Jeffrey A. Sayer, Director General
Director General's Report
CIFOR has just completed its third full year of operation. We now have over thirty Bogor-based scientists of seventeen nationalities including economists, anthropologists and sociologists, as well as forest scientists and ecologists. We are active in virtually all of the countries of the humid tropics and have expanded our activities to southern Africa, India, Indo-China and parts of China. CIFOR staff are now based in Zimbabwe, Gabon, Cameroon and Costa Rica and we are in an advanced stage of negotiation with our colleagues in Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (EMBRAPA), Brazil, on the establishment of our presence in that country.
CIFOR's Strategy for Collaborative Forestry Research was published this year after extensive consultation with research partners, the Board of Trustees, donors, CIFOR staff and others. The Strategy represents a significant advance on the world's forest research challenges as it incorporates a multi-disciplinary approach to international forest science and the comparative advantage of CIFOR in addressing them.
CIFOR undertakes strategic or applied research to efficiently generate new knowledge about forests. This research will have:
- high potential for widespread application;
- substantial benefits to targeted clients, high adoption and minimum lag-times before adoption;
- high probability of success in both research and dissemination;
- potential to enhance the research capacity of partners; and
- potential to promote south-south co-operation.
CIFOR is a "learning organisation"; we are continually listening to our partners, beneficiaries and supporters. Our strategy will continue to evolve as CIFOR responds to the needs of the diverse peoples whose welfare depends on the conservation and management of the world's tropical forest resources.
CIFOR had a productive and exciting year. As reflected in the following pages, CIFOR has achieved a strong international profile. The calibre of our science and the value of our research findings have been recognised and are having significant impacts on forests and people who use them. This was the first year in which we were operating with a full complement of scientists in our Bogor headquarters and our research productivity was much higher than in the past. In May 1996, Indonesia hosted the CGIAR mid-term meeting in Jakarta. The meeting was inaugurated by President Soeharto who spoke strongly in support of CIFOR. We used the occasion of the mid-term meeting to inaugurate CIFOR's new headquarters in Bogor. Several hundred representatives of our donors and research partners from around the world attended the ceremony which was followed by a number of technical seminars. Our visitors responded favourably to this event and many of them expressed gratitude for the efforts made by the Indonesian authorities to provide CIFOR with world-class facilities.
In the course of the year we also hosted gatherings of our research partners in Africa and Latin America. The first meeting in February was co-hosted by EMBRAPA in Brazil and brought together, in the Amazonian city of Manaus, scientists from Brazil and Argentina in the South to Belize and Mexico in the North. Research needs for the Latin American region were agreed by the participants. In April, we collaborated with the then Division of Forest Science and Technology (FORESTEK) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa to host a meeting of researchers from the countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) at Hazyview in South Africa. An ambitious programme for collaborative research in the region was discussed at this meeting and has subsequently been further elaborated into a proposal for funding by the European Union. CIFOR collaborated closely with the Southern African Centre for Cooperation in Agricultural and Natural Resources Research and Training (SACCAR) and the Forestry Sector Technical Coordination Unit (FSTCU), both institutions of the SADC, in the organisation of this meeting and its follow-up.
Throughout the year the Indonesian authorities, and most notably Minister of Forestry Djamaludin, continued to give CIFOR strong backing. The volume of research conducted in collaboration with Indonesian scientists, both from the Ministry of Forestry and from a number of other national organisations, has expanded. Investments have continued to be made in the development of CIFOR's headquarters facility and at the end of the year we were poised to occupy the premises. We continue to receive an encouraging flow of visiting researchers from both tropical developing countries and advanced research institutes in the north. A large number of meetings were held in Bogor in the course of the year and CIFOR's network of contacts was greatly strengthened. Our ability to communicate electronically also improved and we were able to develop in-house capacity to put all our research publications plus some quite sophisticated databases onto CD-ROMs.
At the end of the year we had Memoranda of Understanding and active research collaboration with over thirty research partners throughout the world. We are now well-prepared to make major impacts over the coming years. The Strategy provided an excellent basis for the development of our Medium Term Plan for the period 1998 to the year 2000 which was being finalised at the end of the year. This Plan envisages continued growth of CIFOR's research programme through to the end of the century. After review by CIFOR's Board of Trustees it will be submitted to the Technical Advisory Committee of the CGIAR in early 1997. I have no doubt that over this next three years, CIFOR will continue to make significant advances in developing policies and techniques for the productive, sustainable and equitable use of all types of forests for a great variety of goods and services.
During the year, two internally commissioned external reviews were conducted of our research on biodiversity and on the use of modelling as a means of integrating and prioritising CIFOR's research. These, together with a review of our gender policies and practices, will prepare the groundwork for the External Programme and Management Review which is scheduled for late 1997. CIFOR looks forward to this review to expose our achievements and account for the resources entrusted to us by the CGIAR.
On behalf of all members of the CIFOR "family", I would like to personally acknowledge the strong continuing support and confidence of the members of the CGIAR; the strategic direction of the Board of Trustees; the hard work, dedication and creativity of all staff; and especially the continuing co-operation of the partner researchers and institutions around the world.
Jeffrey A. Sayer