In the late 1990s, Maurice Strong led an external review of the consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). His team included Dr Mankoto Swaminathan, Prof. Bo Bengtsson and Dr Michel Griffon. They concluded that the crop improvement work that the CGIAR had focussed on since its foundation in the 1960s had been the best investment in development assistance ‘bar-none’. However, they recognised that times were changing and that the private sector, notably the large agro-industrial corporations, and a number of national research structures, for instance those of India and Brazil, were filling the niche previously occupied by the CGIAR. They advocated a new orientation for the CGIAR and a focus on the resource management problems confronting poor people in marginal areas. They urged that more attention be given to global environmental problems and to the implications of these for poor farmers, foresters and fishermen. They advocated an emphasis on integrated natural resource management research. This book is based upon the work of a task force that was established by the CGIAR to implement the recommendations of Maurice Strong's review.

The task force included scientists from a wide range of backgrounds who were all working towards the goal of managing rural tropical landscapes for the dual goals of enhancing productivity and sustaining environmental values. None of its members had a complete recipe for achieving this. But many of us had elements of answers.