CGIAR Initiative: Foresight and Metrics to Accelerate Food, Land, and Water Systems Transformation <p>&nbsp;</p><p class="ql-align-justify">Two generations ago, the challenge facing agriculture was daunting but clear: the world needed to rapidly increase staple food production to meet rising demand. That&nbsp;challenge&nbsp;was&nbsp;largely&nbsp;met but new ones arose, and today the challenges facing food, land and water systems are more numerous and complex: over 700 million people still live in absolute poverty, millions&nbsp;more&nbsp;young people&nbsp;seek jobs&nbsp;every year;&nbsp;nearly&nbsp;2 billion people&nbsp;suffer from moderate or severe food insecurity,&nbsp;while 4 in 10&nbsp;adults globally are&nbsp;overweight or obese; gender gaps persist; natural resources are under stress;&nbsp;and&nbsp;water resources are polluted&nbsp;and depleted&nbsp;(<a href="https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/24797GSDR_report_2019.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(225, 227, 230);">Messerly&nbsp;et al&nbsp;2019</a>;&nbsp;<a href="about:blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">Mahler et al 2021</a>;&nbsp;<a href="about:blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">FAO&nbsp;et al&nbsp;2021</a>;&nbsp;<a href="about:blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">UNEP&nbsp;2012</a>;&nbsp;<a href="about:blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">Our World in Data 2021</a>).&nbsp;Climate change&nbsp;compounds&nbsp;all&nbsp;these challenges, increases uncertainty, and means that we can no longer rely on historical experience to guide decision-making (<a href="about:blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">IPCC&nbsp;2021</a>).&nbsp;</p><p class="ql-align-justify">&nbsp;</p><p class="ql-align-justify">Addressing these interlinked challenges&nbsp;requires transformation of food, land, and water systems.&nbsp;Transformation means moving from our current state to a fundamentally different state in the future, but what&nbsp;is that desired future state, and what actions are needed to get there? Synergies between impacts are possible, for example between poverty reduction, improved nutrition, and&nbsp;increased equity.&nbsp;But trade-offs between policies and investments to achieve these impacts are often unavoidable, given limited resources and disparate decision-making domains, and the choices facing national governments and their development partners have become increasingly complicated&nbsp;(<a href="about:blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">Hasegawa et al 2018</a>;&nbsp;<a href="about:blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">Balié&nbsp;2020</a>).&nbsp;What is the appropriate balance between self-reliance and global integration,&nbsp;for example,&nbsp;or&nbsp;between immediate welfare gains and long-term sustainability?&nbsp;Decision-makers at global and national levels have expressed their need for better evidence on the&nbsp;questions and&nbsp;challenges they face, which courses of action should be undertaken, and which policies and investments might minimize trade-offs and achieve collective goals (<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/ejb2p52qrun9qrj/Country%20consultation%20on%20Foresight%20and%20Metrics%2025-Aug-2021.pdf?dl=0" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">see country stakeholder consultations</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/hz3mw8gylzh8zu9/Regional%20consultation%20on%20Foresight%20and%20Metrics%2027-Oct-2021.pdf?dl=0" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">regional&nbsp;stakeholder consultations</a>).&nbsp;</p><p class="ql-align-justify">&nbsp;</p><p class="ql-align-justify">These difficult questions&nbsp;highlight&nbsp;the&nbsp;need for cross-cutting capacity to understand system-level interactions and outcomes –&nbsp;across multiple spatial and political scales&nbsp;(from sub-national to global), across multiple time periods&nbsp;(from the next year to the next generation), and across multiple thematic and decision-making domains. A growing body of analysis is exploring future challenges and options to address them, but very often these studies are focused on individual commodities, challenges, locations, or time horizons, and&nbsp;thus&nbsp;miss important interlinkages. Integrated analytical approaches increasingly bring multiple domains together over longer time horizons, but these are typically focused on broad global and regional scales, with insufficient attention to the diverse concerns and needs of low- and middle-income countries&nbsp;(<a href="about:blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">Willet et al 2019</a>;&nbsp;<a href="about:blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">Springmann&nbsp;et al 2018</a>;&nbsp;<a href="about:blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">Van Zeist et al 2020</a>).&nbsp;</p><p class="ql-align-justify">&nbsp;</p><p class="ql-align-justify">Building on these methodological advances and combining them with multi-disciplinary scientific expertise and close engagement with decisionmakers offers&nbsp;major opportunities for improvement. Innovative use of data, state-of-the-art analytics, and deep and ongoing dialogue with national,&nbsp;regional&nbsp;and global partners&nbsp;–&nbsp;with particular focus on poor and vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries&nbsp;–&nbsp;offer better insights into alternative transformation pathways that can inform choices and sharpen decision-making today.&nbsp;This is what the Foresight and Metrics&nbsp;Initiative seeks to provide.&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>