PIM: Progress to Date and ReflectionsKaren Brooks, Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets.

13 March, 2014, Washington, DC

2013 in a brief

First full year of work, second of three

years designated for implementation of PIM’s

first phase

Relationships with boundary partners

deepened

Ongoing research activities produced

noteworthy

publications and discussion papers.

Selected research results were

applied

PIM’s gender strategy was

approved and gender work in the portfolio

continued

CIMMYT joined PIM, bringing the number of participating Centers to

twelve

Our internal partners

12

Program restructuring: focus and coherence

Examined relationship between activities funded through windows 1 and 2 and those funded bilaterally and through window 3.

Grouped work into 7 flagships plus 1 cross-cutting flagship addressing partnerships, capacity building, and stand-alone gender work. Each flagship carries within it several clusters of aggregated research work.

Appointed Flagship leaders to adjust the program governance to the new structure.

PIM’s flagship projects:F1: Foresight ModelingF2: Science Policy and Incentives for InnovationF3: Adoption of Technology and Sustainable IntensificationF4: Policy and Public Expen ditureF5: Value ChainsF6: Social ProtectionF7: Natural Resource Property RegimesF8: Crosscutting Gender, Partnerships, and Capacity Building

Program restructuring: focus and coherence

PIM’s flagships, IDOs, and contribution to SLOs

Achievements in 2013

Flagship 1:

Foresight Modeling

• Modeling team nearly completed or advanced characterization of 20 priority technologies.

• Progress achieved in developing new methods to assess management practices and systemic interactions.

• The PNAS paper “Climate change effects on agriculture: Economic responses to biophysical shocks” (in collaboration with CCAFS) received the highest level of attention, as measured by Altmetrics, of all IFPRI publications in 2013.

Key improvements to IMPACT model:

• updating the base year to 2005;

• including all CGIAR mandated crops;

• increasing the spatial resolution to the level of individual country;

• including water basins within countries as units;

• enhancing treatment of water and hydrological management of weather and climate shocks.

Results from this work fed directly into the RTB prioritization process via PIM team members at CIP.

Achievements in 2013

Flagship 2:

Science Policy and Incentives for Innovation

• The Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators Initiative (ASTI) finalized data collection and analysis in African countries. Agricultural R&D capacity and investments have increased since 2008, although underinvestment, volatile flows, and aging of the scientific cadre remain problematical.

• The Program on Biosafety Systems (PBS) released ten publications in 2013, including several books addressing socio-economic impacts of genetically modified crops. PBS continued to make progress on the use of the Netmap tool for problem solving, and completed an activity with the African Agriculture Technology Foundation to inform their efforts on public outreach.

Achievements in 2013

Flagship 3:

Adoption of Technology and Sustainable Intensification

• PIM work led by CIAT based on the R4D multi-stakeholder learning platforms continued in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The workshop “New business models: building inclusive and sustainable trading relationships between buyers and small scale producers in Central America”(Nicaragua, Sept) kicked off a two year learning cycle with the member organizations of the Regional Learning Alliance of Central America.

• The HarvestChoice team coordinated a CGIAR-wide initiative on geo-referencing CRP research activities, which included cataloging the CGIAR technologies and developing a prototype tool to visualize the data (country-level mapping of CRPs; activity-level mapping of PIM) (see illustrations on the following pages)

Achievements in 2013

Flagship 4:

Policy and Public Expen diture

• The Arab Spatial open-access database and interactive mapping tool launched in February 2013 displays data on more than 150 indicators of development in the Middle East and North Africa.

• An ICRISAT project on women’s empowerment in rural India builds on existing individual and household panel data for 6 villages from 1975 to 2011 and 18 villages from 2009 to 2011. In 2013, with methodological input from PIM’s gender leader, ICRISAT collected a new panel to examine changes over time in time use, nutrition, and related institutional arrangements.

Achievements in 2013

Flagship 5:

Value Chains

• The Value Chains Knowledge Clearinghouse, an initiative led by PIM with inputs from Bioversity, CIAT, CIP, ICRAF, ICRISAT, IFPRI, IITA, and ILRI, provides a comprehensive, easily accessible repository of research methods and best practices.

• CIP produced five policy briefs and 2 journal articles on results of the Participatory Market Chain Approach (PMCA) in the Andes, Uganda, and Indonesia.

Achievements in 2013

Flagship 6:

Social Protection

• The work of the IFPRI social protection team comparing the effectiveness of different forms of transfers (cash, food, and vouchers), and especially evidence from a randomized experiment in northern Ecuador, was cited in The Economist – conveying the finding that vouchers are more effective than the two other types of transfers in that context

Achievements in 2013

Flagship 7:

Natural Resource Property Regimes

• CAPRi’s sourcebook “Resources, Rights, and Cooperation: A Sourcebook on Property Rights and Collective Action for Sustainable Development” was translated into Chinese, adding to the English and Spanish versions already available.

• As part of a PIM-funded activity led by Bioversity, a common framework for monitoring agrobiodiversity has been developed and discussed at the experts meeting in Huancayo, Peru in November. This framework was used by RTB to prepare an in situ conservation flagship project for roots, tubers, and bananas, and is expected to form the basis for developing a global network for monitoring agricultural biodiversity.

Achievements in 2013

Flagship 8:

Crosscutting Gender, Partnerships, and Capacity Building

• The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) Resource Center released an instructional guide on how to implement, calculate, and analyze the index. In addition to that, it published an analytical case study for Ghana, demonstrating how the index can be used to understand linkages between women’s empowerment and key outcomes, and supplementary resource materials including a video tutorial on how to implement the time-use module. A Spanish version of the WEAI presentation is now also available.

A few early lessons and observations…

• Scientists have maintained research and simultaneously devoted time and effort to make the new CGIAR work.  

• Where the system benefits from Centers working together, the CRPs provide a useful new instrument for cooperation.  

• Where synergies among Centers are few, transactions costs of the CRP structure may outweigh benefits.  

• Our reporting system does not yet support a focus on impact.  

• Our work programming cycle (among other issues) impedes collaboration with boundary partners.

• We face high fiduciary and reputational risks due to inadequate systems.

Question: How does PIM relate to the common IDOs?Productivity - Improved

productivity in pro-poor food systems

Food Security - Increased and stable access to food commodities by rural

and urban poor

Nutrition - Improved diet quality of nutritionally-vulnerable populations, especially women

and children

Income – Increased and more equitable income from agricultural and natural

resources management and environmental services earned

by low income value chain actors

Gender & Empowerment - Increased control over

resources and participation in decision-making by

women and other marginalized groups

Capacity to Innovate - Increased capacity for innovation within low income and vulnerable rural communities allowing them

to improve livelihoods

Adaptive Capacity - Increased capacity in low income

communities to adapt to environmental and economic variability, shocks and longer

term changes

Policies – More effective policies, supporting

sustainable, resilient and equitable agricultural and

natural resources management developed and

adopted by agricultural, conservation and

development organizations, national governments and

international bodies

Environment - Minimized adverse environmental effects of

increased production intensification

Future Options - Greater resilience of

agricultural/forest/water based/mixed crop livestock,

aquatic systems for enhanced ecosystem services

Climate - Increased carbon sequestration and reduction of

greenhouse gases through improved agriculture and natural

resources management

More generally, how does any of the CRPs relate to the

common IDOs?• IDOs useful as aspirational statements• Help focus attention on impact and how to achieve it• But as contribution to workable results framework, oversold• IDOs without indicators are overpraised and underdressed

– …and even with indicators plenty of issues of measurement, attribution

Picture: Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Naomi Lewis, illustrated by Joel Stewart (Walker Books)

How to put some clothes on the IDOs?

• Various guidance notes from ISPC, including metrics workshop in December 2013

• Good discussion of issues

• No easy answers

• New capacity to collect and process data will lead to really interesting and useful breakthroughs in near future

• In the meantime, indicator fatigue setting in

• Need to stop circling and move on, with understanding that we can adjust as we go

• Use update of the SRF to provide framework

Picture: http://1000thingstodowhenbored.blogspot.com/2011/09/26-put-your-clothes-on-upside-down.html

How to update the SRF

1. Basic premise and objectives

sound

Rural poverty, food security, hunger and

nutrition, NRM, gender

2. Impose simple conceptual framework over underlying complexity: four building blocks for an environmentally sustainable food secure future

Technology: yield, resilience, nutrition

Efficiency: technology, management, incentives

Trade: surplus and deficit areas, shocks, efficiency

Social protection: temporary shocks and chronic vulnerability

3. Each of the CRPs contributes to the

composite effort through building blocks

4. Agree on limited set of indicators, show how they map to system level objectives, show derivation in building blocks, linkage to selection of

common IDOs customized for each CRP

Agreements with Fund Council on Indicators Indicators for

the SRF will be aligned with

those for SDG’s

Countries will be the unit of measurement, selected according to

the density of CG presence on the

ground

Countries will agree to participate, will select and define

their specific indicators, and set their own targets

Country-level statistical services will do the measurement, with

technical assistance from outside bodies, including

the CG, as needed.

CGIAR [and CRPs] will report on

contribution validated by countries, and will not seek attribution

back to CGIAR

What do we know about indicators for agricultural sections of SDG’s?

• Document currently out for comment; draft indicators:• Crop yield gap (actual yield as % of attainable yield)  • Crop nitrogen use efficiency (%)  • Crop water productivity (tons of harvested product per unit

irrigation water) – indicator to be developed • Share of agricultural produce loss and food waste (% of

food production) – indicator to be developed

• Additional indicators that countries may consider: • Cereal yield growth rate (% p.a.) • Irrigation access gap [to be developed] • Livestock yield gap (actual yield as % of attainable yield).

SDG indicators clearly still under construction, but we can proceed with confidence of

alignment• Productivity

• Yields for key staple food crops (and livestock?) rise by 2.5% globally per year

• Productivity of labor in agriculture rises by 3% globally per year

• Total factor productivity rises by 2% globally per year 

• Environmental sustainability• Improvements in soil fertility• Water quality • Contribution of land use changes to GHG emissions,

especially from deforestation, is zero by 2030• Nutrient efficiency increases significantly• Agricultural biodiversity measured and monitored 

 

Potential indicators (continued)

• Health and Nutrition• The level of food waste measured and monitored• Target for stunting and/or wasting• Target for dietary diversity

• Food Security Through Trade and Social Protection• Food price volatility returns to its average level

from 1985-2005; grain reserves as a share of use return to global levels of 2000

• Measured price and trade distortions decline by one third relative to 2015

• Populations in need of safety nets to reach 0 hunger goal identified and served

Candidate countries for measurement

South Asia• Bangladesh• India (regionally)

East Asia• Indonesia • Philippines• Vietnam

Africa• Ethiopia• Kenya• Tanzania• Nigeria• Ghana• Burkina Faso• Mozambique or

Malawi?

Latin/Central America

• Peru• Nicaragua

How can the indicators be used?Very useful for…

At aggregate level (SLOs)

Assist in interpreting SDG indicators

Improve quality of measurement

Show commitment of CGIAR to shared global effort

Provide ready source of information for global fora and negotiations

Allow countries to benchmark performance against peers; identify

areas that need attention

At CRP level (IDOs)

Provide focus for soliciting feedback from partners on relevance of

assistance

Allow mid-course corrections in research programs

Inform donors about program performance and priorities to assist in

fund-raising

Provide foundation for shared assessment of effectiveness in venues

with multiple agencies contributing

Can indicators be used for results-based allocation of resources?

• In my view, no. • Ex ante problems of uncertainty in results chains, absence of

agency of most CRP actors in relevant decision processes• Ex post problems of attribution when multiple partners contribute

• Proposal for resource allocation: use window 1 for genuinely system-wide activities• Gene banks• Costs of running CO• Agreed level of reserves for Centers• System-wide public goods (measurement of indicators, etc.)

• Divide residual of w1 evenly among CRPs.

Encourage donors to use window 2 according to their assessment of priorities and reported results.

Summary and Closing

• Two years of implementation of PIM have been exciting

• CRPs are useful new instrument for CGIAR; better for some purposes than others

• We are on the verge of new capabilities in metrics, and must use the capacity responsibly• Avoid over-promising• Respect boundary between science and science fiction• Innovate in techniques for measuring and processing

• Recast SRF around a simple set of core indicators with minimalist text• Cascade indicators for IDOs down from those for the SRF• Agree with candidate countries on measurement for SRF

indicators• Wider set of countries and sub-national geographies for

IDOs

THANK YOU!

Questions?