The biodiversity of food plants is vital for humanity's capacity to meet sustainability challenges. This goal requires the rigorous integration of plant, environmental, social and health sciences. It is coalescing around four thematic cornerstones that are both interdisciplinary and policy relevant.

This is an internal document for the phase I of CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The phase II capacity development strategy can be found here: https://hdl.handle.net/10568/82591. Capacity enhancement is a central priority for CCAFS.

Peri-urban areas, at the interface between urban and rural, link rural livelihoods with the urban lifestyles that put multiple pressures on peri-urban ecosystems. This poses huge challenges for the health and livelihoods of an increasing number of disenfranchised, poor and marginalised citizens, and for sustainable urban development.

The Feed the Future Asia Innovative Farmers Activity (AIFA) is a regional project working to facilitate the scaling of critical agricultural technologies through regional partnership and technology transfer. The project works with a range of agricultural technology stakeholders on a regional basis (private sector, research institutions, governments, networks, etc.) to increase food security, reduce poverty, and improve environmental sustainability by facilitating agricultural innovation and technology diffusion in the Asia region.

Over the past decades, Brazilian agriculture has played an important role in the international market, in response to growing global demand for products, services and food security. This achievement was in a large extent powered by the ability to generate knowledge and the actions promoted by science and technology institutes.

The presentation was delivered to a conference entitled "Science Protecting Plant Health" in Brisbane on September 26th 2017 and then in private policy briefings to ACIAR (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research) and DAWR (Australian Government Department of Agriculture) in Australia. The presentation includes description of the role of the Tropical Agriculture Platform (TAP) and case study examples from CABI’s work to describe capacity building at the levels of individual, organisation and enabling environment.