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IICA/CE/Doc.526(08) Original: Spanish 22-24 July 2008
IICA-CATIE Cooperation: Pooling Capabilities for
for the Sustainable Development of Agriculture
and Natural Resources
IICA and CATIE have been supporting agriculture and natural resource management in Latin America for many years. Theirs is probably one of the most successful examples of hemispheric systems designed to support their member countries in the areas of research, education, institution building, strategic development and policies. IICA and CATIE have worked together for a very long time, in a permanent relationship, although perhaps in some instances the cooperation is more implicit that explicit.
However, the Directors General of IICA and CATIE realize that more integrated, coordinated and consistent work would allow both organizations to enhance their capabilities. This calls for cooperation of all kinds and at all levels - between their respective headquarters (in San Jose and Turrialba), via the national technical offices, under joint programs and projects and by means of strategic actions designed to address concrete situations and development trends requested by the countries or regions. In order to step up cooperation between the two institutions, the Directors General have taken important steps to move beyond the traditional forms of collaboration. Some examples of this increased collaboration are described below:
More intensive contact between the two General Directorates. The Directors General of the two organizations are holding more strategic meetings and sharing more information, in order to establish guidelines for both institutions’ experts. In an unprecedented step, the Director of CATIE has been invited to form part of IICA’s Cabinet; and the two Directors General have held meetings to reach agreement on general guidelines for increased cooperation.
Appointment of the Director General of CATIE as an Assistant Deputy Director General of IICA. This decision was taken to strengthen the ties between IICA and CATIE. The Governing Council of CATIE approved the proposal and the terms of reference. Following this appointment, the Director General of CATIE has become a member of IICA’s Cabinet. Participating in the meetings of the Cabinet will undoubtedly improve the timely sharing of important information. Creation and operation of a CATIE-IICA working group to determine what actions should be implemented in the future. The working group includes a senior official from each organization and meets regularly every month, alternating between the respective headquarters. The meetings are used to discuss both short-term actions and future cooperation activities.
Collaboration Strategy and Agreement. The working group was charged with drafting a cooperation agreement and, during subsequent meetings and visits by specialists of both organizations, identified topics, places and opportunities for collaboration. The organizations established the following three fields of collaboration:
- Territorial Rural Development and the Management of Natural Resources and the Environment
- Technological Innovation, Value Chains and Competitiveness - Information and Knowledge Management
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Concrete actions under regional initiatives. As members of the Interagency Advisory Committee, IICA and CATIE worked with the Central American Integration System (SICA) to formulate the Regional Agro-environmental and Health Strategy (ERAS). IICA has also expressed interest in the MAP program that CATIE is promoting. CATIE officially presented IICA with a copy of the document on the MAP program and invited the Institute to formally declare its interest in taking part. All these initiatives will enable the two institutions to implement focused, complementary actions based on the Central American regional agenda. Cooperation agreement for the course Leadership for the Development of Ecoagriculture. This course was given for the first time in 2007, with singular success. It is a joint activity involving IICA Headquarters, the IICA Office in Costa Rica, Ecoagriculture Partners, the Center for Sustainable Resource Development and IUCN. In 2008, the course will be taking place at CATIE’s headquarters, so there will be close collaboration throughout the planning and implementation process. Teams from the two institutions have been meeting to iron out the details and assign specific responsibilities for the different study sessions, practices and field trips. This initiative is expected to become a permanent activity and also serve as the basis for a regional program.
The Orton Commemorative Library Orton: an example of permanent cooperation. The Orton Commemorative Library, administered jointly by IICA and CATIE, continues to be the most important agricultural information center in the hemisphere. Some of the Orton Library’s concrete actions are as follows:
- The growing number of onsite and online queries processed each year (14,590 and 166,433, respectively, in 2007).
- Technical leadership in the operation of the Agricultural Information and Documentation System of the Americas (SIDALC), a unique mechanism in the hemisphere that interconnects over 141 institutions interested in facilitating access to their data. The system’s website (www.sidalc.net) has over 20,000 visitors each day.
- Over 83,619 bibliographic entries were added to the catalogue of monographs, including 3600 full-text documents. The collection was kept up to date with the acquisition of 42,022 printed and digital scientific and technical documents and two international databases (CABI and TEEAL). The library also subscribed to 87 scientific journals published in different formats.
- Thanks to the implementation of Specific Cooperation Agreement No 58-8201-6-135F CATIE-ARS, which provided US$70,000 for the preservation of the Orton Collection, substantial progress was made in repairing and repainting the shelving (5000 linear meters of the collection), fumigating and cleaning the premises, repairing documents in poor condition and eliminating metal objects.
- Financial assistance from Harvard University, thanks to which the Orton Library was able to acquire technologies for digitizing documents, improve the bandwidth for accessing the library’s resources via Internet and expand the wireless network to encompass the entire library. The library also incorporated 44,160 scanned pages into the institutional repository, including the collection of the Turrialba journal (a project financed by the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service), available via international search engines such as AGNIC and Google.
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- With regard to capacity building in agro-environmental information management, the library held a Course/Workshop on Agricultural Library Management to train 11 professionals from five Latin American countries who work for agricultural and forestry institutions. Furthermore, 18 people were trained at a seminar on agricultural documentation centers in Haiti. Other training events included the First Workshop on Forest Information Policies for Central America, organized by FAO, and a course on scientific literature for students of CATIE’s master’s program. Working with CATIE, IUFRO, and the Global Forest Information Service (GFIS), IICA provided training to forest information managers from Latin America on RSS syndication services and the use of metadata and information-sharing tools. In addition, possible scenarios were constructed for organizing and administering forest information services, and for establishing a Forest Information Resource Center as part of the SIDALC, under a joint effort involving IICA, CATIE, FAO, GFIS and the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII).
- Most recently, virtual learning environments have been incorporated into the training in agricultural information management, eliminating physical barriers to enhance the expertise of agricultural professionals in the hemisphere.
- With regard to national information networks, IICA and CATIE focused their efforts on working with Mexico’s National Agricultural Information Network (REMBA) to prepare the Mexican Agricultural Catalogue, and with Costa Rica’s Agricultural Information Network (REDNIA) to construct a Digital Library for the country. Support was also provided to strengthen the Center for Information Resources on Agroforestry with Cacao, with financing from ICRAF/CATIE.
- With sponsorship from The Equilibrium Fund, an international NGO that has been working to recover lost knowledge of Brosimum alicastrum in Central America since 2001, and with collaboration from the Orton Library, an Information Resource Center was set up to facilitate research on that multi-purpose tree.
- Finally, CATIE and IICA are preparing a proposal that will be sent by The Tropics Foundation of Atlanta, Georgia, to USAID’s American Schools and Hospitals Abroad (ASHA), to secure funds for renovating and modernizing the Orton Library.
IICA and CATIE also carried out a series of specific activities as part of their continuous cooperation. These included:
- In Belize, they presented to the National Cacao Group the Project to Improve the Cacao Industry in Central America, and its evaluation; while in Nicaragua they enhanced the capabilities agricultural actors by implementing a course on agroecology and biotechnology.
- In southeastern Mexico, CATIE and IICA provided technical cooperation to cacao producers affected by floods in the states of Tabasco and Chiapas. The working partnership was strengthened following the implementation of the Integrated and Sustainable Social Development Project (PRODESIS), funded by the European Union and the Government of the State of Chiapas. IICA handled the first component of the project (on microenterprises) and CATIE the second (on agroecology), which includes training in the development of agroecological and agricultural-forestry-pasture production systems in the Selva Lacandona and the establishment of field schools to train promoters
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that are going to be incorporated as technical support units for the micro-regional councils.
- Actions were coordinated with SICTA to promote actions of the Mesoamerican Plant Genetic Resources Network (REMERFI), with which IICA and CATIE held a course on the management of plant genetic resource information for officials from the national research institutes.
- In collaboration with CATIE, OIRSA, Costa Rica’s National Science and Technology Council and UNU-BIOLAC, IICA gave a course on risk analysis and management for living modified organisms (LMO), for 39 participants from Mexico, Belize, Central America, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.
- Under the CACAO Central America Project (PCC), CATIE and IICA have been holding a series of technical forums on the modernization of cacao cultivation in Central America, the most recent of which took place on 28 May 2008, in Managua, Nicaragua.
- IICA and CATIE are also working on the preliminary design of a regional partnership on climate change.
- CATIE and IICA are cooperating with Zamorano, the UCR and the American Distance Education Consortium (ADEC) in the management of the project Partnership for the Development and Utilization of Distance Education in Latin America to Foster Agricultural Innovation, Competitiveness and Sustainable Development. In January 2007, the draft proposal was submitted to ADEC’s Executive Committee (comprised of many U.S. universities). In May 2007, the proposal was presented at the All ADEC meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The institutions involved in the proposal aim to reach a much bigger audience via distance learning and promote the sharing of information with one another.
- Collaboration to disseminate information about the Master’s Degree Course in Agribusiness
IICA disseminated and made available via its Web portal the brochure and admission guide for the Master’s Degree Course in Agribusinesses that CATIE is organizing with INCAE.
- Finally, CATIE contributed important documents and information that IICA drew upon in preparing the report “Situation of and outlook for agriculture and rural life in Americas 2006-2007.”
Based on what was accomplished between January 2007 and June 2008, there is every reason to expect a period of growing cooperation that will make it possible for both institutions increase their capabilities in aid of the sustainable development of agriculture and natural resources in the region.
