Historically, global and national agricultural policies have dramatically and directly affected the characteristics and features of agroecosystems at multiple scales. More recently, agroecological research and practice have also begun to shape national and global policy initiatives. The multi-year UN-led International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) brought together over 400 scientists and experts from diverse disciplines, sectors and institutional backgrounds who together assessed evidence of the impacts of agricultural practices, policies, investments and institutional arrangements on poverty, hunger, health, rural livelihoods, food security, the environment and social equity. The IAASTD also assessed policy options for their likely capacity to contribute towards equitable and sustainable development over the next 50 years. The diverse disciplinary and institutional backgrounds of authors affected communication across boundaries. Varying scales of research interest and divergent research methods, access to different types of empirical evidence and the pre-analytic biases and institutional cultures of participating actors posed continual challenges as well as opportunities for “out of the box” thinking throughout the assessment process.
Results/Conclusions
Conclusions from the IAASTD will be presented along two threads: substance (key findings) and process analysis. The IAASTD affirmed the need for an increase and strengthening of policies and investments in agroecological sciences and in biodiverse ecologically-based farming practices. These were considered to provide a robust set of solutions to many of the social and environmental pressures and crises facing agriculture in the 21st century. The IAASTD’s conclusions illustrate how agroecology is gaining currency in global policy discussions. Yet reorienting agricultural research, extension and education, and establishing enabling institutional, investment and policy environments to build on the contributions of agroecology requires fundamental change at multiple scales, change that is still frequently constrained by an array of economic, political and institutional factors operating far beyond the field or landscape level. Policy options identified by the IAASTD to address some of these constraints will be presented. As the first-ever international assessment to explore a hybrid intergovernmental-multistakeholder model, the IAASTD injected into the development debate a far wider array of perspectives and sources of empirical evidence than typically admitted in conventional policy-making circles. Much of the IAASTD’s success can be attributed to its integration of multidimensional subject matter, its explicitly normative mandate and its diverse multistakeholder authorship and oversight throughout the process.