Science and Technology Mailing List Archive

["D.Harris" <<address removed>>]

This is in response to Jill Lenne's comments. I have been involved in 
tropical crop research since 1982, with ODA/DFID-funded projects in 
Africa, Asia and the Caribbean and also in collaboration with the CGIAR. 
Since 1995 I have been involved in the management of the DFID Plant 
Sciences Research Programme, part of the RNRRS. The main point that I 
would like to make is that the RNRRS has been quite a success and should 
be viewed as such. Examples of this success are that it has:

Profoundly altered the way science for development is done, with 
much-needed emphasis on outcomes targeted towards agreed developmental 
goals (rather than just a load of academics doing whatever they can get 
funding for). Changing the mindset of researchers (overseas as well as 
in the UK) has been quite remarkable and bodes well for the future (as 
long as the UK retains support for such researchers - see the comments 
by Robin Matthews);

Linked basic research with downstream problems and, for example, 
provided a badly-needed public sector involvement in the biotech field 
that is heavily-skewed towards multi-nationals (with all the attendant 
negative perceptions);

Had some quite spectacular, extremely cost-effective, impacts and those 
impacts will grow and grow if the approaches championed by the RNRRS 
Programmes are pursued further.

This brings me to another point, also mentioned by Jill and Robin, that 
of integration. I believe that the most successful projects of the PSP 
are those where an integrated approach has been taken early on. We have 
demonstrated large impacts with farmers in such projects, but the 
integrated approach also requires continuity (of policy, funding and 
engagement)and consequently a medium-to-long term horizon. The idea that 
only extension to farmers of on-the-shelf technologies has been 
thoroughly discredited during the past ten years and the only viable 
alternative is the integrated approach. This, of course, requires 
researchers who are comfortable outside the narrow confines of 
disciplinary science and I know that the DFID-funded RNRRS has furnished 
many such researchers and that resource should not be squandered.

Dave Harris



-- 
Dr Dave Harris         <address removed>

Centre for Arid Zone Studies
University of Wales
Bangor
Gwynedd
LL57 2UW
UK

Tel:  +44 1248 382922
Fax: +44 1248 371533

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