INDEPENDENT SCIENCE & PARTNERSHIP COUNCIL OF THE CGIAR STANDING PANEL ON IMPACT ASSESSMENT (SPIA) Advancing Ex-Post Impact Assessment of Environmental and Social Impacts of CGIAR Research

(CGIAR) in delivering economic benefits in the form of productivity enhancements that are in excess of the costs of research and application is well documented. For instance, Feldman (no date) presents a range of CGIAR projects where impact assessments have been carried out that demonstrated positive net present values for the investments involved. Maredia and Raitzer (2006) show that across all CGIAR funded research in sub-Saharan Africa a positive rate of return has been achieved, with an aggregated benefit cost ratio in the order of 1.12 to 1.64. At the most aggregated level, Raitzer and Kelley (2008) report a benefit cost ratio of between 1.9 to 17.3 in their meta analysis of investments in the CGIAR Centres. Central to the drawing of the conclusion regarding the CGIAR’s success is the use of benefit cost analysis to demonstrate that the benefits of the research effort exceed the costs across a range of levels of aggregation. However, the conclusion is not without question. First, it is clear that only a fraction of CGIAR research projects are subjected to ex post impact assessment (epIA). Second, the broader scale meta analyses demonstrate that there have been a small number of highly successfu