Integrated natural resource management research in the CGIAR Penang, Malaysia, Friday 25 August 2000

The first CGIAR system-wide meeting on integrated natural resource management (INRM) was held in September 1999 at Bilderberg in the Netherlands. That meeting was held in response to recommendations from the 1998 CGIAR System Review, and the results were presented at the CGIARÕs International Centres Week 1999. As a follow-up, a second meeting was held from 20-25 August 2000, at the new headquarters of ICLARM in Penang, Malaysia. Convened by the Centre Directors Natural Resource Management Task Force, four dozen scientists from 13 of the 16 CGIAR centres and their partner institutions discussed integrated natural resource management in relation to the CGIARÕs research programme. This report summarises some of the issues discussed at that meeting. At the Penang meeting, the participants discussed the conceptual underpinnings of INRM as well as how it might be undertaken or expanded to help the CGIAR fulfill its mission of improving food security and reducing poverty without causing lasting damage to the environment. Topics of discussion included the need to shift from empirical to process oriented research and to use systems approaches; to focus on ways of making ecosystems and natural resource managers such as farmers and others more capable of adapting positively in response to change; to work at multiple scales; and to suggest ways of dealing with the tradeoffs that are inevitable in various resource management options. Also examined was how INRM research can enhance the impact of germplasm improvement, which has been the core of the CGIARÕs success for three decades. Several case studies from Asia, Africa and Latin America were presented at the meeting to illustrate how INRM research has successfully addressed real-life problems [see Appendix 1].

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