PROJECT ASSESSMENTS - Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in Low-income Countries - page 153

2005) a training of local researchers in the risk assessment methodology of PRIMET
was held.
4) What has been the benefit or impact (indicate evidence of impact, e.g., page hit
count)?
The MAMAS website is frequently visited by Thai and Sri Lankan people. The State
of the System workshops initiated much discussion among stakeholders (farmers,
extension service, pesticide industry and registration people) so awareness on the
problem is growing. Since most dissemination activities are planned at the end of the
project (end 2005), much of this (like policy briefs) still has to be done.
F) Lessons learned
What lessons have you learned from science, policy-oriented and capacity building
activities that could improve:
1) Future research on Rural Development and Sustainable Agriculture
Future research should be focussed on the validation of the risk assessment metho-
dologies used in the PRIMET decision support system. Tropical risk assessment is
only a young field of science that lacks the wealth of data as present for temperate
regions. The uncertainty associated with the use of temperate data on pesticide pro-
perties and species sensitivity for tropical situations is, however, largely unknown.
2) The role of research in generating policy-relevant information in support of LNV
and other policy institutions
Future projects should include a capacity building component for local pesticide
regulators. This group is often very small (often 1 person per country) and works
quite isolated and lacks the capacity to perform a state of the art risk assessment.
Within current projects courses are developed but these are aimed at training local
researchers.
3) Partnerships and development efforts in the South
For the MAMAS project we invited two people from each participant to Wageningen to
perform the preliminary risk assessment. This visit was started with a 4 day course
after which all relevant data was gathered and the risk assessments performed. This
event proved to be very successful to transfer knowledge, build bridges between
partners, perform a risk assessment and make a fast start of the project. After this
initial visit it is very important that a person from The Netherlands spends a vast
amount of time in the South in order to make sure that the projects keeps its focus
and all relevant information is transferred and optimally used.