Some central concerns. It is a disruptive process with winners and losers. They must identify their niche and reposition themselves accordingly. This has major implications for planning and planners. Regionalization is most effective for tackling issues that cannot be dealt with efficiently on the national scene, due to lack of funds or intellectual resources or because their impact extends beyond national boundaries.
Regional efforts are often difficult to organize and maintain, however.
Participants may be unable to assume full ownership of regional research agendas, or a regional body may lack the political oversight to address the issues submitted to it by members. While regionalization may improve the efficiency of research in a given region, its costs and benefits should be carefully weighed to ensure sustainability. National agricultural research organizations, which have for a long time concentrated on productivity enhancement, are shifting their focus more towards resource management concerns. Incorporating NRM into public planning cycles and dealing with NRM's characteristic uncertainty, long time horizons, and multiple stakeholders all present new planning dilemmas. Moreover, because these issues are intertwined, they are difficult to integrate systematically into the planning of a broader agricultural research agenda.