CGIAR reborn. Creative capitalism for 8 M people in the drylands

MANILA - No, science isn't naturally exciting, and experts aren't helping any. No, they don't talk through their hats, but they talk above our heads. In a moment, I will show you that they should be paying more attention to the old Bill Gates of Microsoft fame & fortune and the new Bill Gates of philanthropy and philosophy. Through ICRISAT, I am told CGIAR has been reborn; I tell you Bill Gates wasn't reborn yesterday.

With the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates is East and the CGIAR is West, and the twain should meet. Actually, they have met, and Bill Gates has been in the last 14 months (as of January 2011) "working with the CGIAR community in further refining and elaborating the Strategic Results Framework, the mega-program structure and the associated funding and operational details" (see "For a sustainable & resilient global agriculture - Bill Gates," 09 December 2009, American Chronicle). The CGIAR has had to work its ass off to reinvent itself, and to meet the expectations of the Foundation that has pledged for 2009-2013 around $400 million or 80 million dollars a year. What Lola wants, Lola gets - if she gets to work well.

So, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, CGIAR has been busy transforming itself from the old to the new. Today, the CGIAR now has 2 working arms: the Consortium of CGIAR Centers, and the CGIAR Fund - the new CGIAR hopefully operating on a common framework with a common fund source. The latest report from the headquarters of ICRISAT at Patancheru is that the Consortium, 15 Centers in all, had met on campus from 13 to 16 February, discussed and approved a common Strategy and Results Framework (ICRISAT Happenings 1454, 18 February 2011). About the mega-programs, MPs, according to Carlos Pérez del Castillo, Chair of the Consortium Board, at the end of the next 3 months the 15 MPs will have been identified. From the MPs shall be derived the Centers' new science projects. The common Fund will decide which projects to finance and how much.

Good news: We are talking of the New CGIAR. Bad news: I find that I, journalist am newly accursed. The New CGIAR isn't talking my language. Try this yourself, the statement of the Vision of CGIAR reborn, verbatim, with my slashes ("A New CGIAR," cgiar.org):

/ reduce poverty and hunger,
/ improve human health and nutrition, and
/ enhance ecosystem resilience
through high-quality international
/ agricultural research,
/ partnership and
/ leadership.

A Vision is a Desired Future. My slashes indicate that there are clearly seen 6 independent parts of that New CGIAR Vision. I have a problem with that. They don't tell me how everything is related to everything else. It must be holistic, but I see only the hole. You expect journalists to only half-listen when experts speak like that. As nice as this journalist can say, as far as I can see, that's a complicated Vision so, should I congratulate the New CGIAR - or commiserate with it? Both!

Congratulations CGIAR:
With a complex Vision, you have said nothing daunts you!
Commiseration CGIAR:
With a complex Vision, you have tied yourself a modern Gordian Knot!

I can't help it: once a copywriter, always a copywriter. So now let me be the modern Alexander the Great and with my sharp wit slash! the Gordian Knot is gone. With Merlin's Eyes, in its place this is the Vision I see:

Healthy
Wealthy
Drylands
2020

That's the mantra: "Healthy, Wealthy Drylands 2020." That is to say, 20 healthy families in 20 wealthy villages in 20 provinces in 20 countries in the drylands of both Africa and Asia in 2020. Computing: 20 families times 20 villages times 20 provinces times 20 countries times 2 regions equals 320,000 targets. That gives us 320,000 new, improved families in 10 years. Defining: A healthy family has no serious diseases at the very least, is food-secure, and has cash flow; a wealthy village has its natural resources enriched and exploited only up to its optimum sustainable yield at any time.

Remember, families with enterprises. Arithmetically, 1,600,000 heads (given that a family has 5 members) is not much, but don't forget the multiplier effect of an enterprising family being supported towards self-reliance in a complete process from production to marketing and back. If you're an entrepreneur, your family neighbor is always looking at where the grass is greener - yours.

Now then, let each family entrepreneurship project, FEP be within the purview of a new, improved CGIAR mega-program. Let the 5 Partners do their job: Project, Public, Private, Patron, People. A CGIAR Center initiates an FEP, and well the CGIAR Centers can do that; looking at where they are located, the Centers cover the whole wide world of agriculture, from soil (seeds, including sperms) to paper (policies, including product marketing):

Africa Rice Center (based in Benin)
Bioversity International (Rome)
CIAT, Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (Colombia)
CIFOR, Center for International Forestry Research (Indonesia)
CIMMYT, Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo (Mexico)
CIP, Centro Internacional de la Papa (Peru)
ICARDA, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (Syria)
ICRISAT, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (India)
IFPRI, International Food Policy Research Institute (Washington DC)
IITA, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (Nigeria)
ILRI, International Livestock Research Institute (Kenya)
IRRI, International Rice Research Institute (Philippines)
IWMI, International Water Management Institute (Sri Lanka)
World Agroforestry Centre (Kenya)
WorldFish Center (Malaysia).

Since Bill Gates is now part of the CGIAR for all intents and purposes, to my mind, these 15 CGIAR Centers are better off capitalizing on his intellectual challenge to businessmen, especially US dollar billionaires, to patronize or practice creative capitalism. (For more details on this radical concept, see my "Bill Gates, Nobel Prize for Economics 2008!" iCRiSAT Watch). From a journalist's point of view, science with a human face, or research for improving the quality of life of peoples along with improving the places, is the perfect vehicle for creative capitalism. For creative capitalism in science, the total target beneficiaries are untold millions, and the cost of service in the billions is not a subtraction but an addition.

Now then, for creative science, I suggest that each family enterprise project be based on the Adarsha Watershed Model of ICRISAT, that which has grown a watershed where none grew before after it has grown a village where only families grew before. In fact, the Adarsha Model has been so successful that in 2007 yet, already more than 200,000 families had benefited from it across India, China, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Rwanda (November 2007, ICRISAT at 35: Triumphant Journey with the Poor in the Drylands, page 38).

Why begin with a watershed? We begin with water for the village, because village water is village life.

When the initial family enterprise project has taken off, still within the village let the moving spirits behind that FEP partnership move on to another FEP, and another, and another ... Assuming that in each village a watershed is grown, in 10 years there should be at least 160,000 watersheds rebuilt to productivity, and 3,200,000 new, improved families in various stages of self-reliance, or 8,000,000 people CGIARed above the poverty line, no longer poor. Creative science is now translated into 160 K watersheds alive and 8 M lively human faces touched by science. Bill Gates would have approved.