Published on 10th August 2009

“Enabling Bio-Innovation For Poverty Alleviation in Asia” is a competitive research grants awarding program supported by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC, Asia Regional Office Singapore) in partnership with the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT,Thailand). The project aims to stimulate and enable research on bio-innovation in Asia that addresses poverty alleviation, and to initiate and support the building of a network of researchers and scholars committed to understanding and enhancing bio-innovation towards economically progressive and socially responsible goals.

This research grants competition on bio-innovation for poverty alleviation in Asia is premised on two key insights from earlier meetings and publications¹. First, there is little known about patterns and characteristics of bio-innovation systems operating in the region and their social dynamics. Second, there is little understanding about how these existing bio-innovation systems actually affect poverty or are able to support poverty alleviation goals.

There are important reasons why it is urgent to address these knowledge gaps on bio-innovations in the region. While developing Asia has made great progress in cutting the overall rate of poverty since the 1990s (largely as a result of poverty reduction in China, and a few SEA countries), the poverty rate still stands at 42.2% or a headcount of 843 million people (ADB 2008 Poverty Survey based on PPP)². By most predictions this estimate will likely worsen in the context of the current global recession. On the other hand, biotechnology, one of the two engines of growth in the new economy³ is being promoted and spreading in many developing countries in Asia in a manner that seems to overlook the needs and potential gains of the poor. There is a valid and growing concern that current biotechnology development and innovations are being shaped and harnessed exclusively by transnational businesses and domestic big private agribusiness enterprises for purely profit accumulation, thus may be widening inequality in many societies.

Relevant dimensions of bio-innovation.

This research program departs from a dominant techno-centric view of bio-innovation in Asia, which vests too much autonomy and power to the physical technology itself as the driving force of technology diffusion, ignoring the social contexts, the relevant social groups and the institutional factors that are involved and that enable (or constrain) innovation.

This program views innovation as the widespread generation and utilization of knowledge in society involving the following features: interaction of diverse research and non-research organizations, individuals and groups; combinations of technological and institutional innovations; continuous evolutionary cycles of learning; shifting roles of information producers, users and a need based exchange of knowledge; and an institutional context that supports interactions, learning and knowledge flows. Innovation therefore is a social process involving and interlinking individuals and groups nested and operating in various domains or components such as: the research domain (e.g. R&D, universities, and private laboratories); enterprise domain (e.g. seed firms and vaccine manufacturing); demand domain (e.g. farmer-users, urban poor residents, primary health centers); and policy domain (e.g. government agencies; international protocols; policies specific to industry and agriculture, or public health and safety).

In line with this framework, the call for proposals thus urges applicants to focus their inquiry, among others, on the following questions:

• Who are the market, non-market, state, and non-state organizations, individuals and groups engaged in the bio-innovation process? How are they inter-linked or expected to inter-link with each other? What are their respective stakes in bio-innovation? Are there coalitions, competitions and/or conflicts between them? In particular, what is the stake of the poor in the process?

• How and at what levels are relevant decisions being made? Whose voice counts in identifying problems and bio-innovation processes and solutions? Whose voice/s is un-, under-, or mis-represented in crucial planning, policy formulation, and public resource allocation associated with the bio-innovation? How are the poor’s needs expressed and represented?

• Whose (human, financial, social, natural, political) resources are being invested in the bio-innovation? For what specific purpose or functions? Whose resources, on the other hand, are being deliberately not deployed, and why? What are the legal or regulatory mechanisms that promote or impede certain types of investments in bio-innovation?

• What are the incentives and disincentives in the participation of various parties in bio- innovation process? Especially, from the end-users’ or from the demand side (the poor and their most immediate providers of service, in this particular case), what are the incentives or disincentives involved in the generation of (say, specific protocols for markers or surrogate carriers, or for products like enzymes), and the adoption of a technological innovation?

• What are the bio-innovation impacts on the poor – particularly, in terms of certain improvements in their quality of life, access and acquisition of knowledge and skills important to improving their health and livelihoods, and in building social capital in communities and localities? What kinds of policy and institutional changes enable awareness among the poor about the potential benefits and risks associated with bio-innovation (say, pharmacovigilance programmes, bio-safety monitoring associations, etc.)?

• The research program will not accept proposals with a central and singular focus on the development of an innovative or new bio-technology that is without an explicit exploration of the social dimensions and the processes and dynamics of the innovation system as outlined above.

On the poverty focus.

The program is chiefly interested in bio-innovations demonstrated to be directly relevant to the social phenomenon of poverty – whether alleviating, worsening or creating new forms of poverty. We also further narrow the scope of poverty to two important areas: – on poor people’s livelihoods and basic health. Bio-innovations are systems, including technologies that are directly related to improvements or use of living organisms that have transformative significance to society.

Poor people’s livelihoods include both natural resource-based (e.g cultivation, livestock) and non-natural resource based activities (e.g. rural enterprises, rural trade, urban informal sector occupations) that are practiced in multiple localities that span rural, peri-urban and urban spaces. Their livelihood platforms harness assets (i.e., natural, physical, human, financial and social capital), and are highly vulnerable and insecure in the face of shocks (such as drought, floods or diseases), and in the context of broader secular trends (such as market and price changes that induce poverty and greater social inequities), and risks (such as seasonality or climate change-induced). Though certainly not exhaustive, some examples of bio-innovations in these areas are as follows: new farm inputs such as bio-pesticides and bio-herbicides; bio-based adaptive responses to climate change conditions such as drought-, flood-, heat-resistant and short duration crops and crop varieties; development of renewable and alternative energy and water resources that directly support agriculture, forestry, livestock and fisheries; biofuel crops and biofuels from waste materials for alternative fuel sources; and biotechnology advances in crop and animal species for increased food productivity and improved livelihoods.

The subject area of poor people’s basic health includes their health status (such as infant and child mortality, child nutritional level, and human fertility and reproductive health), use of basic health services (immunization, treatment of common illnesses, prenatal and antenatal care and assisted delivery); and sanitation and hygiene such as for example, waste bio-mass management. The social implications of new drugs and vaccines, as well as disease diagnostic and reproductive technologies are also possible areas for research that fall under the concern for people’s basic health and reproduction.

Investigation of the components of the bio-innovation system should principally shed light on how these bear on poor peoples’ livelihoods and basic health. The linkages between bio-innovation and poverty can be examined and demonstrated as equity impacts or as patterns of inclusion/exclusion in or impacts of the bio-innovation processes and certain domains. The latter, in turn, may feed back as factors contributing to the weakness, strength, and stability of the existing bio-innovation system.

Context, and ex-post and ex-ante issues.

A bio-innovation system is a web of mutually interacting individuals and relevant groups in various domains that is generally too complex to be adequately understood from a context-independent perspective. This research therefore encourages richly textured descriptions and analysis of the relevant contexts at play in the system’s functioning and outcomes.

Examination of the relevant groups and domains, their inter-relationships, and dynamics of the bio-innovation system, and their association or causal relationship with poor people’s livelihoods and health status are generally ex-post studies. Lessons, understandings and theoretical insights should be derived from particular past or ongoing case experience/s in a given context. However, attempts at ex-ante projections and evidence-based policy prescriptions are welcome, to lay the groundwork for the development of pro-poor bio-innovations.

1 The workshop on “Integrated Policy for Bio-innovations in Agriculture and Health in Asia” in Bangkok, Thailand on 13-14 November, 2006, which was attended by scholars, researchers and experts in the field working in region. This important meeting was supported by IDRC and the Rockefeller Foundation. Subsequently, a paper was commissioned by IDRC and conducted by Dr Rajeswari Raina, -- “Fostering Bio-innovation in Asia: Ways Forward”, Commissioned Paper by IDRC (Innovation, Policy and Science Program Areas). October 2007 

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