Re-affirming agriculture’s core purpose
“Not everyone working other areas of development sees the role of agriculture or food systems as critical to the Sustainable Development Goals,” Frank Rijsberman, CEO, CGIAR Consortium.
Following a set of key discussions held in New York earlier this week around global development challenges, the CGIAR Development Dialogues which will be held at the Faculty House at Columbia University in New York, aims to link the role of agriculture in increasing food security, poverty alleviation, and improving health and nutrition to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Today marks an important milestone in the history of CGIAR, a global agricultural research partnership working towards a food-secure future. Its research is carried out by 15 Centers who are members of the CGIAR Consortium and 16 CGIAR Research Programs who work together with local, national, regional and global partners.
Earlier this week, at the UN Climate Summit 2014, accompanied by the launch of the Global Alliance on Climate-Smart Agriculture, CGIAR announced that it would invest at least 60 percent of its budget in support of helping 500 million farmers adapt to stressful growing conditions.
Scientists, ministers and donors will gather today to highlight the vital roles of agriculture, livestock, fisheries, landscapes and food systems in sustainable development. Speakers at today’s event include Kanayo Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Rajendra Pachauri, chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and leaders in the United Nations, government ministries, philanthropic foundations and universities as well as CGIAR.
The CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE), led by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI)- a member of the CGIAR Consortium is an ambitious 12-year CGIAR research program, unmatched in its scope and range of partners. WLE promotes a new integrated approach to sustainable intensification, which considers a healthy functioning ecosystem a prerequisite for agricultural development, resilience of food systems and human well-being.
The CGIAR Research Program will be represented at the Dialogues by Letitia Obeng, Member, IWMI Board of Governors, and Johan Rockström, Executive Director, Stockholm Resilience Centre, who is also Chair of the WLE Steering Committee. Other WLE representatives include Nathaniel Matthews, WLE’s Research Coordinator, Fabrice DeClerck, Ecosystem Services and Resilience Working Group Leader (Bioversity International), Michael Victor, WLE’s Knowledge Management and Communication Coordinator and Abby Waldorf, WLE’s Blog Coordinator.
They will be joined by around 250 delegates to debate four themes related to the Sustainable Development Goals:
- prosperous, food-secure and resilient livelihoods
- healthier, innovative, capable and inclusive communities
- new partnerships for development impact
- climate change-resilient agroecosystems
WLE, together with two other CGIAR Research Programs, Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, and Forests, Trees and Agroforestry, will provide support specifically to a panel on “Climate-smart agriculture: balancing trade-offs in food systems and ecosystems”, under theme four of the Dialogues.
The whole of the day’s presentations and discussions will be streamed from Columbia University, New York; here is the program. You can click the LIVE button on the program to watch the discussions in real-time. Follow the conversation on twitter hashtag #CGIAR_DD.