Phase 2General Overview
The CBDC programme is aimed at understanding and
strengthening the farmers’ system of PGR conservation and development in
particular, and in biodiversity management in general. The programme is committed to make the field activities farmer-led, and the partner organisations seek to support and strengthen existing farmers’ management of plant genetic resources. Thus, participation is not regarded as the participation of farmers in projects designed and led by external organisations. Where possible, decisions on the programme at the national level are made by the farming communities involved, and national, regional and global decision making by the programme staff is in line with the decisions of the programme communities. Decision making by the farming communities includes the identification of needs, the formulation of objectives and the outputs desired. For those aspects where farmers currently lack capacity or rely on specific knowledge from external sources, e.g. on specific breeding techniques and access to germplasm respectively, partner organisations provide in these needs but simultaneously promote self-sufficiency of communities for those aspects. Here, the formal system (including the CBDC programme partners) and the informal system (farming communities) meet. The approach described above will lead to empowerment of farmers and their communities concerning the access to and control over their own germplasm and will make them largely self-reliant in managing, developing and utilising the germplasm to match their own needs. In this context, the approach will pay due attention to power relations in the project communities, based on socio-economic status and gender, and attempt to compensate existing inequalities. In relation to this, farmers will take on the role in technical, social and organizational leadership, collecting and providing data, training other farmers and supplying and organizing labour, land and germplasm. Where needed, this is complemented by efforts from the CBDC partners, in particular for technical project leadership. The CBDC programme contributes to the over-all implementation of the Global Plan of Action (GPA) as approved in Leipzig in 1996. Most especially, the CBDC programme is a concrete effort in implementing the leading action areas of the GPA that deal with on-farm conservation and development of plant genetic resources (PGR); and the action areas that called for local farmers’ role and their civil society institutions (e.g. NGOs). The CBDC Programme began as an entirely unique and unorthodox experiment. The experiment hypothesised that decentralised, locally-focused conservation and research by farming communities would prove to be efficient and effective. It also theorised that the farmers’ role could best be supported by an unlikely combination of institutional and community actors engaged in research and policy in the South and North. As a programme dealing with research and development issues, the following initial hypothesis were advanced:
The CBDC Programme was also a strong bet on the capacity of totally different organizations to coordinate and cooperate based on their different views and expertise. Results have shown that cooperation among so diverse partners may be difficult and requires time to build mutual trust and understanding, but is finally rewarding and undeniably necessary. The challenge for the second phase is to make cooperation wider, deeper and more permanent. These first four years have not been free of mistakes and shortcomings. Based upon the partners’ analysis of the experimental first phase, the CBDC has developed a new and innovative programme model for the second phase; a reduced and refined administrative system, a revised communication network, a sharpened technical component; and a more participatory planning and operating agenda. The current document is a description of the implementation of Phase Two of the CBDC Programme over the coming four years. Rationale Farmers’ continuing intellectual and technical innovation in agriculture, in PGR management and their system of protecting, using and developing biodiversity in general, has largely been unrecognized by modern scientific institutions. This non-recognition has also influenced policies and development strategies that concentrated resources into centralized research institutions that attempt to supplant rather than build on and cooperate with local knowledge systems. Farmers’ intellectual and technical innovations dominate the management of local and indigenous plants that provide for much of the food requirements of farming communities. Farmers’ management system has not been supplanted in marginal areas, where cultivars of most researched crops like rice remain to be farmers’ varieties. Projects within the CBDC programme differ in agro-ecological environments and in their orientation on markets. The common denominator is not that the environment is favorable or unfavorable but rather whether the agro-ecosystem and the socio-economic environment are vulnerable. In our view, this means that plant genetic resources are threatened, the dependence of farming communities on external sources is increasing, and the sustainability of farming systems and the livelihood of communities is at stake. Exclusive subsistence agriculture has become rare. Most farming communities worldwide sell part of their produce in markets. Many CBDC projects produce for organic markets or provide traditional products, as a consequence of low-external-input conditions and weak formal sector presence or as an explicit choice for sustainable agricultural practices. Under favorable conditions, varieties from research institutions have replaced local cultivars. However, farmers continue to select from cultivated varieties, thereby creating new lines from modern and traditional cultivars, and have by their own efforts widened their PGR options. Farmers need assistance. The different pressures on their PGR systems -which include market integration, changing environment and changing needs, competition from formal research institutions and commercial companies- are growing and creating an increasingly hostile environment. Agro-biodiversity cannot be conserved and sustainably used without farmers playing their role. The specific contribution of the CBDC Programme is to provide or facilitate innovative alternatives to strengthen farmers’ opportunities and tools, and to develop ways of widening the contribution of different actors to such a task. Its broad development objectives are and have been:
Overview of the first four years of implementation Contents The development of the CBDC programme was started in 1993. The programme was initially discussed during the "Keystone International Dialogue on Plant Genetic Resources" where scientists and NGO representatives were participating. The main phase started in 1994 and ended in March 1999. In the first phase, there were thirteen national projects supported by two international programmes. The national projects were in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam in the Southeast Asian region; the projects in Africa were in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe, and the Latin American projects were in Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Peru. The international programmes were the "technical programme" based at CPRO-DLO in the Netherlands supported by NORAGRIC (in Norway); and the "policy programme" based with RAFI in Canada and GRAIN in Spain. The Southeast Asian projects focused on rice-based farming systems and the rice crop became the main crop of the programme in the region. Additional species, like root and tuber crops, as in the case of the projects in the Philippines and in Vietnam were added; indigenous vegetables were also added in Thailand and in Malaysia. Half way through the four-year phase, all the projects shifted to "participatory plant breeding". All their farmer partners were more interested in PGR utilization and crop improvement. There was less interest in PGR conservation per se. The crop focus of the African projects were more varied. Four of the national projects worked on cereal crops while the Kenyan project was working solely on indigenous vegetables. Since all the projects have an eco-systems orientation, additional species identified by their farmer partners were also added. Local vegetables were also studied in the Zimbabwe project and other species were taken up in the other African projects aside from the main cereal crops. Participatory varietal selection on major cereal crops, maize, sorghum and rice were conducted in three national projects. The Latin American projects also worked on indigenous vegetables and even medicinal plants together with some major crops like maize and potato. The Latin American projects had a more holistic approach to the plant genetic resources focus of the programme. Their work on indigenous vegetables, semi-wild and under-utilized plants led the projects to widen their work to take up biodiversity conservation and management within an eco-system and/or territorial approach. The results of the first phase of the programme shall be finally contained in around 60 technical reports from the different projects. The experiences of the projects will result to changes and/or sharpening of the programme research and development focus in the second phase. The national projects will be linked by thematic themes called "transversal lines". These shall be discussed in another section. Then there were two international programmes: the International Technical programme, led by CGN-Netherlands, with the participation of from NORAGRIC in Norway, and the International Policy Programme, led by RAFI and GRAIN. The international programmes provided support to the national projects. Coordination The work of national projects has been coordinated by means of regional coordination units (RCUs). There is one Regional Coordination Unit for Africa, one for Asia and one for Latin America. They have monitored and assisted implementation, facilitated exchange within the regions, maintained communication with other members of the Programme, and represented the region within the Programme Coordinating Committee. The RCUs have functioned differently in different regions. The coordination at the global level has been carried out by the Global Coordinating Unit (GCU), under the responsibility of CET/CLADES. The GCU has channeled funds to partners, compiled reports, kept communications with donors, monitored major developments among CBDC partners, and provided troubleshooting support when requested by partners or PCC members. The CBDC programme has a Programme Coordinating Committee, or PCC, formed by the global coordinator, the three regional coordinators, and a representative of the ETC Group (formerly RAFI), NORAGRIC and CGN respectively. The role of the PCC has been to regularly supervise the development of programme activities, make policy decisions, and guide relationship with the donors. The PCC is also the final decision-maker in case conflict arises. An important characteristic of the first phase was that communications followed a very regulated path, which in general did not allow or facilitate communication among partners of different regions. This arrangement was adopted as a way to avoid misunderstandings or interference among partners that were starting to know each other. The current phase The development objectives of the second phase are summarized in the following box. They are a clear continuation of the objectives of the first phase, although there is a greater emphasis on an ecosystem approach and gender analysis, and more specific goals regarding technical, policy and economic issues. Its scope has also changed, as widening its impact and target population has become one of the strongest challenges identified for the coming years. Programme Objectives 1. Development objectives
There is a general consensus among the CBDC Partners that the strong autonomy of each partner during the first phase facilitated the building of trust and mutual respect, but did not allow partners to take full advantage of their complementarities. Along with closer working relationships, four years of implementation have shown that local needs, possible questions and even possible solutions have much in common within and across continents. A stronger coordination is now seen not only as possible, but as a central demand for the effectiveness of any future effort. Transversal lines of action For the reasons just explained, partners decided to focus the programme research and development strategies in six (6) thematic lines -called transversal lines- that run through the work of the different partners, and which will allow to look for common goals and common questions, and provide the basis for a network of cooperative activities. The six lines are:
Participatory Plant Breeding and Participatory Variety Selection (PPB and PVS)
The National Projects will still be the basis for the implementation of the CBDC Programme. Each National project will develop a coherent and comprehensive work at the national level, as summarized project per project. However, they will privilege cooperation links among partners by organizing most of their contents along the contents of what we have called transversal lines. This new way of defining contents should allow a much more flexible and effective use of different expertises and resources. Technical and policy support could be provided by any of the partners, although the strongest supportive roles are expected to be played by CGN, ETC Group and NORAGRIC participating in the project. The following table shows the participation of the different National projects in the different transversal lines.
Participation of partners in t-lines
Coordination One of the main lessons of the first phase was that the concentration of coordination responsibilities played an important role in creating a heavy and expensive structure and contributing to many of the coordination problems encountered during the first phase. It has therefore been agreed that the coordination will be highly decentralized during the second phase, as a way to guarantee that no partner or group of people will be overloaded, and making sure that coordinating activities will be carried out efficiently and timely. Also important was to realize that the highly regulated communications of the first phase allowed to build trust relationships, but have simultaneously kept partners from using many opportunities for mutual cooperation, and made the coordination tasks cumbersome and even more centralized than initially foreseen. The coordination and communication schemes proposed for the second phase seek to provide an easier and more efficient coordination, a lighter and more flexible structure, a totally transparent communication network and a general environment of active cooperation among partners. The Regional Coordinating Units (RCU). The RCUS for Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia remain. Most of its activities shall be to ensure that the national projects are developed and operated taking into consideration social, political and institutional limitations and potentials found in each country. They will also provide general support during the implementation of projects, and will be co-responsible for the quality and adequate timing of technical and financial reports. Global Coordination The coordination at the global level will be undertaken by three different components: focal points of the transversal lines, an administrative unit (AU) and the Programme Coordinating Committee (PCC). As in the first phase, the role of the PCC will be to regularly supervise the development of programme activities, make policy decisions, and guide relationship with the donors. The PCC will again be the final decision-maker in case conflict arises. But in the second phase, the Programme Coordinating Committee will additionally monitor the implementation of the Programme more closely, provide support when necessary, and ensure the adequate quality and timing of reports. The administrative tasks will be the responsibility of the Administrative Unit. They will include contractual agreements, financial and narrative reporting to the donors, communication with the donors on administrative issues, support for RCUs and national projects to facilitate administrative management. The National projects remain responsible for overall project management, including financial management. This report will greatly facilitate the elaboration and compilation of reports, allowing the administrative unit to concentrate in providing support when needed. A focal point for each transversal line will be established at one of the partner organizations to coordinate activities related to each of the 6 areas of work . Focal points may develop proposals and make suggestions to partners of the line, but have no decision making power. The focal points will report directly to the PCC, and will consult with the PCC in those cases where this is regarded appropriate for any reason. An overview of responsibilities of all components of the CBDC Programme within the new structure is provided below. |
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