Sketch of the Relevant Agents

The Centres are the primary decision-making units of the CG System. In addition, a number of units provide System-wide intellectual property support such as CAS-IP. The balance between Centre authority and System-wide policies is a recurring concern. While Centres have significant leeway in interpreting System-wide guidelines and in specific IP and funding issues, they cannot afford to deviate drastically from the guidelines and common practices in the System. For example, a Centre does not need permission from anybody for a patent application, but it would probably run into trouble with donors if it suddenly announced it would fund half its budget from licensing revenues.

Inter-Centre cooperation can be somewhat problematic. We do not doubt that decision makers at each Centre hold a common commitment to food security, poverty alleviation, and environmental sustainability goals. Each Centre has its own mission statement that supports the CGIAR’s overall mission. But there is a certain degree of inter-Centre rivalry, not least because most Centres are funded by the same donors and funding for international agricultural R&D has stalled over the past decade. On balance collaborative forces are likely to outweigh competitive ones in inter-Centre relations. Centre rivalry can be seen as the mirror image of inter-firm collaboration. For-profit organizations that are active in the same industry are primarily competitors, but there are also significant collaborative or collusive tendencies which may interfere with competition. Conversely, inter- Centre relationships are primarily collaborative, but there might also be competitive tendencies that hamper collaboration. The degree of Centre rivalry is difficult to assess, as it is an informal phenomenon.

Several commentators (CGIAR, 1998; CGIAR, 2000b; Byerlee and Fischer, 2001) suggest that collaboration between Centres is in some sense suboptimal. If inter-Centre collaboration (or the search for information in preparation for such collaboration) yields positive net expected benefits for all parties involved in spite of its higher costs, then how could Centres forfeit such opportunities? Here is an example of the relevance of game theory. Inter-Centre versus intra-Centre collaboration could be modelled as simple Prisoner’s Dilemma with a suboptimal outcome. 1 The premise of CGIAR (2000b) is that there is a large untapped potential for inter- Centre collaboration. The main logic here is combinatorics: the number of possible combinations of researchers increases exponentially with the size of the relevant pool of researchers. If all researchers in the CG System are part of a single pool, the probability of initiating a highly successful research project may be greatly increased. This reasoning is in line with Pinchot and Pellman’s (1999) advocacy of ‘intrapreneuring’: to maximize possibilities for internal entrepreneurship 2 (‘intrapreneurship’) in large organizations, employees must be encouraged to reach across divisional boundaries. The Change Design and Management Team instituted by the CGin 2000 recommended enhancing incentives for researchers to reach across Centre boundaries through Global Challenge Programs (GCPs) (CGIAR, 2000b). The GCP approach was adopted at the CG’s 2001 Midterm Meeting.

Centres’ IP issues relate to many agents, including donors, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government research agencies, universities conducting agricultural research, international research organizations, other nonprofit organizations with missions similar to or relevant to the CGs, life sciences multi-nationals, smaller firms connected to agriculture, as well as farmers’ and consumers’ organizations.

The donors are mostly government agencies and various private foundations. Groups critical of biotechnology influence the System’s relations with the private sector, causing the Centres to be circumspect in their dealings with life sciences firms. Because of the wide variety of donors, beneficiaries, NGOs, and other stakeholders that shape CG structures and policies, and the consensus mode of decision making within the CG, it is difficult to reform theCGradically. Many decisions on contentious IP and funding issues reflect compromise rather than visionary or even properly informed leadership. Furthermore, stakeholders’ insistence on full accountability and consultative processes entail the danger of bureaucratic inefficiency and rigidity. Thus, the designers of Global Challenge Programs must avoid the creation of another layer of bureaucracy.

Some relevant funds come from donor initiatives that do not directly conduct R&D, but rather allocate money to collaborative R&D of others. The longest-established of these is the Indo-Swiss Collaboration in Biotechnology (ISCB) initiated in 1974, which ‘is not directly related to agricultural issues, but rather focuses on methodology development, capacity building and technology transfer’ (Komen, 2000, p. 20). Another important initiative in this category is the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project (ABSP), launched in 1991 and funded mostly by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). 3 With a single government agency as the dominant donor, such initiatives are more flexible than the CG to pioneer novel funding and IP arrangements.

National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) in developing countries, consisting of government agencies, universities, and farmers’ organizations, are the Centres’ primary local partners and are involved in technology transfer to poor farmers. NARS differ widely in their agbiotech capacity (Skerritt, 2001; Trigo et al ., 2001).

Some national R&D institutes in the developed world target less developed country (LDC) agriculture. CIRAD (the Centre de Coopération International en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement) of France is among the biggest agencies of this kind, with an annual budget of about US$200 million. It conducts research on a wide variety of crops in some 50 different countries (Komen, 2000, p. 20; Pardey and Beintema, 2001, footnote 14). In its developingworld orientation and the diversity of its research, CIRAD is comparable to the CG System. CIRAD conducts R&D on a range of major export crops, in contrast to the CG Centres which emphasize food crops grown for subsistence and local markets. Thus, CIRAD is in a different position vis-à-vis the private sector. Some developed-world university institutes are devoted to LDC agriculture, such as the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD). Partnerships with developed-world universities are more common in the CG system than partnerships with multinationals. ISCB and ABSP are each managed by a donor-country university (Ives et al. , 1999; Jenny and Schaltegger, 1999).

Some international agricultural research centers are not part of the CG. Examples include the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC), headquartered in Taiwan, and the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) headquartered in Kenya. 4 The International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) has many LDC members, conducts research at campuses in Trieste (Italy) and New Delhi (India), and has human health and plant biology components. ICGEB pursues a fairly aggressive patenting policy that yields substantial licensing revenues. Another relevant international organization is CAB International (CABI), of which 41 countries are members. CABI Bioscience division integrates four former international biological institutes and operates worldwide from six centres, four of which are located in LDCs. CABI is highly active in partnerships.

Private firms play a direct and gradually growing, but still comparatively limited, role in transferring agricultural technologies to LDCs. 5 The potential here is mostly untapped. It is important to differentiate between multinationals and small-to-medium-sized firms (SMFs), some of which conduct cutting-edge research. Multinationals are a dominant force in ag-biotech in terms of research expenditures. However, SMFs play important roles in specific fields. Given their dominance and their strategic possession of important technologies and market development capabilities, multinationals may be more conspicuous as prospective partners. Moreover, multinationals have vastly more direct involvement in LDCs than do SMFs based in the North. Centres thus might overlook SMFs that possess useful IP and might be valuable partners. Several LDCs have SMFs with substantial R&D capacity.

Relevant private non-profits include inter alia the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) and the Center for the Application of Molecular Biology to International Agriculture (CAMBIA). ISAAA acts as an intermediary in transferring proprietary technologies to LDCs and also seeks to strengthen links between Southern and Northern (often private) research. CAMBIA pursues a market-segmenting strategy. It designs, develops and distributes new research methods and enabling biotechnologies on a preferential basis to LDCs, while recouping royalties from licensing these same technologies to Northern researchers.

The for-profit and non-profit funding potential for medical biotech and genomics is much greater than that of agricultural biotech. Private-sector non-profit organizations with more general biotech- or genomics-related missions may become important players in the CG’s realm. The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) is a prime example. Established with grant money from the for-profit private sector, TIGR is supported by an increasing number of private grants and contracts as well as several large US federal grants. TIGR is involved in genomics partnerships with CG Centres. For example, it is working with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) to sequence the genomes of selected cattle disease agents. Private-sector non-profit organizations such as ISAAA, CAMBIA and TIGR have much more manoeuvring space in their dealings with for-profit organizations than the CG.

Relation Types

Catalysis

Catalysis involves the creation or transformation of other organizations or of relations among them. Catalysis is an alternative to Centre activities of any kind. The CG and its Centres may not be suitable for certain activities because of their specific institutional constraints. Catalysis is important to the CG System’s strategies for at least two fundamental reasons: (i) the System’s uniquely central (i.e. connective) status as a set of nodes in the global network of partnerships in agricultural R&D; and (ii) the modest size of the System’s budget – 1.5% of public agricultural R&D worldwide (or just 1% of total spending) (Pardey and Beintema, 2001). Its comparative smallness requires the System to leverage other organizations’ budgets and activities; its connectedness makes the System highly suitable for this. Catalysis is closely linked to technology positioning; catalysis may be an alternative to Centre R&D. For effective catalysis and technology positioning, CG decision makers need to constantly track others’ activities in agricultural R&D.

The formation of a strong local private agricultural sector and viable related industries is an integral part of any successful strategy for poverty alleviation in LDCs. One could thus argue that local private-sector development ought to be a significant component of the CG System’s strategies. It should immediately be added that where public NARS are strong, this is primarily their responsibility. But where they are weak – as in many African countries – the Centres certainly may have a directly catalytic role to play. In addition, where the International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR), a CG Centre headquartered in The Hague, and other Centres support the development of public NARS, they could catalyse the local public sector’s catalytic role.

Traditional agricultural R&D has been a feature of farmers everywhere for millennia. The knowledge and experimental capacity of local farmers has become more recognized in the 1980s and 1990s. As a result, many Centres now have projects in place, often under the guise of ‘participatory plant breeding’ programmes, that substitute a two-way model of agricultural R&D for the traditional scientist led approach. Similarly, where Centres assist in the birth or growth of locally based (seed) firms, they should be cognizant of local (perhaps latent) R&D capabilities. Thus, Centres may in this way not only directly promote economic development, but also enhance their own R&D network. One further and related argument for Centre involvement in local private sector development is the potential for providing a modicum of counter-balance to the marketing power of multinational firms and their local alliances.

The International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) has assumed this catalytic role. By undertaking R&D that would have been prohibitively expensive for start-up firms, it ‘played an important role in getting the private seed sector started in West and Central Africa’ (IITA, 1997). In addition, it provided training and services to small-scale food processing companies (IITA, 2000, p. 52).

Where Centres take on this role, targeted IP strategies may be of assistance or otherwise relevant. Consider a few examples:

·         As part of a segmentation strategy in a partnership between a Centre and a multinational, permission to use a proprietary technology owned by a multinational may be transferred to local firms. The corporate partner may perceive this to be in its interest.

·         If problems with national claims to genetic resources accumulate, perhaps countries can still be persuaded to send materials to Centres for conservation and R&D if local firms can obtain certain IPR related to the materials.

·         In a variety of partnerships, one or more local private- or public-sector partners could hold IP in coordination with one or more Centres.

There exist partnerships that have as their primary purpose catalysis of partnerships, like collaborative R&D. Examples of such metapartnerships include:

·         The Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR), founded in 1996, involves seven stakeholder groups: donors, private sector, NGOs, Advanced Research Institutes (ARIs), farmers’ organizations, IARCs, and NARS. It does not itself conduct research but aims to mobilize these groups in their efforts to alleviate poverty, increase food security, and promote sustainable use of natural resources.

·         Many information networks involve subsets of these stakeholders, regions, areas of R&D, or crops. Examples include the Asian Rice Biotechnology Network (ARBN), in which the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), a CG Center, plays a prominent role; the Global Program for Musa Improvement (PRO MUSA ); and the Global Initiative on Late Blight (GILB). The latter two have an explicit metapartnership function (Frison et al. , 1997).

·         PRO MUSA was initiated in 1996 by the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain (INIBAP, part of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), a CG Centre) and the World Bank. Its working groups – consisting of scientists from a variety of organizations – focus on different themes in the genetic improvement of Musa . Each of these groups functions as an information exchange network and fosters collaborative projects.

·         GILB was established in 1996. The International Potato Center (CIP), a CG Center, is its convener. GILB is intended to coordinate and enhance R&D efforts to fight late blight disease of potato, which results in annual worldwide losses of about US$3 billion. Partners in its activities include ARIs, NGOs, NARS, farmers, the for-profit sector, and CIP scientists. ‘Bilateral as well as multilateral partnerships among these participants’ are ‘encouraged and supported’ by GILB (Frison et al. , 1997, p. 23).

Meta-partnerships can contribute to a favourable atmosphere for sharing information and IP and may foster innovative arrangements, such as clearinghouse mechanisms for IP.