SANREM Accomplishments and Lessons Learned Workshop

Washington, DC, June 16th 2004

Agenda and Presentations (PDF)

List of Participants

A workshop to share research findings and lessons learned during SANREM’s Phase II (1997-2003) was held in Washington DC on June 16th 2004. The presentations featured results from biophysical and socioeconomic research, methodological tools and approaches, and experiences in institutional capacity building that have been tested for transfer and scaling up. The presentations focused on activities conducted in the three SANREM study areas, namely Africa (Mali and Kenya), Southeast Asia (Philippines and Vietnam), and the Andean region of Latin America (Ecuador and Peru).

About 45 people attended the one-day workshop. They included about 20 SANREM PIs and collaborators from US universities and host-country institutions, about 20 USAID staff from the NRLM team and several regional Bureaus, as well as representatives of non-governmental organizations such as Winrock and The Nature Conservancy. Emmy Simmons, USAID’s Assistant Administrator, EGAT/AA, attended the first half of the workshop, and complimented the presenters and the SANREM Management Entity for the quality and relevant of the research conducted by SANREM. She pointed out that SANREM’s work captures well the complexity of issues related to conservation and development, which cannot be adequately addressed by narrow approaches that focus on one tool or technique. She also affirmed to be pleased that SANREM research recognizes the centrality of institutions in natural resource management. She emphasized the need for organizations like SANREM (and USAID) to continue being ‘bridging organizations’ that can help catalyze resources and maximize impacts.

Kate Clancy (Managing Director of the Henry A. Wallace Center for Agricultural and Environment at Winrock International, and a member of the SANREM Board of Directors), offered the concluding remarks. She stressed that the workshop presentations and discussions attested to the richness of the SANREM research agenda. Yet, she remarked, the job is not done, as one must ask which of the issues and problems considered by the research have been fully addressed and which are in need of further investigation. In particular, there is a need to identify the kinds of research that would be most useful to promote positive action and the ways to present results to policy makers to help them appreciate the relevance of the research findings. She also called for greater attention to biodiversity, as a concept and as a conservation challenge as well as the realm of political economy, including national policies, international agreements, and the impacts of globalization on livelihoods (not only on markets). She advocated for pushing the analysis forward by comparing experiences across SANREM sites (i.e. policy work in the Philippines and Mali) and, finally, she observed that the lessons learned by SANREM can significantly enrich natural resources management efforts in the U.S. (i.e. the New York Catskill watershed).