Collaboration between national, international, and advanced research institutes for eco-regional research

Abstract

Global concerns about environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, and the increasing demands that the expected large increases in population will make on the world’s natural resources, have combined to alter the environment in which agricultural research is being conducted. This has led to a shift in the focus of research from commodities to a land-use systems perspective, and the integration of natural resource management concerns into the agricultural research agenda. The organizational changes which are taking place in the international agricultural research system in response to this broader research agenda are described. The management and institutional implications of these changes for research conducted at a national and regional level, and for the collaboration between international and national research organizations, are discussed. Examples are given to illustrate the diverse characteristics of recent initiatives which address natural resource management problems through partnership arrangements among national, regional and international research institutions. The paper concludes there are unlikely to be simple prescriptions for successful partnership arrangements, but more probably, general guiding principals that could be captured by sharing experiences among the different partnership groups.Key wordsagricultural researcheco-regionalinstitutionsnatural resources managementsystems research