CGIAR (formerly the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) is a global partnership that unites international organizations engaged in research about food security. CGIAR research aims to reduce rural poverty, increase food security, improve human health and nutrition, and sustainable management of natural resources.
CGIAR research is carried out at 15 centers that collaborate with partners from national and regional research institutes, civil society organizations, academia, development organizations, and the private sector. These research centers are around the globe, with most in the Global South and Vavilov Centers of agricultural crop genetic diversity. CGIAR has an annual research portfolio of just over US$900 million with more than 9,000 staff working in 89 countries.
Funding is provided by national governments, multilateral funding and development agencies and leading private foundations. Representatives of CGIAR Funders and developing countries meet as the CGIAR System Council to keep under review the strategy, mission, impact and continued relevancy of the CGIAR System in a rapidly changing landscape of agricultural research for development.
Goals
CGIAR works to help meet the global targets laid out in the Sustainable Development Goals with an emphasis on five areas of impact:
Nutrition, Health, and Food Security
Poverty Reduction, Livelihoods, and Jobs
Gender Equality, Youth, and Social Inclusion
Climate Adaptation and Mitigation
Environmental Health and Biodiversity
Vision and mission
CGIAR's vision is: A world with sustainable and resilient food, land, and water systems that deliver diverse, healthy, safe, sufficient, and affordable diets, and ensure improved livelihoods and greater social equality, within planetary and regional environmental boundaries.
CGIAR's mission is to deliver science and innovation that advance transformation of food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis.
The One CGIAR reform
The concept of a unified and integrated "One CGIAR" was approved by the CGIAR System Council (November 2019) to adapt to rapidly changing global conditions, while also making the CGIAR system more relevant and effective. The fragmented nature of CGIAR's governance and institutions had limited the System's ability to both respond to increasingly interconnected challenges and to consistently deliver best practice and effectively scaled, research solutions needed to maximise impact. One CGIAR includes a unified governance and management through a reconstituted System Management Board and a new Executive Management Team.
CGIAR Research Portfolio
CGIAR's Research Portfolio consists of Initiatives are major, prioritized areas of investment that bring capacity from within and beyond CGIAR to bear on well-defined, major challenges. Thirty-two Initiatives meet a common set of requirements, articulated in System Council documentation and evaluable through the Independent Science for Development Council quality of research for development criteria.
The Research Portfolio is organized by the three Action Areas detailed in the CGIAR 2030 Research and Innovation Strategy: Systems Transformation, Resilient Agrifood Systems, and Genetic Innovation. Each Initiative is placed under a primary Action Area, yet most Initiatives involve collaboration across more than one Action Area.
History
Early years (1971-1990)
CGIAR arose in response to the widespread concern in the mid-20th century that rapid increases in human populations would soon lead to widespread famine. Starting in 1943, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican government laid the seeds for the Green Revolution when they established the Office of Special Studies, which resulted in the establishment of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in 1960 and International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in 1963 with support from the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation. These centers work toward developing high-yielding, disease-resistant varieties that dramatically increased production of these staple cereals, and turned India, for example, from a country regularly facing starvation in the 1960s to a net exporter of cereals by the late-1970s.
But it was clear that the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations alone could not fund all the agricultural research and development efforts needed to feed the world's population.
In 1969, the Pearson Commission on International Development urged the international community to undertake "intensive international effort" to support "research specializing in food supplies and tropical agriculture".