CGIAR: How Scientists Report To The World

MANILA: About 0530 hours Wednesday, 24 August 2016 on Facebook, with the Editor in Chief in me lying in wait, I note the post "2015 IITA Annual Report." This is the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture. Having been writing and doing research on ICRISAT for years, I knew that the IITA is based in Nigeria, a sister center of ICRISAT in India and IRRI in the Philippines, all under the CGIAR now based in France; in fact, the CGIAR has 15 centers around the world.

I say to myself before I click the Facebook link, "Oh my God, 8 months late!" No excuses. Inexcusable considering that we are in the Age of the Laptop & the Internet. Considering that I'm 76 and from zero I could have edited and desktop-published myself that IITA report from 01 December 2015 to 31 January 2016, camera-ready, using Windows 10 and Microsoft Office 2013 working in the Philippines with my Lenovo laptop more than 12,000 km away from Nigeria. It's only 76 pages, for heaven's sake.

Ladies & gentlemen, the Information Superhighway does not have heavy traffic; the slow-moving vehicles of information are with the brains of institutions and individuals who are supposed to know so much better and move so much faster.

And then I am reminded that in India, France, Nigeria or the Philippines or elsewhere, public & private institutions have themselves not conquered the lag of time in reporting to the public what they had been doing the previous year. Applying Everett Rogers' theory of innovation diffusion, we all are adoptors of modern information & communication technology (ICT) software and hardware but are being left behind by ourselves by being laggards in the use of applications (apps) such as word processors and desktop publishers. ICT is good for those who know how to use those technologies, and master them. I said no excuses. I have been a self-taught off-and-on editor in the last 40 years and a self-propelled PC user in the last 30 years not to know or notice. If you want to know, today my favorite apps are Windows 10 and Office 2013, because they are fantastic and they satisfy the shortcut fanatic in the writer & editor & desktop publisher & blogger me; my favorite browser is Opera because she works fast and she is beautiful.

ICT is not a magic lamp; the genie will not grant your wishes if you don't talk the language. "Open Sesame!" is clear and concise; "Options Sesame!" is too scientific. Which is how the IITA 2015 annual report talks.

I click the Facebook link and here I am, on the IITA website http://wpar12.iita.org. The image above is on the website but not on the cover of the IITA report, but it's the one I like – it grabs me. It shows to me how scientists report to the world – in the jargon of science.

In fact, all the CGIAR centers I am familiar with all talk in technical generalities, whether IITA, IRRI or ICRISAT. Like, they proclaim that they are working on "Reducing poverty. Tackling climate change. Engaging women. Protecting the environment. Making rice healthier. Increasing food security." They don't talk to their target clients according to their needs. Like, "You can rise from poverty if..."

CGIAR describes itself as "a global agricultural research partnership" (cgiar.org). CGIAR also claims that "All 15 Research Centers are independent, non-profit research organizations, innovating on behalf of poor people in developing countries." That may be so, but how can those innovations reach the poor people when it's all in scientific jargon?

CGIAR centers have to popularize science and stop talking to each other; the time to do it is yesterday. Their annual reports are not for the masses, but why not? When will they start talking the language of the people they are supposed to serve?

But not one of those CGIAR centers talk to the people really, in the English that everyone should be able to understand. They talk "increase in food security" or "reduction of undernutrition" or "sustainable management of natural resources" in such forbidding language. The target readers don't understand those terms; they are not scientists, and you are not supposed to be writing for technical people, are you?

In the IITA website, it says:

Overcoming poverty & hunger
Reducing malnutrition
Preventing environmental degradation
Cross-cutting areas (empowerment of women, coping with climate change, digital agriculture)

That's what I mean. Is the IITA reporting to the farmers and their advocates or reporting to other scientists only? The CGIAR centers owe it to the people, in this case the farmers of the tropics.

I have just seen on the website and downloaded to my hard drive the pdf of the 2015 IITA Annual Report with the title Gearing up for impact (yes, like that, cap & lowercase; I know it's intentional, like I intentionally capitalize each and every first letter of every word in my titles, all of them). On the IITA website, but not on the report itself, I read:

To make sure that we meet our goal, we continue to focus on ensuring four system-level outcomes: increase in food security. Reduction in rural poverty. Reduction of undernutrition. Sustainable management of natural resources.

Whatever.

The IITA report itself has these sections:

Strategic Initiatives. Improving Crops. Making Crops Healthy. Integrated Systems. Impact and Outscaling.

What I can say is that one of the strategic initiatives of IITA (and that includes the rest of the CGIAR centers, including my favorite ICRISAT), should be to streamline this pathway:

STUDY –>
GATHERING DATA –>
ANALYSES –>
INTERPRETATION –>
REPORT WRITING –>
DATABANKING –>
TECHNICAL PUBLICATION –>
OTHER SCIENTISTS –>
POPULARIZATION –>
NON-TECHNICAL PEOPLE.

And they have to tell the farmers that they have to contribute to the effort, not just wait for government or private assistance. Like, "You can save much water by applying the alternate wetting and drying (AWD) technique developed by IRRI." The farmers must learn to save water, no matter if it is the rainy season. Like, why not have a Philippine program where the wives are the managers of the family farm? That would be real women empowerment.

At this point, I don't blame the CGIAR centers, because my alma mater Itself that is more than 100 years old, UP Los Baños, is on the same boat: dilly-dallying with serving the people with science in the form that they understand in the language that they can appreciate, or at least their son or daughter in high school can. I have found that to be my own calling, but I'm alone and I can do only so much. Help!

26 August 2016. Essay word count, excluding this line: 1110