Download or read book Assessing the effectiveness of multistakeholder platforms written by Thaddée Badibanga and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-04-05 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes the effectiveness of local-level (territory) multistakeholder platforms using data from 55 CARGs in 23 randomly selected territories in three provinces (Bandundu, Bas-Congo, and Kinshasa) of the DRC. The first CARG was established in 2008, and the survey was conducted three years later, from August to October 2011.

Download or read book Rethinking our food systems A guide for multi stakeholder collaboration written by United Nations Environment Programme and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2023-06-21 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multi-stakeholder collaboration is an important process that can serve as a tool and strategy to solve complex issues and problems such as transforming national food systems towards more sustainable outcomes. This guide aims to support stakeholders working at all levels of the food system in the implementation of actions to transform their food systems. Centered on 5 building blocks underpinning successful multi-stakeholder collaboration for food systems transformation, the guide uses these constructions to illustrate ingredients of the process and show the interconnectedness of the steps needed to be successful. The guide also contains two annexes with a list of tools, and assessment questions. Annex 1 highlights a range of tools to support facilitators and participants with deeper guidance on a specific topic. Annex 2 contains a checklist of questions, customized to the content provided under each Building Block, and serves as an ongoing monitoring tool that can be used alongside the recommendations provided.

Download or read book The Impact of Alternative Input Subsidy Exit Strategies on Malawi s Maize Commodity Market written by Mariam A. T. J. Mapila and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-07-16 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study has been conducted in order to generate evidence of the visibility of exit from farm input subsidies in an African context. The study simulates the impact of alternative exit strategies from Malawi’s farm input subsidy program on maize markets. The simulation is conducted using a multiequation partial equilibrium model of the national maize market, which is sequentially linked via a price-linkage equation to local rural maize markets. The model accounts for market imperfections prevailing in the country that arise from government price interventions. Findings show that some alternative exit strategies have negative and sustained impacts on maize yields, production, and acreage allocated to maize over the simulation period. Market prices rise steadily as a result of the implementation of different exit strategies. Despite higher maize prices, domestic maize consumption remains fairly stable, with a slow but increasing trend over the simulation period. Results further suggest that exit strategies that are coupled with improvements in agricultural extension services have the potential to offset the negative impacts of the removal or scaling down of agricultural input subsidies. The study findings demonstrate the difficulty of feasibly removing farm input subsidies. Study recommendations are therefore relevant for policymakers and development partners debating removal or implementation of farm input subsidies.

Download or read book The Child Health Implications of Privatizing Africa s Urban Water Supply written by Katrina Kosec and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-05-10 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identifying policies which can improve water sector management is critically important given the global burden of water-related disease. Each year, 1 in 10 child deaths—roughly 800,000 in total—is the direct result of diarrhea. Can private-sector participation (PSP) in the urban piped water sector improve child health? The author uses child-level data from 39 African countries during 1986–2010 to show that introducing PSP decreases diarrhea among urban dwelling children under five years of age by 5.6 percentage points, or 35 percent of its mean prevalence. PSP also leads to greater reliance on piped water. To attribute causality, the author exploits time variation in the private water market share controlled by African countries’ former colonizers. A placebo analysis reveals that PSP does not affect symptoms of respiratory illness in the same children, nor does it affect a rural control group unaffected by PSP.

Download or read book Collaborating for Our Future written by Barbara Gray and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organizations turn to multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) to meet challenges that they cannot handle alone. By tapping the resources of diverse stakeholders, MSPs develop the capability to address complex issues and problems, such as health care delivery, poverty, human rights, watershed management, education, sustainability, and innovation. This book provides a comprehensive understanding of MSPs, why they are needed, the challenges partners face in working together and how to design them effectively. Through the process of collaboration partners combine their differing strengths, vantage points and expertise to craft innovative responses to pressing societal concerns. The book offers valuable advice for leaders about how to design and scale up effective partnerships and how to address potential obstacles that partners may face. Drawing on three comprehensive cases and countless shorter examples from around the world, the book offers both practical advice for organization embarking on an MSP as well as a theoretical understanding of how partnerships function. Using an institutional theory lens, it explains how partnerships can effect change in institutional fields by reducing turbulence and negotiating a common set of norms and routines to govern partners' future interactions within the field of concern.

Download or read book Multi Stakeholder Platforms for Integrated Water Management written by Jeroen Warner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-17 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As they provide a negotiating space for a diversity of interests, Multi-Stakeholder Platforms (MSPs) are an increasingly popular mode of involving civil society in resource management decisions. This book focuses on water management to take a positive, if critical, look at this phenomenon. Illustrated by a wide geographical range of case studies from both developed and developing worlds, it recognizes that MSPs will neither automatically break down divides nor bring actors to the table on an equal footing, and argues that MSPs may in some cases do more harm than good. The volume then examines how MSPs can make a difference and how they might successfully co-opt the public, private and civil-society sectors. The book highlights the particular difficulties of MSPs when dealing with integrated water management programmes, explaining how MSPs are most successful at a less complex and more local level. It finally questions whether MSPs are - or can be - sustainable, and puts forward suggestions for improving their durability.

Download or read book Demand for Weather Hedges in India written by Ruth Vargas Hill and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-07-23 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Income risk is substantial for farmers in developing countries. Formal insurance markets for this risk are poorly developed, and as a result there has been an increasing trend to sell weather hedges to smallholder farmers to manage their risk. This paper analyzes the demand for rainfall-based weather hedges among farmers in rural India. We explore the predictions of a standard expected utility theory framework on the nature of demand for such products, in particular testing whether demand behaves as predicted with respect to price, the basis of the hedge, and risk aversion using data from a randomized control trial in which price and basis risk was varied for a series of hedging products offered to farmers. We find that demand behaves as predicted, with demand falling with price and basis risk, and appearing hump-shaped in risk aversion. Second, we analyze understanding of and demand for hedging products over time, examining the impact of increased investments in training on hedging products as well as evidence for learning by doing among farmers. We find evidence that suggests that learning by doing is more effective at increasing both understanding and demand.

Download or read book Understanding the Role of Research in the Evolution of Fertilizer Policies in Malawi written by Michael Johnson and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the role of research in agricultural policy making in Malawi at a time when the Africa Union and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development have been seeking to promote greater evidenced-based decision making in agriculture. Drawing on both theory and actual past experiences documented in the literature, results are intended to improve our understanding of the extent to which research has played any role in influencing policy change in Malawi. This is done in the context of the evolution of the country’s fertilizer subsidy policies. Results point to some general lessons. First, strengthening the Ministry of Agriculture’s capacity for policy analysis and becoming more proactive in the policy process proved critical in the earlier years of Malawi’s long history of fertilizer subsidies. Second, the government’s experience of bargaining with donors may have actually strengthened its own ability to position and assert its legitimacy in shaping policies. Third, while research may have played a historically marginal role, researchers have been able to influence policy choices whenever a window of opportunity arose for technical input—such as at times of crisis. However, researchers would also benefit from engaging more with the policy debates and policymaking process. Finally, while the paper draws on existing theoretical frameworks to understand the role of research in the policy process more generally, a better framework still needs to be developed in describing the standard experiences and realities of the African agricultural policy landscape.

Download or read book Agriculture and Adaptation in Bangladesh written by Timothy S. Thomas and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-07-29 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bangladesh is extremely vulnerable to the impact of climate change because it is a low-lying, flat country subject to both riverine flooding and sea level rise, and because a large portion of its population is dependent on agriculture for its livelihood. The goal of this research was to examine the likely impacts of climate change on agriculture in Bangladesh, and develop recommendations to policymakers to help farmers adapt to the changes. In this study, we use climate data from four general circulation models (GCMs) to evaluate the impact of climate change on agriculture in Bangladesh by 2050. We use the DSSAT (Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer) crop modeling software to evaluate crop yields, first for the 1950 to 2000 period (actual climate) and then for the climates given by the four GCMs for 2050. We evaluate crop yields at 1,789 different points in Bangladesh, using a grid composed of roughly 10 kilometer (km) squares, for 8 different crops in 2000 and 2050. For each crop, we search for the best cultivar (variety) at each square, rather than limiting our analysis to a single variety for all locations. We also search for the best planting month in each square. In addition, we explore potential gains in changing fertilizer levels and in using irrigation to compensate for rainfall changes. This analysis indicates that when practiced together, using cultivars better suited for climate change and adjusting planting dates can lessen the impacts of climate change on yields, especially for rice, and in some cases actually result in higher yields. In addition, the analysis shows that losses in yield due to climate change can be compensated for, for many crops, by increasing the availability of nitrogen in the soil. Moreover, we used a household survey to collect information on the incidence of climatic shocks in the last five years and adaptation options. The survey was conducted from December 2010 to February 2011, covering data from the previous production year. The results confirm that Bangladesh farmers already perceive the impacts of climate change. In particular, the survey results indicate that of all climate change–related shocks, floods, waterlogging, and river erosion caused the largest loss to rice production. Farmers in our survey lost around 12 percent of their harvest, on average, to some kind of shock, with about half of that attributable to flooding-related issues. The second leading cause of rice crop loss was pests, responsible for around 3 percent of production. Taken together, the results indicate that adaptation efforts in Bangladesh should include adjusting planting dates, using improved cultivars better suited for climate change, improving fertilizer application, exploring increased maize production, and bolstering flood and pest protection for farmers.

Download or read book Annual report 2020 CGIAR Research Program on Policies Institutions and Markets PIM written by CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2020, PIM findings contributed to seed policies in Nepal and Uganda, Malawi’s extension strategy and approval of insect-resistant cotton, a nationwide program aimed at improving the effectiveness of public service delivery in Uganda, social protection programs in Egypt, and school gardens for better nutrition in Papua New Guinea. At the global level, PIM research was used to shape strategic decisions of organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GIZ, the Inter-American Development Bank, the UK Government's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, the World Bank and the World Health Organization. PIM tools were incorporated in universities’ curricula in India and South Africa. Examples of PIM innovations scaled up by partners in 2020 are private sector seed marketing in Ethiopia, picture-based insurance in Ethiopia, India and Kenya, and tools for inclusive governance of natural resources in India and Peru.

Download or read book The Logic of Adaptive Sequential Experimentation in Policy Design written by Haipeng Xing and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-06-26 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the wide adoption of rigorous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in medical research, economists and other social scientists have increasingly used RCTs in their research. As researchers pick up projects amenable to the RCT methodology, they likely leave out important questions to which RCTs cannot be directly applied. As a result, RCTs have been criticized for the proclivity of addressing trivial questions. As a matter of fact, in medical research RCTs are an integral part of adaptive sequential experiment design—a few steps must be taken to screen out drugs that have toxins and strong side effects before running any RCTs on humans. In this paper, we argue that economists can learn a great deal from the design principles implemented in medical research. We develop a theoretical model to show the logic of adaptive sequential experiment design in the presence of uncertainty over negative effects and discuss how to choose samples in a population to minimize the experiment cost. We also point out the applications of our proposed framework in the economic domain, such as economic reforms and new product design.

Download or read book Handbook on establishing and operating multi actors agricultural innovation platforms written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2023-11-02 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multi-actor agricultural innovation platforms (MAIPs), as models for inclusive and collaborative innovation, are increasingly deployed in farmer communities to solve the last-mile bottleneck, namely, the empowerment of smallholder farmers and value chain actors to access innovation and services to drive field-level change. Facilitators play a critical role in establishing and operating MAIPs, stimulating interactions among MAIP actors and thereby supporting co-innovation and co-learning processes. They are usually specialized MAIP actors (e.g. researchers, extension agents, agricultural educationists, brokers, NGO activists, traders and processors). Qualified MAIP facilitators, as value chain intermediaries and coordinators, are required to have strong facilitation skills and relevant technical background. They are normally trained through training of MAIP facilitator courses or through the implementation of a MAIP. This handbook aims to support MAIP facilitators to establish and operate MAIPs. It summarizes the experience of the MAIPs in persimmon, hazelnut and honey value chains that FAO implemented as part of the European Union-funded project “Development of sustainable and inclusive local food systems in north-west region of Azerbaijan (GCP/AZE/014/EC)”, the “Tropical Agricultural Platform Agricultural Innovation System (TAP-AIS)” project implemented in Malawi, and the Science and Technology Backyard (STB) initiative led by the China Agricultural University (CAU). It also draws on the experience of the training course “Training of master trainers for establishing and operating Multi-actors Agricultural Innovation Platforms” co-organized by FAO and CAU on 11–15 July 2023.

Download or read book Innovation Platforms for Agricultural Development written by Iddo Dror and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovation Platforms (IPs) form the core of many Agricultural Research for Development programmes, stimulating multi-stakeholder collaboration and action towards the realization of agricultural development outcomes. This book enhances the body of knowledge of IPs by focusing on mature IPs in agricultural systems research, including the crop and livestock sectors, and innovations in farmer cooperatives and agricultural extension services. Resulting from an international IP case study competition, the examples reported will help the many actors involved with agricultural IPs worldwide reflect on their actions and achievements (or failures), and find tools to share their experience. Chapters feature case studies from Central Africa, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Nicaragua and Uganda. Authors reflect critically on the impact of IPs and showcase their progress, providing an important sourcebook and inspiration for students, researchers and professionals.

Download or read book Enhancing dairy based livelihoods in India and the United Republic of Tanzania through feed innovation and value chain development approaches Final project report written by Duncan, A.J. and published by ILRI (aka ILCA and ILRAD). This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ??? ??????

Download or read book Water Resources Assessment Modelling and Management written by C. P. Kumar and published by C. P. Kumar. This book was released on 2023-03-30 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water is one of the most vital resources on Earth and plays a crucial role in sustaining life. With the rapid increase in population and urbanization, the demand for water has been increasing exponentially, leading to an immense pressure on the existing water resources. In this context, the assessment, modelling, and management of water resources have become crucial to ensure sustainable development. This book, "Water Resources Assessment, Modelling and Management," is a collection of 101 articles that delve into various topics related to water resources. It covers various aspects related to surface water, groundwater, surface water modelling, groundwater modelling, management of water resources, challenges and strategies, advanced techniques in water resources, thrust areas. The book provides a special emphasis on water resources issues and management in India, which is crucial due to the significant water-related challenges faced by the country. The articles in the book offer a broad overview of the latest techniques, tools, and strategies used in the assessment, modelling, and management of water resources. Each article is concise, with a length of around three pages, and provides a brief yet informative summary of the respective topic. The aim of the book is to provide readers with a quick and accessible overview of each topic, without delving too deeply into technical details or using equations. To keep the content straightforward and easy to understand, the articles do not contain equations. However, readers who wish to explore a topic in more depth are encouraged to consult other relevant books and resources, where they can find more comprehensive information and mathematical formulations. The book aims to be a valuable resource for water resources professionals, researchers, and students who are interested in understanding the challenges associated with water resources and the strategies for their management. It covers a wide range of topics, including the latest techniques and tools used in water resources management, and the impact of climate change on water resources. Overall, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge and practice in the assessment, modelling, and management of water resources. The book is expected to serve as a useful reference for anyone interested in this important and timely topic.

Download or read book Spillover Effects of Targeted Subsidies written by Lenis Saweda Liverpool-Tasie and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-04-05 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though there is increasing evidence of the availability and potential of new agricultural technologies in Africa south of the Sahara, effective demand for them is still low. A recent refocus on increasing farmers’ use of modern technologies such as improved seed and chemical fertilizer has led to a resurgence of input subsidies for these products in many developing countries. One popular mechanism currently in use is input vouchers. Targeted input vouchers are intended to simultaneously improve the targeting of subsidies and develop demand in private markets. While there is growing evidence of the impact of targeted subsidies on private input demand, as far as we are aware no empirical studies have examined the spillover effects of targeted subsidies for just one input on the use of other complementary inputs with which there is low substitutability. Consequently, this study begins to fill this gap by exploring the effect of increasing access to subsidized fertilizer on farmers’ use of improved seed in Nigeria. Using a control function approach within a limited dependent variable framework, we explore the effect of receiving subsidized fertilizer on a farmer’s likelihood of using improved seed. The study finds evidence that increased access to subsidized fertilizer increased the likelihood of farmers using improved seed in Kano, Nigeria. This indicates that farmers are re-optimizing their use of other inputs in response to increasing availability of one input. This complicates the ability to isolate the returns to any one input when evaluating programs targeted at just one input. Our results were robust to various model specifications and indicate that there is a clear link between farmers’ use of improved seed and fertilizer in Kano, which could be leveraged in the development of input subsidy programs across Africa south of the Sahara.

Download or read book 2013 Global Food Policy Report written by Fan, Shenggen and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2014-03-12 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 2013 Global Food Policy Report is the third in an annual series that provides an in-depth look at major food policy developments and events. Initiated in response to resurgent interest in food and nutrition security, the series offers a yearly overview of the food policy developments that have contributed to or hindered progress in achieving food and nutrition security. It reviews what happened in food policy and why, examines key challenges and opportunities, shares new evidence and knowledge, and highlights emerging issues.