Strengthening Institutions

Strengthening Institutions

Problem analysis

The World Development Report 2003 (World Bank 2002) highlights the role played by competent institutions in sustainable development. Institutions have to be able to pick up signals to anticipate emerging problems, balance interests between stakeholders and follow through on their mandates. The diverse institutes involved in devising and implementing agroforestry solutions to development problems do not always have these capacities.

Many research and development professionals are ill equipped to carry out high-quality work in agroforestry and natural resource management. Integrative approaches require bringing together knowledge and skills that usually reside in different sectors. Further, some national institutions may have adequate human resources, but lack enabling policies, good programs and resources to fully mobilize their human capacity. To retain and motivate qualified professionals, the capacity of these institutions to develop good programmes and improve their working environments must be strengthened in a comprehensive manner.

Potential solution

Through this theme we will strengthen the capacity of institutions - local, national and regional - to participate effectively in generating and applying innovations in agroforestry, INRM, and environments for improved livelihoods. Quality diagnosis of problems, needs assessment, strategic planning, tools and methods, and implementation support will be some of this theme's key contributions. The aim is to facilitate the development of individuals and institutions that are fully able to realise their potential contribution in a sustainable way.

Addressing capacity at the institutional level will strengthen the participation of our partners in research and development within all themes. By increasing the total number of individuals and institutions competent to do research, teaching and dissemination of knowledge in agroforestry, we are diversifying the sources of knowledge reaching farmers, and thereby increasing the potential for adoption and impact on livelihoods and landscapes.

Focus: Research systems and institutions

Under this focus, we will strive to understand the bottlenecks faced by national institutions and work out joint strategies and programs to address them. Our main role is as mentor to them, encouraging development of sustainable capacity to undertake quality research and share research findings. In this process, they will become stronger as partners. We will seek to understand the capacity and needs of national institutions, develop joint research programs and sourcing support, and hone the knowledge and skills of promising scientists in their institutions.

Focus: Development systems and institutions

We will work with organizations that are engaged in empowering farmers, disseminating agroforestry and land management options, marketing agroforestry products and setting and implementing policies impacting on rural livelihoods. ICRAF will form and strengthen strategic partnerships with them to ensure the multi-directional flow of knowledge and skills emanating from research and from farmers' experiences. Negotiation tools and information will be made available for policy makers at all levels from the local to international. We will survey and review country policies in order to develop better environmental assessment and governance strategies. It will also strategically manage the training of development workers and farmers, identifying pathways for dissemination of innovations, and working to develop successful scaling-up strategies.

Focus: Educational systems and institutions

The future farmers, policy makers, scientists, educators and development workers are pupils and students at various levels of education from primary schools to colleges and universities. In this focus, ICRAF will work with policy makers, education managers and educators to incorporate multi-disciplinary approaches to land management into curricula. At a basic education level, schools will have the opportunity to understand and apply natural resource management principles in the process of learning various subjects. This approach has the potential to improve relevance of basic education and to strengthen links between schools and local communities. At higher levels of education, the focus will be on strengthening multi-disciplinary approaches to teaching and learning. Our programmes will yield skilled future farmers, and an increased pool of human resources capable of doing high-quality agroforestry and INRM research and development.

Focus: Inter-institutional collaboration and knowledge management

The aim of this focus is to develop mechanisms that foster better sharing of knowledge and information. There is also a need to strengthen our internal knowledge-management capacity, methods, and coordination to facilitate its sharing of knowledge, its follow-up with partners, and its impact assessment. We will link with other CGIAR centres and other advanced research institutions and universities across the research-education-development continuum, helping to improve the quality and diversity of our innovations. We will develop comprehensive agroforestry/INRM knowledge banks and delivery mechanisms, with the goal of becoming a "one-stop shop" for information in this field.