TMT Journal Update #9 from Mark Holderness

Dear Colleagues,

The Transition Management Team held a brief teleconference to prepare for its face-to-face meetings later this week in Washington, D.C. We discussed the need to continue to engage stakeholders in the reform process to ensure that we understand their concerns and the key issues that must be resolved in the coming months. 
 
The reform process is at a critical stage as the proposed new core elements begin to take shape and we are working to ensure a seamless connection of all of the key pieces – the Consortium, the Fund, the Strategy and Results Framework and Mega Programs, and the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development. We are working to ensure that these elements work together to create a lean, focused, and coherent organization. The various teams responsible for developing the different structures in the new CGIAR have been working closely together to resolve problems and ensure consistency across the structures.
 
Our aim is to have the new components of the CGIAR work together seamlessly, so that we have better targeted and integrated research that is openly implemented with partners and yields greater benefits for the poor and their environments. Now that the basic structures and responsibilities in the new CGIAR have become clearer, our emphasis is shifting to establishing the programs that the new CGIAR will implement. Two interwoven processes have been launched to help shape the programs the new CGIAR will conduct:

• the CGIAR Strategy and Results Framework team is using researcher surveys and economic modeling to identify where large-scale research investments are most likely to bring the greatest development returns; and
• towards the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development, electronic consultations are being conducted to gather opinions from a wide range of stakeholders on their development demands and what needs to change in agricultural research policies, institutions, processes and systems for research, including that of the CGIAR, to make greater impacts on development.

Planning for the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development is now in full swing, with a great effort building up from each region, to stimulate investment and change in research for development systems around the world. The Global Conference Task Force, established by the Global Forum for Agricultural Research, is working hard to pursue an innovative and exciting process, led and delivered through each region. These consultations also provide a mechanism for public discussion of the proposed CGIAR Strategy and Results Framework and Mega Programs as they evolve. 

We invite you to join any or all of the six regional electronic consultations for the Global Conference that are now under way. These will be followed by face-to-face meetings, in which participants will draft a set of overarching global agricultural research for development priorities and an overall action plan for discussion at the Conference itself, to be held in Montpellier in March 2010, with subsequent follow-up for changing agricultural research practices, institutions and systems.

Another TMT Journal Update will follow shortly after our meetings in Washington. As always, we welcome your questions, comments or feedback, which can be sent to TMT@cgiar.org. If you have received this email as a forward and would like to subscribe to the TMT Journal Updates please send an email to TMT@cgiar.org.

Best regards,

Mark Holderness
CGIAR Transition Management Team