GCARD2

By Caity Peterson

One of the best examples of the inter-connectedness of the three themes for this year’s Gobal Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD2) is the Global Foresight Hub, re-introduced on Wednesday by Joost Vervoort, Scenarios Leader at the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

Vervoort’s take home message? You can have all the foresight you want, but if it’s not integrated across multiple scales and multiple stakeholders it won’t do anybody any good. In fact, the “Hub” exemplifies the inseparable nature of the Foresight and Partnership themes; their inter-dependence is the key to the practical application of foresight in agricultural research and development. Read more »

By Caity Peterson

You can run into all kinds of people at major global agricultural conferences – Bruce Campbell, Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), for example.

Spying Dr. Campbell alone, exposed like a gazelle in the vast corridors of the Conrad Hotel – the venue for the Second Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD2) – with nothing but a cup of coffee to defend himself, an auxiliary unit of the GCARD2 social reporting team seized the opportunity to corner him for a lightning interview. Read more »

By Caity Peterson

Abrar Chaudhury isn’t a fan of top down adaptation costing. “Top down, purely econometric approaches usually way underestimate the true costs of adaptation,” he says. But he also says that a bottom up, community directed approach isn’t the absolute answer either. “The real story,” he asserts, “is in the difference between the two.”

Chaudhury’s work involves the use of a new community adaptation prioritization and planning tool called Participatory Social Return on Investment (PSROI). PSROI builds on traditional Social Return on Investment methods – which normal focus on economic analysis of pre-determined interventions – by integrating a participatory, community-driven component. 

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By Caity Peterson

Worst-case scenarios for climate impacts, GDP growth and population increase point to a world where the majority of people in low-income developing nations are living at an intake of just around 1,800 calories a day. It therefore doesn't take a genius to understand why pessimists in our midst are seeing a future of mass starvation.

In fact, says Gerald Nelson of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), “if you’re thinking about the future and you’re not thinking about climate change, you’re making a huge mistake.”

Speaking to participants and partners at the Second Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD2) in Punta del Este, Uruguay, Nelson highlighted the important role that foresight must play in connecting the research done at the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) science to its use in society.

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