Report of the First External Review of the System-Wide Programme on Integrated Pest Management (SP-IPM)

The First Review of the Systemwide Programme on Integrated Pest Management (SP-IPM) was undertaken by a two-member panel chaired by Dr. Andrew Gutierrez, USA. He conducted the Review over the course of the year 2001. The Panel Report was considered by the interim Science Council (iSC) at its 82nd Meeting held at CIP, in Lima, Peru, in April 2002. The report has two attachments. The first contains the iSC commentary, which summarizes iSC's views on the Panel Report and on the joint response from the convening centre, IITA, and the SP-IPM Steering Committee. The second attachment is the joint response of IITA and the SP-IPM Steering Committee to the Panel Report.Five recommendations are underlined:1. There is a strong need and a high relevance for SP-IPM in the future. The Panel recommends that in order to be successful in the future SP-IPM should go beyond its present focus of improving co-operation among centres and should widen its scope and take a more outward-looking approach in seeking international assistance and co-operation.2) SP-IPM should more thoroughly analyse its taskforces with regards to scope and extended problem definition in order to expand their potential global relevance.3) SP-IPM should more seriously explore the complementarity among sytemwide programmes4) Socio-economic and policy research should be added as a major component of SP-IPM5) SP-IPM should be upgraded to a "virtual center" beyond its current system-wide programme status