LESSONS LEARNED - Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in Low-income Countries - page 102

preferences made it difficult to add or change partners in the course of execution of
the projects. During this phase, major improvements have been observed in the
quality of collaboration with local partners, both with farmers/farmer organizations
and local planners and policymakers.
(3) Capacity building
Formal and informal training received considerable attention with positive results;
successes were recorded in the field of institutional capacity building and collective
learning (in some cases impressively fast), but these efforts were still too scattered
and uncoordinated.
(4) Policy relevance
Work in the DLO-IC programme aims at two policy arenas, on the one hand the
Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Food Quality in The Netherlands,
on the other hand national and local policymakers in the partner countries.
Tangible successes in this field are difficult to identify, as the programme was
designed to aim at and emphasize successes in the science arena rather than in the
policy arena. Moreover, the reviewers were scientists, with relatively limited expertise
in the area of assessment of policy relevance. However, the tools and methods
developed can serve as building blocks in syntheses supporting policy formulation
on global issues as framed in the MDGs (see also Box 1) and reflected in global
agreements and conventions (Table 2). Most projects generated information relevant
for formulating/revising agricultural and environmental policies at sub-national level
in the South. Only in a limited number of cases the work focused at the national
level in partner countries.
Summarizing, most projects have followed a new integrated style, aiming at a more
comprehensive analysis of land use systems at different scales. The research
approach followed was to some extent interdisciplinary, characterized by substantial
interaction of scientists with land users and policymakers. These developments
expanded the role of scientists from knowledge contributors to trainers and facilitators
Table 2. Examples of relevant international conventions and agreements
Some relevant international initiatives, conventions and agreements related to RDSA:
• WSSD: World Summit on Sustainable Development
• MDG: Millennium Development Goals
• CBD: Convention on Biological Diversity
• UNFCCC: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
• World Water Forum
• WTO: World Trade Organization
• Various commodity agreements
• International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food & Agriculture
• MA: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment