Bruce Campbell is Director of the CGIAR Challenge Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). He shares his thoughts about CCAFS and his new role as the program director.

Photo: Courtesy of Bruce Campbell.

Q: What are the primary goals of the CCAFS Challenge Program? BC: There is accumulating evidence that climate change poses a significant threat to the food security and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people who depend on small-scale agriculture. The overall goal of CCAFS is to help overcome this threat by providing farmers, policy makers and donors with new knowledge and tools that better enable them to adjust their actions in response to observed and anticipated changes in the climate.

Q: How will the program add value to and complement the ongoing work of the CGIAR Centers on climate change?

BC: Farmers and other resource users manage their livelihoods and landscapes in an integrated way that encompasses many activities. The Centers work from the perspective of their mandates, whether livestock, forests, specific crops or what have you. Innovations resulting from that work, such as drought-tolerant crops and better management of livestock, fisheries and so forth, are necessary but not sufficient for coping with climate change. Rural communities need integrated options, based on the combined use of different crops, management practices and payments for ecosystem services at a range of spatial levels. A conducive policy context is also important.

CCAFS will foster adaptive capacity by offering a range of options to farmers, communities and policy makers. Its work will be integrative, drawing on the strengths of the Centers, but ensuring that climate change solutions are framed in the context of household portfolios and multifunctional landscapes. We’ll also complement the Centers’ work by tackling cross-cutting research issues. An example is our proposed work on payment for environmental services for farmers.

Our research partnership with the Earth System Science Partnership, or ESSP, will further strengthen the complementary nature of our work with the Centers. Through this partnership, we can tap into the considerable skills of the climate change research community and link these to the applied research skills of the CGIAR. Specifically, we look to the ESSP for expertise in climate modeling, downscaling climate forecasts to specific regions in support of production decisions and risk insurance approaches and modeling to inform decisions about trade-offs between food security, livelihoods and environmental goals.

In all these ways, we hope to facilitate connections across Centres – connections that will make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.     

Q: The CCAFS Challenge Program is working closely with several non-CGIAR partners. What is the CP’s partnership approach?

BC: I spent some time researching and writing about partnerships with several colleagues. The result was a document called “Navigating Amidst Complexity: A Guide to Implementing Effective Research and Development to Improve Livelihoods and the Environment.” The principles and best practices of participatory partnership are not rocket science. So, it’s amazing how often they aren’t followed, to the detriment of collaborative endeavors. In CCAFS, we’ll involve partners from the outset – in defining the work program, formulating impact strategies and so on.

Q: In your new role as director of the program, what do you see as its biggest opportunities? Its biggest challenges?

BC: CCAFS will bring together the complementary strengths of the CGIAR, the ESSP and their respective partners to address the most pressing and complex challenge to food security in the 21st century. This collaboration will unite the world's best talent in agricultural science, development research, climate science and earth system science. I think this collaboration is the CP’s biggest opportunity. Our key challenge, perhaps, is to establish and maintain effective partnerships, while ensuring that CCAFS remains an integrated endeavor. Ensuring that the collaborating institutions work well with multiple partners will be a balancing act.

Q: What should we expect for agriculture at COP15? What are the likely outcomes?

BC: I don’t think anyone expects that a very detailed program for agriculture will emerge from COP15.  But there does appear to be an opportunity for putting agriculture firmly on the post-Copenhagen agenda. In this regard, CCAFS is working with a large consortium of players to jointly host an “Agriculture and Rural Development Day” at COP15. The purpose of this event is to establish a work plan for fully incorporating agriculture into the post-Copenhagen agenda.

Q: You come to the CCAFS Challenge Program from CIFOR with a forest background. How will you bridge the divide between forests and agriculture to address land use in the climate debate?

BC: My early work dealt with livelihoods in dryland Africa, covering everything from small-scale irrigation to harvesting of forest products. So, in coming to CCAFS, I feel I’m returning to that focus. At CIFOR, I led the forests and livelihoods program, which is all about the synergies and tradeoffs between environmental and livelihood goals. So, I don’t see a clear divide between forests and agriculture. They’re all part of the mosaic in which farmers live and work. Where I do see a pronounced divide is between global environmental and local livelihood goals. The challenge for research is to put in place incentives that advance the global environmental agenda, while at the same time reducing poverty. This challenge is part of the CCAFS agenda.

Q: Do you think recent calls for stronger support of agriculture will translate into strong support for the CCAFS Challenge Program? What are the best opportunities for making that happen?

BC: The evidence suggests that CCAFS will receive massive support for a number of reasons. Climate change is at the top of the international agenda because of the devastating impacts it is likely to have in our lifetime. Food security is back on the agenda, as evidenced by discussions in various global fora. Then, there is the desire of CGIAR stakeholders, from farmers to donors, for a more integrated CGIAR. CCAFS is at the intersection of all those forces: climate change, food security and cross-Center partnerships. To secure strong support, the program needs to achieve efficiency and low transaction costs, demonstrate an ability to act as an honest convenor of diverse partners and develop a sharply focused strategy for ensuring that research has an impact.

Q: CCAFS emphasizes the importance of communications between scientists and stakeholders in its work. How do you envision that work being carried out?

BC: We intend to build communications into all aspects of our work. But we want to go about this in a strategic way, so that our communications are constructed solidly on the basis of our goals and proposed impact pathways. For this purpose, we’ll undertake stakeholder analyses, investigate researcher-stakeholder relationships, build consensus on impact pathways, form partnerships with key players in these impact pathways and ensure that key messages get to the appropriate players at the right time.