1. Since its inception in 1970, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research has sponsored and supported a network of International Agricultural Research Centers around the globe. The work of these centers has been focused on the development and use of modern agricultural technologies for the production of food in the nations of the tropics and sub-tropics. While the expansion of food output in the tropical developing countries over the past 20 years is the result of many factors, most important among them being the innovative decisions of many millions of third world farmers, the science derived technologies and the applied policy insights generated through CG assisted research have made a significant contribution to the easing of hunger and the attainment of greater food security for hundreds of millions of the world's peoples.

2. During almost two decades of activity, the members of the CGIAR and the staff of the centers they assist, have incorporated in their work the advances in man's understanding of the complex interactions of human activity, biology, the physical environment and the social milieu that together comprise the foundation of all agriculture. During this period, CG members have expanded the number and scope of the centers they support from an initial four to 13. These centers are concerned with the development of food production technologies, the national policy framework for agricultural development, and the organization and efficiency of country research systems needed to underpin the agricultural development efforts of partner nations. CG members have also supported the establishment of several additional international organizations outside the CG system. The latter engage in research or provide counsel to interested governments on the use and management of the production resources used in farming. The work of these resource management centers has focused on the sustainability of agricultural production systems over time and includes systems that combine agriculture and farm forestry.

3. Recent advances in the biological and environmental sciences have heightened understanding of the complex requirements for maintaining an assured agricultural output from land of poor quality or limited fertility. The expansion of population, and particularly of rural population, in many nations of the tropics and sub-tropics is forcing farmers onto land of increasingly poorer quality. The growth in the settlement of forest lands unsuited to continuous cropping is a phenomenon throughout the world's tropical regions; a phenomenon that raises anxieties for the long term vitality of both the settlements and the biological richness of the global forests. For many years CG members have viewed the trends to subjugate forest land to farming with apprehension. Members have recognized the threat to the biological wealth of the tropical forests of farm settlement as well as the economic threat to the homesteading farmers who, after exhausting the initial fertility, were likely to find it impossible to wrest a sustained living from a steadily degrading soil resource. The research into the underlying scientific complexities of the agricultural-forestry interaction has been a part of the CG's concerns with resource management. These concerns have deepened with the increasing rate at which tropical forests are now being felled and cleared for farming. To give a strong expression to these concerns, the Berlin meeting of the CGIAR in May 1988 called upon the governing bodies and the managements of its centers to accord priority attention to research on finding environmentally suited technologies that would sustain long term agricultural output with a minimal impairment of farm resources. The CGIAR also asked its Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) to review the present programs of the CG centers and of 10 non-associated centers, several of which are resource management related, so as to determine what subject matter represented by the non-associated centers could be included within the CGIAR mandate.

4. The TAC report will guide CG members on the organization of its future support of sustainable agriculture. While this report is awaited, the CG recognizes that the use of renewable natural resources, and particularly the utilization of global tropical and sub-tropical lands including lands used for agriculture and for forests, is a matter of such gravity that it must shape now the direction of the future endeavors of the Group. CG members believe there is an evident and urgent need to investigate the significant research issues of renewable natural resource management for sustained food production and for the long term maintenance of lands best suited to tropical and sub-tropical forests. Accordingly, the CGIAR members, meeting in Canberra in May 1989, declare their intention to continue to give emphasis to support for research on technologies and systems of enhanced food production that can be sustained by farmers over time through the efficient utilization of their renewable natural resource base, and to expand this emphasis to include research on the optimal use of tropical and sub-tropical forest lands giving particular stress to the interaction of agriculture and forestry, and the use of forest resources as an important contributor to the rural economies, energy needs and the wealth of partner nations.