The challenge of HIV/AIDS: Where does agroforestry fit in? - World ...

152World Agroforestry into the Futuretion between sector-based institutions,ministries or faculties.The sectoral nature of institutions, ministriesand faculties brings new challenges withinnational programmes in terms of coordinatingagroforestry activities. Despite recommendationsat the conference in 1982 formore integration, this has not happenedin most countries. In institutions of higherlearning that do not offer postgraduatecourses in agroforestry, students wishing tocarry out their research in agroforestry haveto find their own points of integration.Funding constraints often prevent nationalagricultural research organizations(NAROs) and public universities retainingwell-trained agroforestry staff. Once theybecome skilled, staff may move to theprivate sector, international research organizationsor non-governmental organizations(NGOs), or go out of the region on teachingor research assignments. Although theymay contribute in one way or another toresearch efforts in their home countries orregions, the high turnover presents a challengefor the national programmes. Thisproblem is not specific to agroforestry andis linked to the more general ‘brain drain’of expertise from the South to the Northand, within countries, from the public tothe private sector. For those that remain inthe national programmes, regular salariestend to be insufficient for sustaining an acceptablestandard of living and a secondincome is often a necessity. Only rarely aresecond jobs conducive to research activities;usually they will take time away fromresearch and (graduate) education. Lack oftime and incentive for research thereforepresents a serious problem for many developing-countryresearch programmes.Mainstreaming agroforestry into nationalprogrammes has been successful to acertain extent. In institutions of higherlearning, agroforestry has become an areaof study, even at graduate level, implyingmajor policy changes in the recognition ofagroforestry by universities. However, mostof the agroforestry activities conducted inNAROs are donor funded and agroforestryhas not become part and parcel of theircore programmes and priorities. This is duemainly to persisting sectoral orientation.Effective communication and sharing ofinformation across sectoral barriers remainsa daunting challenge at both localand national level. However, these problemsare only part of the broader globalcapacity building challenge to promote,legitimize and institutionalize effectivesharing of ideas and information acrosssectoral, national, cultural, linguistic andsocioeconomic barriers. The increasingimportance of electronic communicationhas often made matters worse for developing-countryresearchers, since the requiredfacilities may not be available. In the longterm, however, electronic communicationis likely to become a valuable tool, helpingdeveloping-country researchers to overcomethe long distances between them andother researchers in their fields.Measuring the impact of capacity buildingefforts presents another challenge. Thereare various ways to do it, but each methodhas its own shortcomings. As with any impactassessment, issues of cause and effectwill arise. A ‘with and without’ analysissuffers from bias, since the very effort thatwent into identifying target institutionswould make any comparison suspect. A‘before and after’ comparison assumes thatover that same time period, there were noactivities or initiatives affecting the institutionother than the particular researchcapacity building efforts for which impactis being measured. Individual institutionstherefore need to develop a combinationof measures that will give the best resultsbased on the objectives of their capacitybuilding efforts. Examples of aspects thatcan be measured include:• The number of people that have beentrained (critical mass of expertise withinorganizations). This is really a measureof building research competence ratherthan research capacity.• The number of publications producedby trainees. This approach has distinctlimitations in that not all the good researchis published, and there may begood reasons why some people do notor cannot publish their research results.Some work may be more effectively disseminatedby means other than publishingin peer-reviewed journals. In manycases, there is a considerable time lagbetween the research results and publication.• The funding attracted by researcherswho have benefited from the capacitybuilding effort. This has limitations,however, as comparisons may not bevalid. Different institutions, especially indifferent countries, may attract differentlevels of funding based on their relationswith donors. And this only measures researchers’ability to attract funding, notthe impact of their research on the enduser, i.e. farmers and the poor.• The networks built by the institution.This measures the extent to which increasingthe capacity of an institutionincreases its ability to establish partnershipswith other international, regionaland national organizations. While thisis a good measure of the institutionalgrowth as a result of the built capacity,it does not address issues of impact onthe other institutions nor on the end usersof the institutions’ research products.• Inclusion of agroforestry in nationalprogrammes is another measure of