AGRICULTURE IN A DYNAMIC WORLD - Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in Low-income Countries - page 2

Urbanization processes, industrial development and access to information
technology leading to a reduction in cultivated area, especially in the land area
for less-remunerative cereal production;

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Impacts of global environmental changes, particularly climate change induced
risks on decision making, and the increasing societal concern with respect to the
conservation and use of (agro-)biodiversity.

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Various studies have addressed the impacts of these changes on agricultural sector
development, poverty and food security at the national level in developing countries.
However, relatively little is known about the impacts at lower levels. Linking global
policy processes such as the WTO 1 -agreements, the World Summit on Sustainable
Development (WSSD, Johannesburg 2002), the Kyoto protocol and other international
environmental agreements/conventions (CBD, CCD, UNFCCC) to responses at
regional and local level is essential for furthering sustainable development. The
understanding of the responses to changing political, economic and environmental
contexts will determine how successful and sustainable selected development path-
ways will be.
Research projects executed by Wageningen University and Research centre
(Wageningen UR) addressed challenges to sustainable development in various agro-
ecosystems and regions in the South. These studies have been supported by the
Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV) through its DLO
International Cooperation (DLO-IC) programme. In the course of 2005, LNV
developed a new vision on the role of agricultural knowledge and science for
development (LNV 2005) to guide its future activities. In the context of this
reorientation, a multi-disciplinary group of Wageningen scientists were invited to
evaluate and extract lessons learned from past projects in the framework of the
DLO-IC programme. This evaluation resulted in the current topic.
A common leitmotiv in the DLO-IC research programme has been to mobilize
and integrate local and international knowledge for reconciling conflicts between the
multi-facetted development and land use objectives in rapidly changing rural areas.
The extensive networks and research capacity developed over the years in
conducting these studies constitute important assets in designing and implementing
feasible solutions and have great potential for linking the local-scale options and
constraints to the global development agendas.
By 2005, some 70 collaborative North-South projects had been carried out. All
science groups of Wageningen UR 2 were involved in the implementation of the
programme and at least half the projects and activities undertaken were directly
related to the research theme 'Rural development and sustainable agriculture' 3 .
In recent years, there has been a search for more sustainable development
strategies. This has direct implications for agriculture, given its relationships with
the natural resource base and its prime economic importance in low-income
1 A list of acronyms is given in front of the topic.
2 www.wur.nl/UK/research
3 The other themes covering specific topics on global food chains, agro-biodiversity, nature
management, enabling policies, and water.