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New research division targets UN Millennium Development Goals

In an effort to help scientists contribute to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, CIP established a new research division in 2003 to improve targeting and do a better job of monitoring impact

CIP’s new Impact Enhancement Division, which will be operational by the end of 2004, will focus on research in 33 target countries covering eight regions and a variety of agro-ecologies. This is one of the key outcomes of the nearly 18 months of analysis and consultation involved in the Center’s visioning exercise, through which CIP scientists and management concluded that the delivery of greater benefits to the poor will require a realignment of the way the Center targets and evaluates its research.

“CIP can no longer assume that simply increasing agricultural productivity will push people out of poverty or contribute to global development goals,” says economist Keith Fuglie. “That assumption was fundamental to many of our past successes, but we now operate under vastly different circumstances. In today’s world, productivity increases will not provide the leverage needed to crack hardcore poverty, reduce child mortality, or lessen the impact of global warming.”

Fuglie, who heads the Center’s new Impact Enhancement Division, notes that CIP’s last priority-setting exercise, conducted in 1997, produced the first CIP strategy to explicitly address both poverty and environmental issues. That exercise, he says, led to a repositioning of Center research to the targeting of broad poverty-stricken areas in northeast India, Bangladesh, the interior provinces of China, and Central Africa. “Much of that research,” says Fuglie, “is now contributing millions of dollars in benefits,” (see Impact of CIP-related technologies).

Impact of CIP-related technologies1
Technology		Country	Time span for project appraisal	Returns on investment2
General	Specific			Internal rate of return (%)	Net present value (million $)	Poverty content (%)
Varietal	Late blight resistance and improved seed	Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire	1978–1993	92	27.0	85
	Resistance to drought and viruses	China	1978–2000	106	11.9	71
	Late blight resistance	Peru	1979–2020	27	5.4	31
Integrated pest management	Potato tuber moth	Tunisia	1976–2000	64	6.4	18
	Sweetpotato weevil	Dominican Republic	1989–2019	29	1.1	55
	Sweetpotato weevil	Cuba	1993–2020	65	21.7	32
	Andean potato weevil	Peru	1988–2018	32	1.8	31
Seed	Rapid multiplication and late-blight resistant varieties	Vietnam	1978–1993	81	2.1	52
	True potato seed	India	1978–2015	29	18	60
	Sweetpotato-virus-free planting material	China	1978–2015	202	550	20
	True potato seed	Egypt	1979–2015	28	2.9	23
	True potato seed	Vietnam	1990–2010	39	1.8	52
1 This is not an exhaustive list of where impacts of CIP-related technologies have occurred. Rather, these are selected cases where CIP has been able to conduct formal benefit–cost analysis of technologies known to have been widely adopted. It is part of an ongoing effort to assess and document impacts of CIP in developing countries. 2 Net present value estimated using a 10% discount rate. Poverty content is the estimated share of total benefits going to poor households (based on the percentage of the population in impacted areas living below $1/day). Benefits of technology adoption are projected into the future based on estimates of the probable adoption patterns and “life span” of the technology. See Walker TS and Fuglie KO, 2000. Impact Assessment at the International Potato Center (CIP) in the 1990s. Paper presented at the CGIAR Impact Assessment Workshop, 3–5 May 2000, FAO, Rome, and the papers cited therein for more detailed results and sensitivity analysis of the estimated rates of return to research investments.

Fuglie notes, however, that previous CIP priority-setting exercises had important limitations. Center researchers acknowledge, for example, that CIP’s priority setting has historically been somewhat one-dimensional, with targets selected principally on the basis of expected varietal adoption and the resulting crop production value.

Disaggregating the data

“What happened in past planning exercises,” adds Pamela Anderson, CIP’s Deputy Director General for Research, “is that our priority setting was based on global aggregate data. We didn’t have the mapping and modeling tools we have now to disaggregate the data, let alone pinpoint the locations where it makes the most sense to focus on a particular type of research.”

Anderson notes that in CIP’s 2003 visioning exercise, geographic information systems and a special algorithm developed by the Center’s systems analysts were used to overlay World Bank and FAO data with on-the-ground information provided by CIP regional scientists and national cooperators. The study compared four poverty indicators: income (under US$1 a day), child and maternal mortality rates, and persistent hunger.

Targets for CIP Vision As part of the recent CIP Vision exercise, the Center’s systems analysts superimposed potato and sweetpotato crop production statistics with data on poverty, malnutrition, and child and maternal mortality to help pinpoint the locations where CIP’s research is most likely to help the poor. The resulting map targets eight regions and provides compelling evidence that research investments in West Africa should be given high priority.

The end product was a poverty map (see above) that has been overlaid with CIP’s crop maps to show where the Center’s research is likely to do the most good. The map, Anderson says, will be the principal working tool of the Center’s Impact Enhancement Division, one of six new research divisions specially designed to contribute to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

The Impact Enhancement Division’s long-term objectives are to increase the effectiveness of the Center’s targeting tools, to monitor the impact of CIP research as it evolves, and to set mid-course corrections. Staff assigned to the Division will continue to focus on identifying priority geographical areas, populations, and systems. Thus far, 33 countries in eight regions have been targeted in this way, though Center researchers acknowledge that more work is needed to filter down to specific locations.

While many of the sites identified are already hosting ongoing CIP research activities, initial analyses also indicate the existence of pressing needs and new opportunities in areas such as West Africa, where the Center has not worked since the early 1990s.

Built-in safeguards

Anderson notes that once the Division’s first set of targeting exercises is complete, most likely before the end of 2004, the Center’s social science team will conduct participatory needs and opportunity assessments to determine the types of knowledge and technology that will most quickly achieve results in each location.

“Safeguards are being built into the Division’s procedures and policies to avoid missteps that might adversely affect the poor or damage the environment,” Anderson acknowledges. “The unintended consequences of new technology can easily have negative consequences for farm families already at high risk,” she explains.

CIP Director General Hubert Zandstra adds: “Scientists don’t like to be taken away from their research, but this was an exercise that needed to be done and it is already providing benefits.” The Center’s visioning and priority-setting exercise, he notes, has met with support from a range of partners and donors.

World Food Prize winner Pedro Sanchez, in a statement to the participants attending the CGIAR 2003 Annual General Meeting in Nairobi, stated that: “CIP has taken leadership in assessing and realigning its program to meet the Millennium Development Goals, setting an example that can be followed by other(s).” Sanchez, together with M. S. Swaminathan, is Coordinator of the UN Millennium Development Project Task Force on Hunger.

CIP scientist receives 2003 Derek Tribe Award CIP virologist Luis Salazar received Australia’s 2003 Derek Tribe Award for research that led to major increases in sweetpotato production in three Chinese provinces. China, the world’s largest sweetpotato producer, was the first country to benefit from advanced technology that eliminates virus diseases from farmers’ planting materials. Use of the technique, economists say, led to a 7 percent increase in world sweetpotato supplies and added some US$550 million to the Chinese economy. “Dr. Salazar developed the detection technology needed to make the system work,” says CIP Director General Hubert Zandstra. “It was Lucho’s research that made the process feasible, and China’s determination and organizational skills that made it work on such a large scale.” Salazar, a Peruvian national, joined CIP in 1973. Before that, he was a member of the team that adapted the ELISA technique for virus detection in plants. ELISA is a standard tool of clinical immunology and is commonly used to screen for HIV and other viruses in humans. “Derek Tribe was a great friend of CIP, and China is one of our oldest and most important partners,” Zandstra adds. The Derek Tribe Award was established in 2001 in recognition of Professor Tribe’s contributions to international agricultural research. Sponsored by the Crawford Fund, it is presented biennially to a citizen of a developing country. This is one of the many activities undertaken by the Crawford Fund to raise awareness about the links between food, environment, and the world’s poor. The Fund also assists in the transfer of agricultural technologies to developing countries. It was established by the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in honor of the late Sir John Crawford, one of the founders of the CGIAR and one of CIP’s early champions. The award was presented to Salazar by the Honorable Tim Fischer, Chairman of the Crawford Fund, at a ceremony in Canberra, Australia on December 4, 2003.