Global research systems for sustainable development: agriculture, health, and environment

Abstract

It is clear from even a casual reading of the contributions to this volume that the battle to achieve sustainable growth in agricultural production must be fought along a broad multidisciplinary front. Poverty undermines health and degrades the environment. Environmental problems such as soil erosion, waterlogging and salinity, and fertilizer and pesticide residues link the agricultural agenda with issues such as malaria and schistosomiasis control, sanitation, and water and food quality on the health agenda. Environmental changes under way at the global level, such as acid rain, ozone depletion, and climate change, will require changes in food production and health practices at the producer and community levels. Effective bridges must be built between the "island empires" of agricultural, environmental, and health sciences. A second perspective that emerges from the chapters in this volume and from discussion at the Bellagio conference is the central role of family- and community-level decisions in achieving growth of agricultural production, enhancement of the resource base, and improvements in health. This means that much more effective organizational and institutional linkages must be built between the suppliers of knowledge and technology and the users. It also means that the institutions must be designed to place the users in a stronger role relative to the suppliers. During the discussions at Bellagio a vision of the institutional infrastructure that will be needed to supply knowledge and technology in the areas of agricultural production, resource management, and health began to take shape. In this concluding chapter we draw on the papers and discussion at the Bellagio conference and at the three earlier consultations to outline our vision of the structure of global agricultural, health, and environmental research systems. We are under no illusion that the process of evolving an effective global research system that will be capable of bridging the island empires of agriculture, environment, and health will be easy. In his paper for the Bellagio conference, Douglass C. North emphasized that the design of an institutional framework that will make possible sustainable agricultural development in the 21st century will require a clearer understanding of the way institutions evolve than is available at the present time.