Environmental Impacts of the CGIAR: An Assessment

Study by Drs. Michael Nelson and Mywish Maredia, who were appointed by TAC's Standing Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA) to examine the nature and magnitude of environmental impacts attributable to the application of technologies developed by the CGIAR and its partners. While attributing these impacts directly to agricultural research is not possible given the present state-of-the-art in environmental impact assessment, and given the need to separate other, non research-related contributing factors, the authors were able to reliably draw general conclusions about the positive and negative environmental impacts of CGIAR research.The primary positive environmental impact of CGIAR research is in the area of land savings-that is land which does not have to be converted from its natural state to agricultural use-which as a result of CGIAR research on just seven primary mandated crops, the study estimates at between 230 and 340 million hectares. Most of the negative environmental impacts associated with agricultural development would almost certainly have taken place in the counterfactual scenario, that is had the CGIAR never existed