CRP1.2: The CGIAR Consortium Research Program on Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics, referred to as Humidtropics. seeks to transform the lives of rural poor in the humid lowlands, moist savannas and tropical highlands in three major Impact Zones of Sub-Saharan Africa and tropical America and Asia, presently containing a population of 2.9 billion persons, mostly poor smallholder farmers. Humidtropics research is guided by a Global Hypothesis “A stepwise series of preferred livelihood strategies exist within the humid tropics where poverty reduction, balanced household nutrition, system productivity and natural resource integrity are most effectively achieved and contribute best to human welfare” and several related Specific Hypotheses and Research Questions addressing integrated production system interventions, expanded livelihood options, and the abilities of institutions to take these interventions to scale and target rural poverty and gender equity outcomes. A dynamic program structure is built around three complementary Strategic Research Themes; Systems Analysis and Synthesis, Integrated Systems Improvement, and Scaling and Institutional Innovations. Together these SRTs will conduct a baseline Situation Analysis leading to identified entry points for integrated production systems research; design and implement an M&E Framework; assemble, test and refine systems interventions through participatory processes; champion new farm opportunities through Research for Development Platforms as pathways to assess fuller impacts and adoptability of the most promising opportunities; link these platforms to partner development institutions; and then advance the effectiveness of these institutions to scale up these interventions, with a particular focus on poor households and gender equity.
These activities will be conducted within 11 Action Areas that were selected on the basis of being representative and capturing diversity of their larger Impact Zones, the urgent need for large-scale impacts on poverty and natural resource integrity and their potential to advance earlier investments and potential partnerships. Some of these Action Areas are arranged as transects from humid lowlands to highlands while others are nested into large concentrations of poverty and resource degradation. Together these Action Areas contain 11% of the population on 9% of the lands in the program’s Impact Zones, leaving great potential for direct impacts through targeted interventions addressing rural poverty, food security, improving nutrition and health, and sustainable management of natural resources. Each Action Area contains nine to 24 Action Sites where integrative research on systems productivity, natural resource management and market development are conducted. These Action Sites will serve as proving grounds for integrating tree, crop and livestock enterprises, advancing the status of women and linking them to technical innovations, fostering and expanding agro-biodiversity, developing new products for rural industries, and linking farm management to better managing community natural resources and mitigating climate change.
Humidtropics will be implemented through a governance and management framework balancing inclusiveness and responsibility. Its success is based upon partnership including raising the effectiveness of local and national partners and providing opportunities to test outputs developed by other CRPs. In many ways, the Action Areas operate as independent units but then combine their lessons learned, research outputs and developmental outcomes into a larger Global Synthesis focused upon the production and dissemination of International Public Goods. In its first three years, Humidtropics seeks investments from the CGIAR and other investors US$150 million to reorganize diverse and narrowly focused research efforts in these Action Sites and transform them into a larger, impact-oriented thrust in their respective Action Areas in accordance with planned cross-Center collaborative reform within the CGIAR. Over the next 15 years, Humidtropics will advance System Level Outcomes within the eleven Action Areas by increasing staple food yields by 60%, increasing average farm income by 50%, lifting 25% of poor households above the poverty line, reducing the number of malnourished children by 30% and restoring 40% of these farms to sustainable resource management. In this way, Humidtropics will serve as a model to other agencies seeking to link agricultural systems research to developmental impact.
