In pursuit of increased research impact, CIAT has developed a new strategy for the period 2014-2020. Reaffirming eco-efficiency as a guiding principle of our research, the strategy explains how the Center’s growing research team and networks will capitalize on past and current work to translate smarter use of resources into valuable impacts, such as higher incomes, improved child nutrition, and better water supplies.
The new strategy responds to various trends shaping the world today, including population growth, rapid urbanization, extensive land degradation, climate change, and exciting scientific advances. The strategy also takes into account key developments in each of the regions where CIAT works – sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
We will implement our strategy in two important ways.
First, the Center’s scientific agenda will feed directly into that of the CGIAR Consortium – the global research partnership to which we belong – as we work toward the Center’s three strategic objectives:
1. Make affordable, high-quality food readily available to the rural and urban poor by boosting agricultural productivity and enhancing the nutritional quality of staple crops.
2. Promote rural income growth by making smallholder agriculture more competitive and market oriented through improvements in agricultural value chains.
3. Provide the means to make a more intensive and competitive agriculture both environmentally sustainable and climate smart.
Second, CIAT will embark on a set of strategic initiatives designed to boost our development impact, based on the Center’s diverse and evolving research strengths, while also influencing the future focus of CGIAR research. The new initiatives we propose will:
- Promote forage-based livestock production to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions while improving the livelihoods of the rural poor through the sustainable intensification of meat and milk production.
- Develop more sustainable foods systems that serve the needs of a rapidly urbanizing world.
- Gain a better grasp of how yield gaps and instability in major crops can be reduced in an eco-efficient manner.
- Enhance ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes as a means to improve the livelihoods and well-being of the rural poor.
In delivering our strategy, we will vigorously pursue new alliances – including public-private partnerships – and reinforce our current collaboration to ensure the delivery of development impacts in our focus regions. We will take steps to ensure that our work empowers and transforms the lives of women and marginalized groups. We will build stronger capacity for research and innovation among our partners in developing countries. We will mainstream knowledge sharing principles and practices into our work to enhance our research outcomes through continuous learning.
Finally, in keeping with our vision of an eco-efficient future, we will pursue this aim in CIAT’s own operations, making the Center carbon neutral in the near future and registering further gains during the years to come.