Good morning, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. Let me say how privileged I feel to be allowed to come to this session. You should know that I had to introduce myself on this session. I was talking about it to my colleagues on Thursday, and having looked at the report and being as interested as I am, I said, "Do you think I could come and listen for a bit?" And they said, "Don't come and listen--come and speak." So I want you to know that it was my idea to come, and I thank my colleagues for the invitation.

One of the special reasons that I wanted to be here was the fact that very early on in my interest in development in the early seventies, I had the pleasure of being invited by Maurice Strong to meetings with Barbara Ward, at the time coincident with the formation of CGIAR. Subsequently, I joined the board of the Rockefeller Foundation, and my first field trip was to CIMMYT in Mexico, where I went through the fields with farmers and had explained to me that it was one thing to have agricultural research, but it was another thing to get the farmers to buy it. And I remember very well walking through the fields, and we had a tame farmer who agreed to use some of our products and then convince the others that it worked a year later. I had my first lesson in development economics at the hands of your colleagues in the CGIAR. So I have a very, very strong and very deep feeling for this organization.

The achievements have been really extraordinary, and I read with great interest the report that you are going to be considering in these next few days. It is a report that I found very difficult to put down because of the range of subjects that it covers and the extraordinary importance that it has to development, generally, and if I may say so, particularly to the work of the World Bank.

As you know, as I need hardly tell anyone in this room, the crucial importance of agriculture and rural development to poverty alleviation is a central if not the central thrust, and we in the Bank are extremely keen to maintain the relationship that we have with the CGIAR.

There have been some alarms recently in relation to the level of World Bank funding, and those alarms continue but are unrelated to the CGIAR. They are alarms which are caused by the lack of discretionary assets on the part of our institution, and only because of that, and we have been able to continue the level of our support for this year.

You have my undertaking that I will try to continue it, if not increase it, in the period ahead, but you have to understand--and I will be very open with you as we move forward--that this is part of a larger problem that the Bank faces in terms of being asked to do lots of things that we probably should not be doing. If I can fight that off, then we can stay with CGIAR and have it as a central thrust; if we cannot, I may appeal to all of you to give me a hand with your various governments to explain to them what is important and what is not important for the Bank to do.

But we start and I start with the very strongest possible sense of alliance and familiarity with CGIAR and with all of you.

The second thing I want to say is that reading this report, I was cast back 3-1/2 years when I came to the Bank. The fascinating thing is the similarity of the tasks that you face with the tasks that faced me 3-1/2 years ago--a multilateral institution; lots of diverse and uncoordinated activities; not a very well-developed sense of partnership with the outside actors, be they private sector or be they other institutions that were dealing in similar areas; a contrast between international and national activities, and a need to bring them together; a passionate desire to give people autonomy and yet a need for some sort of coordination; a need to focus attention on the changes, yours being particularly the changes that relate to commercial developments that were previously not part of the CGIAR picture but which now clearly are, in terms of patents, in terms of rights; a need to establish foundations; a need to bring together better mechanisms for both discussion of issues and resolution of directions; an issue of accountability for performance. These were exactly the issues that I faced at the World Bank.

And I just want to tell you that while you think that perhaps the five days of meetings is a long time to consider it, 3-1/2 years later, I am still considering these subjects. I can only hope that you are much more efficient than I was as you address these subjects which are central and which, in my judgment, must be faced up to - not just in the interest of your organization but in the interests of the 800 million people who now do not have adequate food and the several billions whose needs we have to meet by the year 2025.

So I am very sensitive to the discussions that you will have and will very much look forward to the results of your deliberations. There is very little doubt that what you are considering is central to our function.

As I read the report, I realized also that even when you finish, as I am sure you will, your deliberations on the scientific and on the developmental aspects of the CGIAR, there is the next level that you need to face, that we need to face together - the same level I saw when I trudged through that field in Mexico nearly 30 years ago. Namely that the development of technology is one issue, but the utilization of that technology is another, and we need to think of the integration of your efforts with property rights, with rural roads, with extension of the information to women, with financing small enterprise, with conversion of agricultural products, with marketing capabilities so that if we increase production, there can be the proper yields to the farmers, and that they don't get into monopolistic situations where, once they have met their own food needs, they need to be able to get benefits from this extra production that they have.

So what you are doing in itself is a world of issues. But once you succeed, there is yet another world of issues in terms of the application of the results. Here at the Bank, we here have switched our own point of view very much from the agricultural to what we call rural development. Why? Because for successful and sustainable development we need to bring the results of your work together with a number of other essential components so that we can have the communications, the marketing, the financing, the information flows that are necessary to take the best advantage of the results of the research which you are doing. And that, I have learned, is a world in itself. As our new Nobel Prize winner, Amatya Sen, points out, in the famines in India, it was a distribution problem, not a food problem, that we faced. So it is crucial that we should also integrate your activities with a broader field of activities in terms of rural development and of the distribution, marketing and conversion patterns that we need for your work.

As to our experience at the Bank, my colleague Ismail Serageldin is familiar with the mistakes that we have made in the last 3-1/2 years, and I hope that he can bring them to your attention so that you can avoid them during your deliberations.

We have had a few triumphs, however, but one of the lessons that we have learned is that as you go into an exercise like this, if there is any piece of advice I can give, it is that it is really crucial to stand back for a moment, not with your hat on of whomever it is that sent you, but just as the great leaders, intellectuals and pragmatists that you all are, and just look at it as an issue without political bias. If you don't--which was the case with us for the first year--it is very difficult to make progress.

So my admonition would simply be that if, for the next day or two, you could look at the issues as issues and not as representatives of your countries or your institutions, it is probably a worthwhile approach.

We found here at the Bank that we had to stand back and try to forget the hats we were wearing and just take a look at the issues. And I must say that the report that you have and the recommendations are, I think, a remarkable start in terms of giving focus. And let me just add my thanks to the commissioners for what they have done. I think it is a superb piece of work, and I am sure it will be a remarkable start for your discussions and a really excellent basis, whatever you think of it, for the discussion.

So in conclusion, let me say that the Bank is 100 percent in support of what you are doing. To the extent that I have problems, they will be externally generated as a result of pressures on the asset allocation of our institution. But I will be fighting for the continued very strong support of CGIAR. If I have political problems, I will come back to all of you and enlist your help to try to help me to free up the moneys we need to continue support at the levels that we are seeking.

I am very glad to be back with CGIAR after my period on the Foundation board, and hope that I can continue to be supportive of your efforts.

Thank you very much.