Annual report 2021: CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems

2021 was WLE’s final year – the culmination of a decade of science and impact. Throughout the year we saw the real-world difference made by our flagship projects and watched solutions unfold at landscape and basin scales. We also saw our research flow into larger processes in a year of international action that included the UN Food Systems Summit and high-stakes meetings of the UN Conventions on Climate Change and Biological Diversity. WLE participated in all of these, bringing proven solutions to the table. We also helped shape the CGIAR 2030 Research and Innovation Agenda: several new One CGIAR initiatives will build on – and advance – WLE research, including ‘NEXUS Gains: Realizing Benefits across Water, Energy, Food and Ecosystems’, ‘Agroecology’ and the ‘NATURE+’ initiative on nature-positive solutions. We also worked with other CRPs to propose a future model for assessing integrated systems research. In 2021, results spanned the five impact areas of the One CGIAR Research and Innovation Strategy.