Memorandum submitted by the Natural Environment Research
Council (NERC)
NERC is one of the UK's seven Research Councils. It funds and
carries out impartial scientific research in the sciences of the
environment. NERC's comments are based on inputs from the Centre
for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), the foremost UK centre for the
sciences of ecology and hydrology. CEH has a long history of carrying
out research for DFID and ODA, mainly in water resources, tropical
agriculture, forestry and agroforestry.
Comments
Is the approach to agriculture in terms of poverty reduction
and growth strategies right?
§ Separating agriculture
from broader consideration of renewable natural resources may
not lead to the best solutions. In particular, the separation
of agriculture from forestry is often an artificial one as farmers
need both tree and crop products to meet their daily requirements.
Similarly, water resources are crucial to short- and long-term
productivity.
§ Policy development must
be built on sound evidence, which should include outputs from
applied socio-economic and biophysical research. We therefore
welcome the commitment to 'maintain a substantial programme
of agricultural research bringing together expertise in developing
countries, the CGIAR, the UK and elsewhere'.
DFID's method of support for agricultural research
§ Increased funding of
R&D research in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural
Research (CGIAR) centres may undermine the very good and worthwhile
activities conducted by national centres unless these also receive
long-term support through funding and collaboration. The presence
of high-salaried CG centres in a country already creates a "brain
drain" from national centres to CG centres. The building
and maintenance of national research and extension capacity, run
by national experts, aided by long-term partnerships with UK research
institutes, should be part of DFID's strategy for agriculture
and poverty reduction. DFID's Civil Society Programme should also
ensure that NGOs take advantage of knowledge generated by local
and international researchers.
NERC RESEARCH CENTRES AND COLLABORATIVE CENTRES
NERC Research Centres
British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
British Geological Survey (BGS)
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH)
Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL)
NERC Collaborative Centres
Centre of observation of Air-Sea Interactions and Fluxes (CASIX)
Centre for Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes and Tectonics
(COMET)
Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM)
Centre for Population Biology (CPB)
Centre for Terrestrial Carbon Dynamics (CTCD)
Climate and Land Surface Systems Interaction Centre (CLASSIC)
Data Assimilation Research Centre (DARC)
Environmental Systems Science Centre (ESSC)
NERC Centres for Atmospheric Science (NCAS)
National Institute for Environmental eScience (NIEeS)
Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML)
Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS)
Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU)
Southampton Oceanography Centre (SOC)
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Further information on all these centres can be found on the NERC
web site www.nerc.ac.uk
April 2004
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