Publications /  Annual Report 2001

Better environments, better lives Since the mid-1980s, CIP has steadily strengthened the coverage of environmental issues in its research. By focusing on areas directly related to our core mandate, building on accumulated expertise and developing solid partnerships, we have managed to do so without overextending or venturing outside its areas of comparative advantage. In this section we provide three examples of CIP's work to ensure that agricultural research goes beyond improved crops to provide better, more secure habitats.

In the high Andes, home to CIP's mandate crops, support to new institutional approaches is triggering sustainable development. Center scientists are also developing powerful tools to study fragile highland production systems, thereby contributing to a wider and more informed vision of the many factors that impinge on development in these areas. In Vietnam, densely populated Hanoi is home to another emerging global concern: the environmental and human health issues associated with urban agriculture. CIP is contributing to the creation of viable options through research on recycling wastes from tuber processing and pig production. Research in a valley in Peru is highlighting a theme so new that the international research community has barely begun thinking about it: the implications of global warming for integrated pest management. CIP scientists are contributing information and analyses that will shed light on the complex interactions involved.

In all of these efforts, partnership holds the key to improving people's lives while protecting their environments.