CGIAR Flagship Report: Insight to Impact: A decision-maker’s guide to navigating food system science
CGIAR’s first-ever Flagship Report Insight to Impact is now live! We hope you joined the official launch event, April 10 at CGIAR Science Week in Nairobi!
CGIAR’s inaugural Flagship Report aims to synthesize science in an accessible format designed specifically to arm policy- and decisionmakers at national, regional, and global levels with the evidence they require to formulate, develop, and negotiate evidence-based policies and investments. “Insight to Impact: A decision-maker’s guide to navigating food system science” is set to change how decision-makers make science-backed decisions.
Visit the report: Report website and PDF downloads: 
Read:
- The full report: Insight to Impact
- Devex Decoding Food Systems: stories, videos about Insight to Impact
- Media release: New CGIAR flagship report translates insights into impact for food systems in crisis
- Opinion: Future of our agriculture lies in science by Eliud Kiplimo Kireger, Director General of Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO)
- Blog post: This isn’t just another report. It’s a survival guide.
- Blog post: New CGIAR champions network to bridge gap between science and policy
- Blog post: Seven ways to turn science into action: Insights from CGIAR’s flagship report development process
- Blog post: CGIAR and Germany mark 50 years and look ahead to inaugural Flagship Report
Resources:
- Photos:
- Launch event photos
- BMZ Germany’s Felicitas Röhrig. CGIAR’s Julianne Biddle, Ismahane Elouafi release Insight to Impact. Credit: Saleef Nyambok, CGIAR
- CGIAR Insight to Impact policy champions network take on Insight to Impact. Credit: Saleef Nyambok, CGIAR
- Flagship Report stack. Credit: CGIAR
- Breeding staff at CGIAR partner facility in Uganda. Credit: Jjumba Martin, CGIAR
- Scientist at Ugandan breeding facility. Credit: Adam Hunt, CGIAR
- Launch event photos
- Press coverage:
- Inter Press Service: Insight to Impact: CGIAR Inaugural Flagship Report for Decision Makers Navigating Food System Science (Also: All Africa)
- Siani: CGIAR Flagship Report: Insight to Impact
Background:
Policymakers across the globe are grappling with complex and interconnected challenges: food and nutrition security, climate change, biodiversity loss, water resource degradation, sustainable development, gender equity, poverty reduction, and more. To these global challenges facing our food, land, and water systems in a time of climate crisis, CGIAR’s global partnership of 13 world-leading research Centers brings a track record of delivering more than 50 years of timely, policy-relevant, impactful innovations, data, and expertise to partners. As the largest producer of global public goods in the agri-food development sector, CGIAR research combines trade-offs and synergy analyses with transformative approaches to address challenges in the areas of climate, environment, nutrition, poverty, and gender.
By synthesizing and making accessible CGIAR data and evidence, and drawing upon the insights and expertise of CGIAR’s vast network of more than 3,000 partners worldwide, the Flagship Report will help policy- and decision-makers in targeted global, regional, and national processes. It will ensure that expertise and science from CGIAR and partners contributes to global processes, thus strengthening impact in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). It will also ensure policy- and decisionmakers in LMICs are better equipped with the data, research, and innovations to contribute to global agenda setting and global policy processes.
A preview of the report was presented at an event marking the 50 year anniversary of German-CGIAR collaboration in Berlin in December 2024.
There are four phases of report development:
- Market research/intelligence to identify and specify the target audiences and ensure development of a product built for impact, that gives stakeholders what they need. This will be aligned with a CGIAR capacity assessment.
- A design period to identify processes ripe for policy influence, goals, themes, structures, and content for the first report and its successors.
- A synthesis and writing phase to translate science into policy through CGIAR’s five Impact Areas. Content will be relevant, well-evidenced, comprehensive, accessible, and actionable. This phase will include fact verification, editing, and proofreading.
- An advocacy and communications phase will ensure that the messages, insights, and recommendations are conveyed in an accessible manner, and deliver and implement a strategy to reach intended stakeholders in ways that will catalyze planned-for uptake, usage, and impacts.
- To ensure the report drives real-world impact, an Insight to Impact Policy Champions group will drive action. The group is a network of decision-makers from low- and middle-income countries and global institutions who will strengthen two-way dialogue between science and policy, scale proven solutions, and embed CGIAR/partner research into national, regional, and international decision-making.
This will be followed by an evaluation in which the process and the direct impact in target countries will be examined. The results will be incorporated into the planning of future reports.
By channelling CGIAR’s world-renown expertise, partner network, evidence, innovations, and knowledge products to policy- and decision-makers and national and regional institutions, CGIAR’s Flagship Report will catalyze positive and transformative change on a global scale.
Design and development of the inaugural report is being led by Lead Researcher Dr. Julianne Biddle. Meet Dr. Biddle and discover her vision in this Q&A video.
Download the 4-page Flagship Report overview.
Update: Flagship Report Preview in Berlin, December 11, 2024
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We would like to thank all funders who support this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund, and bilateral projects, and the special support for this project from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) with GIZ.