As a party to the Convention on Biodiversity (CBO), there is a need for Malaysia to implement its commitment to CBO's objectives on conserving biological diversity, sustainable utilisation of natural resources, and fair and equitable benefit sharing deriving from the use of genetic resources. Under the Ninth Malaysia Plan (RMK9), the Ministry of Natural Resources & Environment has allocated a special grant to Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM) to establish a database on forest related traditional knowledge of the Orang Asli in Peninsular Malaysia.

Participatory communication in development aims to facilitate the integration of interpersonal communication methods with conventional and new media channels, with the focus on encouraging all stakeholders to participate in the process. The growth of internet-based technologies has created new opportunities for facilitating this participation and enhancing the ability of resource-poor communities to access information and support and to share experiences and knowledge.

This background note for the development of an AIS Investment Sourcebook provides a menu of tools and guidance to invest in agricultural innovation in different contexts. The content is drawn on tested good practice examples and innovative approaches with emphasis on lessons learned, benefits and impacts, implementation issues, and replicability

During May 2010 the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) hosted two events related to knowledge management (KM): The Knowledge Share Fair for Latin America and the Caribbean, funded by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and a regional meeting of the Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev) community. The Fair was attended by 200 professionals from more than 70 organizations and 18 countries and showcased more than 40 experiences related to KM in agriculture, development and food security.

This Module is the first in a series of four that address capacity development competencies in FAO. It is intended to provide FAO staff and consultants with a basic understanding and knowledge of Capacity Development (CD), reflecting the international debate as well as FAO’s perspective on CD. It also provides some key concepts for adopting changes in responsibilities, behaviours and attitudes that are consistent with FAO’s new role in CD. 

This paper is the result of a joint effort of OECD/DAC and LenCD to assemble the critical messages about training and learning that are emerging from the current international scrutiny of training and capacity development. It synthesises current wisdom on the topic, and offers a sense of direction on where the debate is going, particularly in terms of approaches to capacity development interventions at country and field levels. The paper is written primarily for the demand side, i.e.

We are facing complex societal problems such as climate change, human conflict, poverty and inequality, and need innovative solutions. Multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) are more and more seen as a critical way of coming to such innovative solutions. It is thought that when multiple stakeholders are able to meet, share experiences, learn together and contribute to decisions, new and innovative ways of dealing with problems are found and turned into action. Still, much remains to be understood about the role and effectiveness of social learning in multi-stakeholder settings.

Recent experiences in participatory video-making raise the question of how best to use this medium for enhancing local seed innovation systems. Embedded in a mini-process of participatory action research, two styles of participatory video—scripted and scriptless—were tested and assessed together with farmers and facilitators in Bogra District, Bangladesh.

Society’s learning capacity in the field of sustainable land resource management is at stake and more emphasis on knowledge management is needed to guarantee that the accumulated knowledge is shared in such a way that the right actors have appropriate knowledge at the right time to take the best decisions. Efficient policies governing structures for national and regional knowledge management need to be formulated and the working procedures of the various actors in the field need to be defined more sharply.

Apart from the introduction and conclusion, the contents of this book are organised around a number of case studies, grouped into two main chapters.