In this episode, Robin Davies speaks with Dr Ismahane Elouafi, the Executive Managing Director of CGIAR. CGIAR (formerly the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) is a global partnership that unites international organisations engaged in research about food security. CGIAR's mission is to deliver science and innovation that advance the transformation of food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis.
In this episode, Robin Davies speaks with Dr Ismahane Elouafi, the Executive Managing Director of CGIAR.
CGIAR (formerly the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) is a global partnership that unites international organisations engaged in research about food security. CGIAR's mission is to deliver science and innovation that advance the transformation of food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis.
Dr Elouafi discusses the structure and governance of CGIAR, its achievements, and current challenges. She emphasises the importance of addressing climate change, improving food security and nutrition, and adapting agricultural practices to changing conditions. Dr Elouafi highlights the need for more flexible funding models and diversification of donors to allow CGIAR to address pressing issues in agriculture and food systems. She also discusses promising new technologies in agricultural research, including genomics and big data analysis, and the importance of understanding synergies in nature to produce more with fewer resources. The interview touches on the connections between agriculture, climate change and health security, and Dr Elouafi outlines her aspirations for her three-year term, which include harmonising research portfolios, increasing impact in low-income countries, and simplifying CGIAR's structure to better connect with various stakeholders in the agricultural sector.
Dr. Elouafi took up her position in December 2023. Prior to joining CGIAR, she served as Chief Scientist at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations from 2020 to 2023. Dr. Elouafi has nearly two decades of experience in agricultural research and development across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. She previously led the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture and held senior scientific positions with the Canadian government. Dr. Elouafi is known for her work promoting neglected crops, non-freshwater use in agriculture, and empowering women in science. She holds a PhD in genetics from the University of Cordoba, Spain.
Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre. Our producers are Robin Davies, Amita Monterola, Jackie Hanafie and Finn Clarke. You can read and subscribe to our daily blogs on aid, international development and the Pacific at devpolicy.org, and you can follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. You can send us feedback and ideas for episodes to devpolicy@anu.edu.au.
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Host 0:25
We wish to acknowledge the indigenous people of Australia, the wider Asia Pacific region and other parts of the world, and express our respect for their traditional knowledge and practices which stem from a deep connection to the lands and waters they have inhabited for millennia.
Robin Davies 0:42
Welcome to Devpolicy Talks, the podcast of the Development Policy Centre. We're part of the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country in Canberra. I'm Robin Davies. This year, we've relaunched our podcast after a more than two-year hiatus. In this new season, we're bringing you a mix of interviews, event recordings and more in-depth documentary features relating to the topics we research at the centre, namely, Australia's overseas aid development in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific and regional and global development issues.
In this eleventh episode, I speak with Dr Ismahane Elouafi, who quite recently took up her role as Executive Managing Director of CGIAR.
CGIAR, formerly the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research, is a global partnership that unites international organisations engaged in research about food security. CGIAR's mission is to deliver science and innovation that advance the transformation of food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis. The organisation works through 15 research centres around the world, with over 9,000 staff working in 89 countries. CGIAR focuses on five key impact areas: nutrition and food security, poverty reduction, gender equality, climate adaptation, and environmental health.
Over its 50-year history, CGIAR has made significant contributions to global agriculture and food security. The organisation played a crucial role in the Green Revolution, developing high-yielding varieties of wheat, rice, and maize that dramatically increased food production in developing countries. It’s estimated that CGIAR research enabled nearly 700 million people to escape poverty between 1981 and 1999. Without CGIAR's efforts, developing countries would produce 7-8% less food and 13 million more children would be malnourished. In recent years, CGIAR has focused on climate-resilient agriculture, nutrition enhancement through biofortified crops, and rapid responses to emerging crop and livestock diseases.
Dr Elouafi took up her position in December 2023. Prior to joining CGIAR, she served as Chief Scientist at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations from 2020 to 2023. Dr Elouafi has nearly two decades of experience in agricultural research and development across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. She previously led the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture and held senior scientific positions with the Canadian government. Dr Elouafi is known for her work promoting neglected crops, non-freshwater use in agriculture, and empowering women in science. She holds a PhD in genetics from the University of Cordoba, Spain.
Robin Davies 1:19
Alright, well, can I just start by asking you to introduce yourself?
Ismahane Elouafi 1:19
Yes, definitely. Ismahane Elouafi, Executive Managing Director of CGIAR, and I started this job only in December, so I'm quite new in this capacity.
Robin Davies 1:19
Welcome to the role.
Ismahane Elouafi 1:19
Thank you very much.
Robin Davies 1:19
And what was your what were your previous roles leading up to this appointment?
Ismahane Elouafi 1:19
So, before that, I used to be the chief scientist of FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization] for three years. And before that, I used to run a research centre based in the United Arab Emirates called ICBA, which stands for the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture. And before that, I used to work with the federal government of Canada and with the University of McGill and with the CGIAR centres as well.
Robin Davies 1:19
Alright, can we begin by just for our listeners who might not be familiar with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and the organisations that make up the partnership. Could you just describe the role of the Consultative Group and how it works with its partner organisations, and maybe also how it's governed?
Ismahane Elouafi 2:27
So, the CGIAR, it's the largest publicly funded international agricultural research centres. We have 15 centres that make up the CGIAR. Some of the centres are more than 60 years old. So, like IRRI [International Rice Research Institute], was created in 1962. There are centres that are a little bit younger, like IWMI [International Water Management Institute], which is in Sri Lanka, that is about 40 years old. So, the centres were created around commodities or ecosystems. So, you find a Tropical Agriculture centre like in Nigeria, or you find the wheat and maize centre in Mexico or WorldFish in Malaysia. So, there were other commodities, or agri-food or agroecological zones. And what happens is that over the years, those centres came together as CGIAR. The CGIAR, historically, the Secretariat used to be part and parcel of the World Bank, but in the last 15 years it has moved out. It's based now in Montpellier, in France, and it basically runs the partnership. The partnership is an integrated partnership between all centres, and those centres are still quite connected to their mandate, be it on a commodity or on natural resource management or on a dryland for example, ICARDA [International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas]. But still, they are more and more working together, particularly at the national system. The way it is governed is that we have each centre. It's still independent, to some extent, with a board of directors, but we have what we call the integrated partnership board that runs the overall CGIAR, and that runs mostly what we call the pooled funding that is distributed to all centres to provide them with seed money to really help them go and raise more money to address the priorities that they are targeting again, around either an agroecological zone or a commodity or a region.
Robin Davies 5:00
And so, this structure really treats the network of individual research organisations as a system, right?
Ismahane Elouafi 5:00
Yes, and it's about trying to ensure that priorities are appropriately identified and funded across the whole system.
Ismahane Elouafi 5:00
Yes, and have that system level and bring both solutions, like we have IFPRI, which is the International Food Policy Research Institute. IFPRI has always worked with all the centres, but it's very important that we bring the policy and institutional solution along with the technical solution. And that's where really working at the system level and having a central piece to talk to both the donors but also the stakeholders and the beneficiaries, it's very important.
Robin Davies 5:00
And now that the Secretariat is independent of the World Bank, I believe the World Bank vice president for sustainable development always used to chair the CGIAR and it's still the case?
Ismahane Elouafi 5:00
That's still the case for the chairmanship of the system Council, which is made up of the donor community and mostly sits with the representative of the region. It's always chaired by the World Bank, and the World Bank still runs our trust fund, which has the pooled funding in it.
Robin Davies 5:00
Now in our own region, we have the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, WorldFish in Malaysia – which are the other major institutions in the Asia-Pacific?
Ismahane Elouafi 5:00
So, in Asia and the Pacific, you’ve got the International Rice Research Institute based in Manila, Philippines. You’ve got WorldFish in Malaysia. You got ICRISAT [International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics], which is on dryland in Hyderabad in India. And you’ve got IWMI, which is the International Water Management Institute based in Sri Lanka. But also, many of the other centres, they have programs here. So, you find, for example, a huge program of the CIP, the International Potato Centre that is normally based in Peru, in China and in Vietnam and many other countries. You find, for example, CIMMYT [International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre] has big programs on wheat and maize and so on and so forth. So there are many other centres that might have an HQ in Africa or the Americas, but still are very active, particularly in Bangladesh. For example, in Bangladesh, we have almost every centre represented in Bangladesh.
Robin Davies 6:55
And can I ask, what's the status of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research [ACIAR]? Is it one of the...
Ismahane Elouafi 6:55
Yeah, so Australia is a donor for us, and it has a seat, a permanent seat on the system Council and Australia is represented by the CEO of ACIAR.
Robin Davies 6:55
So ACIAR is regarded as a donor organisation, but it's not one of the 15 partner organisations.
Ismahane Elouafi 6:55
No, no, it's not. It's a donor organisation representing the Australian government around the main funders table.
Robin Davies 6:55
Okay, well, thank you for the scene setting. Can I move on to a question about what you consider to be the most pressing challenges facing your organisation in relation to food security and nutrition in the years ahead?
Ismahane Elouafi 6:55
I think the main issue, and I think it says it very well in our mission, it's really the climate crisis. The climate crisis, in many ways, brings in all the pieces of the challenges. So we have been existing for more than 60 years. We have been breeding. So one of the major features, and maybe successes, of the CGIAR, it's basically its genetic material, and its pre-breeding, or breeding capacity, which makes that more than 60% of the wheat, for example, comes from CIMMYT and ICARDA which are two of the centres. You look at the rice. More than 50% of the rice comes from IRRI. You look at the beans, you look at the chickpea, you look at the faba bean, you look at the forages and so on and so forth, or chicken or others. But really what has happened is that when we were breeding back in the 60s and the 70s and even the 80s, the focus was very much on productivity and less on sustainability, reducing natural resource management or adaptation to climate change. So today, I think, and maybe that was the case for the last 15 years, we are catching up with adaptation to climate change. We know now that most of our maize in Africa will not produce if we are at plus two degrees. So how quick can we change the varieties across the continent to really adapt to climate change? You look at the work in Asia and the Pacific. It's the same. Be it for fish, be it for crops, be it for water management. The solution today has to develop much more radically and much more quickly to make sure that we are adapting properly to climate change. So that's, I think it's the biggest challenge we have.
The second challenge we have is really the finance and the funding of the organisations. So the fact that we say - we are again, 60 plus - raised the question, for how long do we need the CGIAR to exist? Isn't there an exit strategy for the national system to be able to do their own science, or is it to exist forever, the way we have existed? So there's a big question on what's our comparative advantage now after 60 years, and what will be our comparative advantage in 30 years? And how could we work with the national system to have that graduation in certain countries, and we go to others. So right now, we are in about 80 countries. In those countries, you find all of the least income countries and low middle income countries. But what we need to do as well, it's maybe move gradually to the most needy countries and make sure that we are there, even if there is no finance there.
So right now, it's difficult like, let's see. I'll take an example of Niger as a country, as a country that requires the help of CGIAR, but there isn't enough projects in Niger. Could we foresee in the future that we are a little bit more free so that we go when we are needed more than just where money is, and I think that's really a very important question that we need to get ready to answer and make sure that the funding model will allow us, in a few years...
Robin Davies 10:00
I'll come to the funding model, because I do want to talk about that. But just before we talk about money, I guess you've referred to some of the achievements of the partner organisations historically, some of which is kind of embodied in this notion of the Green Revolution. But when you look back, what would you pick out as the major achievements of the CGIAR member organisations?
Ismahane Elouafi 10:00
I think the Green Revolution, it's definitely one of the achievements. And we have to look at the Green Revolution in the context of the 60s and 70s. Right now, there's a lot of criticism of the Green Revolution because it focused a lot on increasing productivity based on increasing input. But the reality of things it has averted famine as well. The other very big, I think, achievement, it's really our work on nutrition. When you look at really the numbers of averted deaths or fragility of nutrition of children, right now, there is a study that says we are averting between three to six million deaths of children per year because of the commodities that we have been breeding with vitamin A, with zinc and iron. There is a huge component on the policy, policy influence to make sure that we have the right policies for certain agri-food system development. Bangladesh will be a very good example, but so will be Ethiopia, Vietnam and many other countries.
When we go for example, on the animal side, the majority of tilapia worldwide has been developed by the program called GIFT [Genetically Improved Farmed Tilapia. I can give you the example of, again, the dual-purpose chicken breeding that we are doing in Ethiopia and in many countries, whereby we have now chicken that can both lay a lot of eggs, but also have gained weight. And we know chicken proteins are very important again, for kids. And there is a very famous program, one egg per day per kid, that could really avert lots of malnutrition in children. And there are a number and number of really achievements that the CGIAR was behind. And it shows very well in the World Food Prize. It shows in the African Food Prize and many other recognitions. The latest one was the PABRA [Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance], which the scientist, the lead scientist, had the African award, the African Food Prize last year in 2023 around the beans. Beans varieties with high iron that really made - has a huge impact on lives and livelihood of many farmers in many parts of Africa.
Robin Davies 13:57
The reference to prizes reminds me that at one time after the food price crisis, around 2007 there was, you know, a resurgence of investment in agriculture, and a lot of interest in how to promote innovation in agriculture, and one of the mechanisms that was established at that time was the AgResults program, which is very much about making funding available to people who can solve a problem, but not prescribing how they do that. When you look at those sorts of initiatives, what do you think is the best way to support innovation in agriculture? Is it that sort of challenge approach, or is it much more just focusing on the core strengths of your partner organisations and supporting them to do what they do?
Ismahane Elouafi 15:00
I think there shouldn't be one model or two models where we tend to really put our eggs in few models. I think as far as the model gives you space for co-creation and brings in the different parties. So I think really what did not work differently is the copy-paste from ecosystem to ecosystem, or from, sorry, from the north to the south. That didn't work out so and I think we have yet to understand why certain technologies never get adopted, particularly in the Global South.
We were looking at what we call total productivity factor, which is basically your output minus your input. And how did it develop in different countries? And basically the study what it did. It shows the difference between high income countries, high middle income countries, low middle income countries and least income countries, and what it shows in the last 30 years is that in the high income countries, because of adoption of technologies and innovation, we have much more output with less input. So and that's what we want. It's producing more with less, whereas most of the development or the increase of productivity in low income countries was based on clearing new land. It wasn't based on less input. It is always based on more input, be it land, be it water. And the difference between the two, it's the adoption of technology. So the question I think we need to solve: how do we make sure that innovation is adopted in the least income countries, and what are the barriers? And is it because the solution is created outside those stakeholders, or is it related to investments, like upfront investment in most technologies? Because by the end, most technologies have an infrastructure component that has moved very quickly in high income countries and hasn't moved almost in low income countries. So I think for me, it's the co-creation, but the co-creation with a good understanding of why it did not happen in the past and what is missing, and how could we bridge that gap - why a technology is not adopted or it's not available for farmers in certain setups.
Robin Davies 17:16
Let's come to that question of funding that you referred to, and this might test your diplomacy a little bit, but you signaled that having flexibility in the way you use the resources you have is important so that you can be responsive. And certainly some of the resources that flow to the CGIAR member organisations are quite flexible and can be allocated across the system, but I know that a lot of them are not. There's a lot of funding that a donor will provide directly to an individual organisation because that donor has certain preoccupations. How problematic is that for you, as a person who looks across the whole system and thinks about where resources are most rationally allocated across that whole system, that you've got all these donors making individual decisions based on, you know, quite narrow priorities?
Ismahane Elouafi 18:28
See, I think it's the problem for me, but also of a director general of a centre, the less you have unrestricted funding, the less you can really move the money to a more strategic area. So, and that has been really a problem. I mean, if we look at the funding of the CGIAR right now, we have hardly at the same level as 2014 so 10 years later, we have just came back because there was a dip after 2014 and it started going up. Now we are at the same level.
Robin Davies 18:35
Can I ask what that level is?
Ismahane Elouafi 18:35
It's about $930 million for the overall system now. So, and if you look at the inflation rate, it means we have less than 2014. So in the grand scheme of things, there isn't more money for the last 10 years, there is less money. And what kind of money, as you said, is it unrestricted that you can move to different places or not? And that's the - it's again, in that time, there is much less unrestricted funding than now. So and the reason behind is, I think most donors have very more defined priorities, either geographically, or is it priorities in terms of commodities or thematics, and that definitely limits a lot our capacity or our ability to really address many areas.
Break
Ismahane Elouafi 19:22
For example, if I take just an example again, if I go to a country that has less interest for donors, it might need it much more than others, but you can't go there. Or if we talk about neglected, underutilized species, for example, which now we recognize they are super important for climate adaptation, but for a very long time, we didn't have donors that really are interested in breeding neglected and underutilized species or local species. So definitely, it's a huge challenge, and that's where diversifying our donor space is very important. So working more with philanthropists, but also those philanthropists from different parts of the world, representing different communities and different ideologies, as well. Working more with the private sector, working more with NGOs, working more with the diaspora that might be interested to help their country, for example, working more with the Somali diaspora, to work in Somalia instead of only working with the usual donors for Somalia. So I think the more we diversify, the more we can cater for more needs, and the more it's going to give us more flexibility to really address the highest priorities that we see as scientists in this agriculture and food area, or food land and water systems.
Robin Davies 20:00
And the reference just then to the way that climate change affects investment priorities reminded me that we forgot to mention CIFOR, the Centre for International Forestry Research.
Ismahane Elouafi 20:00
Yes, CIFOR and ICRAF [World Agroforestry Centre]. CIFOR and ICRAF are not part of One CGIAR, but they are CGIAR centres. So they are CGIAR centres, but they are not under the One CGIAR, the system council that I mentioned, because they have decided not to, but we are in discussion to bring them back because, not only because of historical relationship with CIFOR-ICRAF, but also the importance of trees and agroforestry for climate adaptation and mitigation, or mitigation with co-benefits on adaptation.
Robin Davies 20:00
So in terms of resource flows over time, I know that prior to 2007 in the years leading up to the food price crisis, the level of official development assistance for food security and agriculture was at an all-time low. Might have been 6% or something like that, and then it grew dramatically for several years. So it sounds like it's reached a plateau and is now declining again. Is that about right?
Ismahane Elouafi 20:00
Maybe. Maybe it went to - there's a huge competition between health, education, agriculture, food security, so they're all very important priorities. And I think ODA [Official Development Assistance], it's a very limited envelope, and that's where getting other donors, NGOs, philanthropists, or private sector - so it's very important. We cannot restrain ourselves only in ODA. We have to go beyond ODA, because in international development, and I hope you agree with me, Robin, it's very clear that the impact of putting $1 in international development in the agriculture and food sector has multiple benefits, from better lives and livelihoods to better education to better health and so on and so forth. So we need more advocacy for channeling international development through an agriculture program or a land water and food system program.
Robin Davies 20:00
So how do you do resource mobilization for the CGIAR system? I mean, some organisations that are less diffuse run regular replenishment rounds, but how do you do it for the CGIAR system?
Ismahane Elouafi 20:00
So the CGIAR doesn't have a replenishment cycle. But what we do, I have to say that we had very good relationship with many donors across the years, particularly the major donors that we have, many of them represented in the system Council. And what we are doing with the countries, it's regular meetings and regular updates to make sure we maintain the level of funding from their ODA most of the time. Right now, what we are trying to do to increase our budget, it's explain and also show the connection between investing in international agriculture system with their climate envelopes, for example, or the connection between investing in agriculture, agri-food system and their biodiversity envelope. So many donors, we used to be part of only the food security envelope, but the reality of things - things are very interconnected, and particularly agriculture and climate change has a double-edged relationship whereby we are part of the emission, and we are emitting 37% but also climate change is affecting agriculture a lot, and if we don't do anything, the productivity will go lower instead of higher. Same thing with biodiversity. We are part of the problem with biodiversity, but we are creating diversity as well in the ag system. So it's all of these envelopes and the interconnections, connectedness between them. It's something that needs to be clarified so that hopefully we'll get more funding from the different envelopes of our donors.
The discussion we have with the donors now, is it time to move to a replenishment or not? As you know, there are pluses and minuses in that. We are not the winner, and I have to say that our donors have been quite faithful to the CGIAR, particularly through the trust fund, but also beyond the trust fund. So we're looking at mechanisms that will allow us to have a long-term funding and maybe overlapping envelopes that will give us more stability. We can't do research based on a three-year basis, it's very difficult. So this year, the system Council and the international - the system board and the different boards of the centres, we have agreed to go for a six-year plan whereby we are developing, right now our science and innovation portfolio for 2025 to 2030 and we are hoping, really that the financing and the commitment from the different donors could help us get that overlap over six years.
And we don't do enough advocacy, I think as CGIAR or as ag and food sector, we are not so organized like when we - we always think that to adapt to climate change and to reduce emission, we have to get to the electric car. So that's the only one we think of, and there is, whereas most of the solution actually are in the agriculture sector. So we can reduce methane quite dramatically through different agricultural practices, and we have some very interesting investment in finding anti-methane or low methane forages, for example, or low N2O [nitrous oxide] forages. We could do much more in terms of increasing carbon sequestration through healthier soil, but also through more crop coverage. And in many times, people, when they think about climate, they don't think agriculture. They will think about renewable energy only, whereas sincerely, the only things that sequester carbon in this planet, it's plants, soil or ocean. It's not Tesla. I always say it's not Tesla. Tesla - it's getting money because a Tesla car will emit much less than normal car. So we are almost giving money to the electric car because it will allow us to not produce another car that will emit, whereas in agriculture, we're going to put money in agriculture that produces food, but also sequesters carbon, reduces and cleans up the air for us. And I think we are not yet in that understanding whereby in the best time the farmer should get money for the food they produce, the nutrition they produce, if you want to put it on a nutrition it will be much more powerful. So they are paid for the nutrition that they are producing, and maybe they are paid also for the ecosystem services that they are producing, that they are making. And I think we haven't had enough advocacy, because we are not well organized as a sector. A sector includes more than 500 million small-scale producers that are mostly in the Global South. Most of the multinationals do the advocacy for themselves and their businesses. It's not like a sector-wide, whereas energy has been quite strong. Energy since the beginning, we start talking about climate change, they came with a plan as a sector, and hence they have been quite well seen as a solution. Not so much just a problem, whereas agriculture right now, it's seen only as a problem. It's not seen as part and parcel of the solution.
Robin Davies 29:13
I recall, at one time there was a lot of interest in the concept of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and in fact CIFOR received quite a lot of funding to do research in this area. And I guess that has been a dispiriting experience. That was a concept that never came to fruition. But anyway, that was an aside. Can I just ask you one more quick funding question? Have you been successful in mobilizing funding from non-traditional donors such as UAE [United Arab Emirates] or China or others?
Ismahane Elouafi 29:13
Yes, as a matter of fact, we are very grateful that in COP28 [28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] we had in Dubai, we had a really great success whereby we started our fundraising. We got about $890 million that was announced in the COP28 out of which 100 million from UAE. That was much in fund with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 100 million each. And we are in discussion right now with Azerbaijan. We're in discussion with China. We're in discussion with Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other donors. So part and parcel of the strategy is definitely to diversify our donor base through bringing new countries like the UAE or Saudi Arabia but also working with big countries like China, Brazil and others. DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo] as well. So it will be really good for us to work with those countries and in those countries, and that really, it's a development from how the CGIAR has been in the past. It's also working with the national systems that have developed tremendously over the years, like EMBRAPA [Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation] in Brazil, or CAAS [Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences] in China, or INRAE [National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment] in France, for example, whereby we can work with them to bring the solution that work well in China and help China really reduce poverty and malnutrition dramatically in the last few years to some parts of Africa or some parts of Southeast Asia or some parts in Latin America. So the idea is not only to get them as donors, but get them also as full partners, so that we take some of the innovation and technologies that they have and we customize them for other parts of the world.
Robin Davies 30:00
Alright, now you have spoken about climate change, and I guess the imperative that that provides for the continued existence and work of the CGIAR network. What do you see as the most promising new technologies that will increase agricultural resilience in the face of climate change?
Ismahane Elouafi 30:00
I think that the developments in many sciences in the last 10 years will allow us to understand better the synergies and the interconnectedness between things. So we used to talk about water alone, soil alone, genetics alone. I think really, in this big data time, we can understand better what regenerative agriculture means. What about, instead of having one mono crop, what about you do many crops at the same time, but you find ways that will allow you still to go for mechanization and take the first one and the second one. I think, the genomic work, the proteomic work, the enzymology, the understanding of pathways, how our body absorbs food. What does it mean that my vitamin D, if I take vitamin D in this or I take citrus, for example, what does it mean if I take my vitamin C from an orange, I absorb it differently than you. So all of this understanding of personalised nutrition, interaction between microbiomes in the guts of an animal versus the soil versus human, all of this, I think it's developing at a rate that is unbelievable. The fact that we have much more quantum capacity that will allow us to really analyse the data, will allow us to understand it better.
And I think there are few initiatives that are harnessing that. One of them, it's called PTFI, the Periodic Table of Food Initiative that Rockefeller Foundation started about four years ago with the CGIAR. So we have the secretariat. It's based in CIAT [International Centre for Tropical Agriculture] in Colombia, and actually the two main organisations that work together on the PTFI initiative, it's the Alliance Bioversity-CIAT, which is a biodiversity and agricultural centre with American Heart Association. So it's a medical with agriculture and the initiative. It's trying to understand food. It's not only understand this grain or this vegetable or this fruit, but understanding food as a total and what does it mean for me as a person with this genetic makeup, living this style of life, to absorb it or not. So I think it's beyond explaining things one by one. It's trying to understand the synergies in nature and the trade-offs. I mean, there isn't only synergies, there are also trade-offs. And how does it work? I think with this, hopefully we will be able to produce more with less, because by the end, I think the dilemma we have on the planet is that we have a larger population, much more high demand for nutritious food than in the past, but we have less resources than 50 years ago, and many of the resources that we have been using are not renewable.
So the equation that we have to solve as human beings is, how do we produce more with much less, and unless we understand the nature and how nature synergistically put many things together in a more efficient and effective production system, we won't be able to do it, because the population will rise more, the demand for all natural resources, be it water, energy, and you name it, will increase. And we know that many of the things are limited, like phosphorus, for example, or many other elements that are in the planet, they are very limited. So I think mimicking nature, in my view, is very important, and the sciences today allow us to do it. The science today allows us to really come up with beautiful explanations that will allow us to produce more with less.
Another example that I want to leave you with: in IRRI, which is in Philippines, the scientists scanned all of the rice genome, and they were able to find very old rice that is anti-cancer. So we have now 16 ideotypes of rice that are anti-cancer with quite a high impact or a high, very high capacity to reduce the cancerous cells in breast cancer, colon cancer - breast, colon, there is a third cancer. So it's beautiful, and we couldn't maybe, if we wanted to discover this rice 10 years ago, we couldn't do it. But now with artificial intelligence, with digital, with our capacity to do much more circular, genomic and phenomic, we were able to detect those 16 ideotypes of rice.
Robin Davies 35:00
So you've talked about the connections between agricultural production and climate change, and you've touched just now on one connection between agriculture and health. I wanted to ask about health security too. Obviously, the way that livestock production, whether it's smallholder or industrial, the way that livestock production is managed, has a lot of implications for human health. People are very conscious now of the presence of H5N1 [highly pathogenic avian influenza] in chicken flocks. They're very conscious of the risks of using antibiotics to fatten cattle in industrial cattle production, which can promote antimicrobial resistance. How much is health security an explicit focus for the CGIAR system?
Ismahane Elouafi 35:00
I think it's very important. So if we go back to the climate and the climate crisis, we talk about many things that wouldn't grow at plus two degrees, but really what we are not paying attention to is the movement of insects and parasites and viruses. So it's going to change completely. What used to be very much contained in certain continents, going to move quite fast to other places. And this will be really driven by particularly the variation in the climate. The global warming itself going to move a lot of insects again, and pathogens and what have you. And we'll have much more one health issues than in the past. And I think it's very important for us to understand it. It's very important to be ready for it. And it's very important for us to look at the zoonoses particularly. So if you look at the incidence of zoonoses in the past, there was always about a decade between one another, and then it gets less. So I think we're going to get into seasonal, maybe movement of zoonoses.
So we have a very strong one health program in the CGIAR, of course, in collaboration with many partners, including FAO, UNEP [United Nations Environment Programme], OIE [World Organisation for Animal Health] and others, WHO [World Health Organization] as well. But I think we need to do more. The One Health concept and the climate crisis going to be much faster than our capacity to analyse and put in place strategies and from the animal side and from the wildlife side as well. I mean, last year, rabies in the wildlife of Canada was a huge concern, and this is just the beginning of it. So, definitely, we need to do more.
Robin Davies 38:22
And I guess, I guess it's the same with climate change and health. It's not just about the volume of production, it's about the manner of production.
Ismahane Elouafi 38:22
So, the adaptation, yeah, and that's where adaptation is very important, adaptation and collaboration. So because when you start looking at movements of insects, it's not - there is no passport anymore. It's really nature moving as it sees fit. So that's where collaboration and international collaboration and proper monitoring and proper modeling of where this virus going to move or this disease going to move. There are many studies that say the next one, it's not a zoonosis, it's mostly a plant disease. And that's where, again, going back to the genetic base and making sure that we have a broad base of plants and animals, in terms of species, of subspecies, but also within. Like, when we talk about, most of the wheat is coming from CIMMYT, and this is a very narrow genetic base. So could we now, with our knowledge, go back and make it much more, even if we are talking wheat, but making sure that we have a number of genes for rust resistance or a number of genes for Hessian fly resistance and so on and so forth. So genetic basis would be very important, and genetic material and breeding and creating diversity in our plants, in our animals, in our fisheries, will be very important.
Robin Davies 40:00
You may not be in a position to really answer the next question, but it's always struck me as strange that the agricultural research organisations so well organized have formed a structured partnership with an effective governance arrangement, and are able to collectively negotiate resource allocation. That all happens on the agricultural research side. When it comes to health and medical research, there is nothing like that. There are a lot of specialized health and medical research organisations around the world, but there is no partnership among them. There is no overarching governing body that does what CGIAR does. Do you have any thoughts on why that might be, and would you have any - is it good or bad that they don't have it?
Ismahane Elouafi 41:10
The only observation I have is that there is a lot to learn from different sectors. You could say the same with the climate. For example, on the climate and environmental sciences, there isn't a very well organised body to do it. But also, if you look at the dominance of private sector, it's different. So the dominance of private sector in the medical field is huge, and maybe that's one of the reasons why there isn't really one big body that does the coordination. So I think for me, I like very much how the data and the privacy data has been really well sorted out in the medical field, which we don't have in the agriculture field. So one of the areas that I think really we can learn a lot from is how they anonymize data, and how they can really put together different cohorts for the analysis, which we don't do even in the Veterinary Sciences. But it's a very good observation. It's something to really dive into and understand why we don't have such thing in the medical field, other than maybe the dominance of the private sector.
Robin Davies 41:10
Now, I have got a bit carried away. I realize you're quite close to your next meeting. Can I just ask a final question about, I guess your aspirations for your term? In this position, how long is your term going to be?
Ismahane Elouafi 41:10
It's three years.
Robin Davies 41:10
Three years, yeah. What would you hope to achieve by the end of this three-year period?
Ismahane Elouafi 41:10
For me, really harmonising and integrating the research portfolio is very important. So right now, we are launching our new science and innovation for six years, 2025 to 2030 and then we are focusing on eight science areas and one big program on scaling for impact. So I hope really, that with this new portfolio, we can increase our impacts on the ground in the national system, particularly in the least income countries, and the way we design it right now, which is in agreement with all the scientific community in the CGIAR, it's really, how could we make sure that we walk a little bit closer to the development agencies and provide them with the best solutions. I think there is a gap between the international developments, particularly the last mile organisation, and the applied research institution like us, and we have to bridge that gap, because by bridging it, hopefully we will get more technologies in the hands of small-scale producers.
The other thing really I'm trying to do is to simplify the CGIAR. It's a little bit a complex governance, a complex system. People that work with us have been with us for a very, very long time, where it's not so easy to bring in new partners. So I hope that I could simplify it so that we play the role of a network of networks of networks whereby we connect very well with academia. We connect very well with other international organisations. We connect very well with international development agencies, and we connect well with the private sector, the SMEs [Small and Medium-sized Enterprises] in the Global South, so it will be great if we can really play that role of connectors and network of networks, so that the continuum between a beautiful idea that starts in academia makes it really to a product in the hands of small-scale producers that most probably work with either the local private sector, or with the local international development agencies.
Robin Davies 45:00
Alright, well, we'll leave it there. I really appreciate you giving me so much time. Thank you very much.
Ismahane Elouafi 45:00
Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity.
Robin Davies 45:42
You're welcome.