Approaches to environmental services research in the CGIAR

The Sustainable Development Goals try to reconcile the unfinished business of the human development deficit at the bottom of the pyramid, with the realization of planetary boundaries and the need for substantial gains in the efficiency of enhancing human wellbeing per unit resource use. Agriculture, still over a third of global employment, will need to transform towards greater productivity per unit land and labour but will also need to minimize direct negative external environmental effects. The transformative change needed cannot be achieved by following sectoral approaches and the institutional landscape that have brought us to where we are. Beyond building on past strengths of crop genetic improvement and associated technology for intensifying agriculture, the international agricultural research of the CGIAR has picked up the challenge of contributing to the more integral perspectives of sustainable development goals. As contribution to the wider debate this booklet introduces and reviews underlying concepts of environmental services, takes stock of ongoing work in a number of CGIAR research programs, suggesting ways forward that will combine place-based analysis and support for ‘learning landscapes’, with national policy reform and emergence of international institutions that link beneficiaries and providers of such services, combining fairness and efficiency.

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