added value and PROCINORTE is currently more a research program than a multistakeholder forum.
Lessons have to be drawn from this innovative, bottom-up, highly participative multistakeholder mechanism and its impact on AKST after 10 years of existence. The second external evaluation was completed in February 2007. Options
19 PROCINORTE is a cooperative programme in research and technology for North American countries (Canada, United States and Mexico) that aims to strengthen the capacity of the three countries to carry out agricultural research and technology transfer through exchanges and partnership in a cost effective way. This program is under the leadership of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA). |
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for action can be discussed in the light of this last evaluation and focused on two major issues:
• The building up of two or three strong and active ARD forums in the NAE region (North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe including Russia) to significantly help the work at the global level in collaboration with other regions; and
• The analysis of strength and weaknesses of the major past projects to identify the conditions for success of the future projects supported by GFAR, both at the regional and global level and taking into account regional specificities and diversities in the analysis.
It would be worthwhile if cooperation at the academic level be made between NAE and south AKST with strong political support but without political interference, in an effort to gain mutually useful knowledge firmly oriented towards development and sustainability goals.
6.4 Reshaping Policy Environment and Governance Systems
The agenda for agricultural and rural development policies nowadays is broader than in previous decades. The agricultural sector is being exposed to a more diversified set of demands, not only from consumers, who are increasingly concerned over issues such as food quality and safety, but from wider society, whose expectations increasingly involve territorial, social, environmental and cultural matters. This may require a wider and more coherent policy framework, the establishment of new proprietary regimes as well as the reshaping of IPR. In addition, governance options particularly at the local level can also be reconsidered.
6.4.1 Developing a coherent policy framework
The intricate complexity of the development of agriculture and rural areas, the multifaceted linkages with policy, the diversity in agricultural and rural systems and the important dynamics of changes in the overall system mean that policies are typically formulated on the basis of a partial knowledge of the overall situation. The guiding principles in any intervention and in the supporting research simultaneously consider the economic, social and environment dimensions of sustainability (FAO, 2005b; Martin, 2005):
• Economic: implies that production is profitable and demand-driven and contributes to the livelihoods of the citizens;
• Social: implies that production concentrates on product safety and quality, contributes to better health of all the citizens and is transparent and responsible, etc.; and
• Environmental: implies that production processes should respect environmental carrying capacity, respond to climate change, participate in improving the energy policies, etc.
The adjustments in policy issues and regulatory frameworks have implications for research to tackle some of the main challenges, such as:
• To provide a trans-ministerial/interagency approach for better coherence of the complex overall framework (e.g., between agricultural, economic and health ministries that would result in the production of diversi- |