Agency’s Project ID:
GEFSEC Project ID: 2503
Country: Global
Project Title: International Assessment of agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD)
GEF Implementing Agency: World Bank and UNEP
Other Executing Agencies: FAO, UNDP, UNESCO
Duration: 3 years
GEF Focal Area: Multifocal
GEF Operational Program: 1-4, 6,8,9,12-15
GEF Strategic Priority: BD4; CC4; IW2-3; POP1-3; SLM1-2; CB1-2; EM1
Pipeline entry date: 14 May 2004
Estimated Starting Date: April 2005
IA Fee: $302,000
Project Executive Summary
GEF Council Submission
Contribution to Key Indicators of the Business Plan:
The project will deliver a global and five sub-global assessments of the role of agricultural science and technology in reducing hunger and poverty, improving rural livelihoods, and facilitating development that is equitable as well as environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. The project is a major global initiative, developed out of a consultative process involving 900 participants and 110 countries from all regions of the world. IAASTD will provide robust information for decision-makers on how to ensure that policies, practices and institutional arrangements enable knowledge, science and technology to contribute to global environmental and developmental benefits.
Record of endorsement on behalf of the Government(s):
(Enter Name, Position, Ministry) / Date: (Month, day, year)Not Applicable
Financing Plan (US$)
GEF Project/Component
Project / 3,000,000
PDF A
PDF B / 350,000
PDF C
Sub-Total GEF
/ 3,350,000Co-financing*
World BankUNEP
UNESCO
FAO / 3,000,000
690,000
225,000
150,000
Government / 3,345,000
Bilateral
NGOs
Others
Sub-Total Co-financing: / 7,410,000
Total Project Financing: / 10,760,000
Financing for Associated Activities If Any:
Leveraged Resources If Any:
*Details provided under the Financial Modality and Cost Effectiveness section
Approved on behalf of the World Bank. This proposal has been prepared in accordance with GEF policies and procedures and meets the standards of the GEF Project Review Criteria for work program inclusion.Steve Gorman Robert T. Watson
WB GEF Executive Coordinator
January 14, 2005 / Tel: 202-47306965
Email:
- Project Summary
a) Project Rationale, Objectives, Outputs/Outcomes and Activities
Project Rationale:
Access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food is the primary challenge for over 700 million chronically undernourished people, the vast majority of whom live in rural areas in developing countries. Global population is projected to increase to approximately 9 billion within the next 50 years[1], with almost all of the increase in developing countries. Greater numbers of people and changing food preferences in response to rapid urbanization and increased per capita income in developing countries is projected to result in a doubling of the current demand for food by 2050.
The majority of the world’s poor live in rural areas, and is dependent, directly or indirectly, on agriculture for their livelihoods.[2] Increases in agricultural productivity can result in increased income for poor producers given equitable ownership of assets. Increased productivity also results in higher rural non-farm income as the rising incomes of producers create demand for non-farm products and services.
Development in the agricultural sector for the rural poor has either concentrated on increases in agricultural productivity through the application of modern farming practices, such as chemicals, mechanization and high-yielding varieties (intensification) or from expanding production onto new land (extensification).[3] Both extensification and intensification can result in adverse environmental consequences.
The role of agricultural intensification can be problematic. On one hand, it may relieve pressure from marginal areas and critical ecological sites where local to global environmental benefits can be retained or even enhanced. On the other hand, it may lead to processes such as uniform adoption of high-yielding varieties, increases in soil erosion, chemical pollution, reduction in soil biodiversity, and releases of greenhouse gases -- all with consequent effects on climate change. Alternatively, expansion onto new lands has been responsible for the loss of natural ecosystems, such as wetlands and rainforests, and marked declines in the diversity and quality of habitats as they transition from natural to managed landscapes. The negative consequences for global environmental assets, such as biodiversity, soil carbon fixation and international waters, are significant.
Improved agricultural systems and land management practices may, under the right circumstances, provide both economic (developmental) gains and environmental benefits, such as the:
· reduced overall rate of natural resource loss and land degradation;
· overall landscape biodiversity enhanced both in areas of land use and in protected areas;
· reduced rate of soil, runoff and nutrient losses;
· reduced contamination and eutrophication of fresh waters and contamination of soils, and
· reduced rate of greenhouse gas emissions, and increased carbon fixed in agricultural systems.
There are a number of critical environmental and social factors facing the developing world that may directly impede efforts to meet the projected demand for agricultural products. These include less water available for crops due to an increase in use by other sectors; less arable land due to urbanization; less labor due to HIV/AIDS and rural to urban migration; increased levels of acid deposition and tropospheric ozone; and a changing climate with warmer temperatures, increasing variability and more extreme events.
To ensure the sustainability of the natural resource foundation and biodiversity on which agricultural production (crop, livestock, fishery, forest, fiber and biomass) and hence, rural livelihoods and nutritional security depend, will require that decision makers better understand the economic, environmental, ethical and social considerations surrounding agricultural science and technology and related policy. For example, non-biophysical attributes of production systems – such as markets, social norms and customs (especially around gender, but also age group and ethnicity) – often determine resource ownership and control, and consequently nutritional security. Agricultural knowledge, science and technology (KST) must be harnessed to seek both developmental and environmental benefits simultaneously.
Hence, the global community is confronted with the serious task of ensuring nutritional security and enhancing rural livelihoods while at the same time reversing environmental degradation, redressing social and gender inequity, and ensuring human health and well-being. The overall challenge is a better understanding by those who make decisions on agricultural, environmental and macroeconomic policy, at both the national and international levels, in developed as well as developing countries, of the social and political environment in which production take place and the requirements for an agricultural research system to generate technologies that are socially equitable, economically viable and environmentally beneficial. This better understanding can result in policies and institutional arrangements that facilitate a renewed emphasis on sustainable management and consequently, the generation and implementation of technological innovations that contribute to sustainable development.
This project’s assessment of agricultural KST will contribute to catalyzing the generation and widespread adoption of agricultural practices that deliver global environmental benefits in biodiversity conservation and its sustainable use in agricultural systems, reduced emissions of greenhouse gases from agricultural systems, reduced vulnerability of ecological systems to climate change, reduced land degradation and improved quality of international waters impacted by agricultural systems. The information generated in this project is expected to lead to better management of natural and agricultural systems across production landscapes and sectors, and political and administrative boundaries, hence promoting sustainable development. The multi-focal development aim, consistent with GEF priorities, is to integrate ecological, economic and social goals to achieve multiple and cross-cutting local, national and global benefits, thus contributing to improving rural livelihoods, food security and human health.
Project Objectives: Development and Global Environmental
The IAASTD will bring together the range of stakeholders concerned with agriculture, hunger, poverty, human health and environmental issues to share views, gain common understanding and vision for the future (present to 2050), to develop new partnerships and to provide robust information pertinent to the needs of decision makers at international, regional, national, and local scales. The IAASTD will integrate biophysical factors and socioeconomic driving forces and will bring the best available information to bear on analyzing how agricultural KST can be used to reduce hunger and poverty, improve rural livelihoods and health, increase incomes and facilitate equitable, environmentally, socially and economically sustainable development at global, regional, national and local scales. The IAASTD will build global and sub-global (community to regional) assessment capacities to undertake integrated scientific assessments of agricultural KST, and build ownership to implement action based upon the evidence in the assessments. This may result in catalyzing additional sub-global assessments at the local, national and regional levels.
The IAASTD will provide information on contentious, complex topics such as biosciences, but it will not set goals or advocate specific policies or practices. It will be policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive. The IAASTD will integrate scientific information on a range of topics that are critically interlinked, but are often addressed independently. Highlighting linkages among questions concerning agriculture, poverty, hunger, natural resources, and development will enable decision makers to bring richer knowledge to bear on policy and management decisions on issues previously viewed in an isolated context.
The IAASTD will focus on assessing the demand for agricultural products and the environmental, social and economic consequences of meeting this demand under a range of plausible futures. The analysis of the consequences of meeting demand within this range of scenarios will be grounded in historical lessons. Its primary objectives are to:
· assess the effects of agricultural S&T policy and institutional environments, as well as practices, in the context of sustainable development;
· make the resulting state-of-the-art, objective analyses accessible to decision makers at all levels –from small-scale producers to makers of international policy;
· identify where critically important information gaps exist in order to allow more effective targeting of resources; and
· further the capacity of developing country nationals to generate, access and use agricultural KST that promote sustainable development.
Project Activities:
At the First Plenary of the IAASTD (September 2004), the plenary agreed that the IAASTD would be comprised of a global assessment and five sub-global assessments addressing the role of agricultural KST in development. Stakeholders from all relevant groups agreed on the broad scope of the IAASTD, and a series of questions to ensure that the global and sub-global assessments would provide the information needed for sound decisions on issues related to agriculture (see Annex I in the full project document).
The overarching question, which provides the framework for the global and sub-global assessments, is: “How can we reduce hunger and poverty, improve rural livelihoods, and facilitate equitable, environmentally, socially and economically sustainable development through the generation, access to, and use of agricultural knowledge, science and technology?”
Global Assessment
The global assessment will have three sections: (i) Historical Perspectives; (ii) Plausible Futures; and (iii) Policy and Institutional Issues. Gender analysis will be utilized in all three sections.
Historical Perspectives:
· How have local, national, regional and international policies and institutions, including economic and trade policies, facilitated or inhibited the application of agricultural KST to reduce hunger and poverty, improve rural livelihoods, and facilitate equitable, environmentally, socially and economically sustainable development?
· What advances in agricultural KST have generated significant changes in hunger alleviation (food and nutritional security, food safety, etc.), poverty alleviation and the structure and quality of rural livelihoods, and in the environment?
Plausible Futures:
· What are the key drivers, how do they interact, and how might they plausibly change over the next 50 years that will affect the development and adoption of agricultural KST to meet future food demands, while addressing rural livelihoods, human health, equity and environmental issues?
· For a set of plausible changes in the key drivers, what are the projected national, regional and global changes in: (i) consumer demand; (ii) production; (iii) food prices; (iv) livelihoods; and (v) environmental conditions (climate and natural resources)?
Policy and Institutional Issues
· What national, regional and global policies and institutional arrangements will optimize the uptake and adoption of advances in agricultural KST?
· What are the appropriate investments in, and what are the optimum institutional arrangements for agricultural research and development to reduce hunger and poverty, improve rural livelihoods, and facilitate equitable, environmentally, socially and economically sustainable development?
Sub-global Assessments
Five sub-global assessments (Central and West Asia and North Africa; East and South Asia and the Pacific; Latin America and the Caribbean; North America and Europe; and Sub-Saharan Africa) will be performed at the regional, national or local scales and will complement the Global Assessment by examining context-specific aspects of the Global Assessment. Each of the sub-global assessments will use the same basic framework as the global assessment, i.e., the impacts of agricultural KST on rural livelihoods, nutritional security, equity, the environment and human health will be evaluated in relation to both the past and the future. The sub-global assessments will vary in scale from continents to communities, will use a consistent methodology, cover a range of agroecological systems, and employ selection criteria that take into account socioeconomic and institutional conditions, and poverty mapping. The assessment should seek to incorporate, and build upon, local and indigenous knowledge related to agricultural technologies and also assess the impact of knowledge and technologies emanating from the informal agricultural research and innovation system driven by farmers and other local land users
Outreach and Communications
An outreach and communications strategy will be developed by the Bureau in conjunction with the Secretariat and the communications experts from the co-sponsoring agencies for both the global and sub-global assessments. The strategy will include a web system accessible and useable by all stakeholders; the published assessment reports, each with a Summary for Decision-Makers; publications in the scientific literature, popular media and conference proceedings; presentations at MEA meetings (UNCBD, UNCCD, Ramsar and UNFCCC), scientific conferences and workshops; and diffusion of information through the already established networks of the different stakeholder groups, i.e., co-sponsoring agencies, MEAs, governments, private sector, NGOs, consumers, producers, scientific community including the CGIAR, extension services, etc.