CGIAR COVID-19 RESEARCH RESPONSE: POLICIES AND INVESTMENTS

As the world’s largest global agricultural innovation network, CGIAR is playing a leading role in the global response to COVID-19 – on the immediate response, on the medium-term recovery, and on the essential long-term resilience-building needed to build back better. CGIAR is deploying its 8,000 scientists, staff in over 100 countries, depth of expertise, 3,000+ partnerships and the world’s genebanks.

The CGIAR research response to COVID-19 addresses four thematic areas to maximize the relevance and utility of support to policymakers and practitioners. In addition to policies and investments, research will also focus on food systems, One Health, and inclusive public programs.

CGIAR is providing knowledge, evidence, technologies and methods to help key implementing and policy partners mitigate the pandemic’s effects on agriculture and food security. Working closely with national stakeholders, CGIAR is identifying country-specific demands for COVID-19 relevant research; carrying out multidisciplinary research in response to this demand and supporting uptake of evidence-based policy and investment decisions to deliver impacts on the ground.

Researchers across the CGIAR system will work to enable more effective cross-sectoral policies and investments linking beneficial environment, economic, social, and health outcomes for crisis response, economic recovery, and improved future resilience. Policy and investment research will carry through and evolve during the different stages of the pandemic:

• As a crisis response in the short term, researchers will conduct global and regional scenario analyses to determine COVID-19 impacts on food, nutrition, and livelihood security and inform COVID-19 policy responses needing to balance different government priorities.
• In the medium-term recovery phase, work will focus on guiding the adaptation of crisis policies and investments to reflect lessons learned in mitigating the pandemic’s health and economic impacts on food and nutrition security and considering differential actions that are gender-sensitive and in key sub-national regions.
• To build long-term resilience, researchers will support more effective cross-sectoral policies and investments for food systems resilience and improve One Health preparedness that links environmental, social, and health outcomes.

Learn more about the CGIAR COVID-19 Hub, and CGIAR research on COVID-19.