meeting+15

= NBDC Team Meeting #15, ** 11 April 2013, 15:00 - 17:00 **= toc
 * ILRI Addis Ababa (DG meeting room 26) **

Agenda

 * 1) Review ** action point tracker **from last meeting
 * 2) Follow up from 'One NBDC / one research approach' discussions (Randall)
 * 3) [[file:NBDC_Gender_Recommendations FINAL March 13th 2013.docx|Gender assessment recommendations]] (Cathy / Katherine / Beth)
 * 4) Science meeting progress (Wolde)
 * 5) **Round of short updates** **for comms and coordination** (at every team meeting there will be this short round of updates on STEP: stories, travel, events, publications) and a round of what's up on the NBDC website and wiki.
 * Events and travel plans?
 * Publications?
 * Other stories?
 * **Wiki:**
 * **Please update the key contacts list!**
 * Meeting minutes from last team meeting
 * 1) AOB?


 * Next team meeting: ** Thursday 9 May 2013 ** . **

**Check the list of action points and find them in red in the minutes below.**

Minutes
Attending: Kathryn, Simon, Teklu, Birhanu, Gebre, Gerba, Kindie, Randall, Zelalem, Belay, Beth, An, Kiros, Alan, Kees, Ewen.

Welcome back to An and welcome to Kiros.

Action point tracker
Kees will work on the 2-pager and on the NBDC basin institutional story outline.

Follow up NBDC gender assessment recommendations
See the recommendations on the gender page.
 * 1) **Leadership statement of support to gender**: Someone can draft it and Management will be happy to support these - we assume top leadership here is Alan & Simon. With all recommendations, we need to ask ourselves: what are we trying to achieve and whether they will be achieved through those mechanisms.
 * 2) **Gender integrated in design phase of follow-up programs**: Originally gender was not placed prominently in the design. But it has been addressed once Beth and others went to the sites and started doing the work. Gender as a specific component of research design hasn't been addressed explicitly. What do we want to achieve now with it? There's a lot of gender discussions across CGIAR. There is a gender workshop in Montpellier in June where CRP resource persons will be trained in different methodologies to address gender. Kathryn can share information about this. Do we want to integrate through partnerships etc.? At the very least we want focal points on gender from Humidtropics and WLE to review and comment on these recommendations.

In terms of going forward we can do better research on gender, integrate gender to research or focus on 'transformation' - but is that what we are hoping to achieve? Do we do that through partnerships? There is a danger that gender gets addressed by a gender-focal person - tagged on rather than integrated. We can address the capacity gap/need. Re: transformative gender approaches, we need to clarify what we mean. We could also work in Ethiopia with different stakeholders at different levels to get their views about what an improved situation would look like on gender and equity. Transformative approaches are different at farmer level, woreda level and e.g. CGIAR level. Doug: Wouldn't it be useful to have a small group to look at what we have done and what are the gaps? Then we could look forward. In terms of science work we've done, we've tried to get multiple perspectives etc. But we struggle to get women in meetings and activities. How to address this? If gender was missing as an element of our research design, would it make sense to get someone to make an assessment on gender issues? Is there merit in trolling back to the past. WLE and Humidtropics are much more gender-savvy than NBDC. We could organise a workshop (with WLE and Humidtropics) looking back at our CPWF/NBDC work even. How much influence can we have on programs that seem to be better aware of gender. We could have a gender training for our core staff - a workshop would not be high on our list of activities. Gender research in NBDC: We have not done enough gender-sensitive work in NBDC because in hydrological research there isn't much room for gender. If this project had focused on technology transfer, we could have looked into adoption constraints for women. Our limited focus on gender is partly related to the nature of research. What we need to do for NBDC is to think about 'what do we want to do in the next 9 months that best attends to gender issues'? Recruiting staff (gender specialists hired for Africa RISING, Humidtropics). In terms of messages we can communicate, if we think that gender is an important component, we have to do sthg. If we could raise this as part of the next IP meetings and how our work has affected men, women, children etc. that would be great. --> but there's a danger that we overload IPs with anything that is applied. We are already doing a lot of work with equity issues. The conversation between Kinde and Alan shows that we have a completely different understanding about gender work etc. We have to tackle these issues in our core group before moving on to CRPs.

We need to accept our failings and move on. We might not need a full writeshop but some lesson learning. Could invest in some training. Could incorporate some of this into the Institutional History work.

Trainings. Should we adopt recommendations or some revision of them? Gender and modelling – not much time left to do much on this in NBDC. Gender mainstreaming needs to be part of the institutional culture in developing new research projects.

**One NBDC / One approach to research in NBDC**
Beth and Randall have been leading this initiative to help. Randall presented thinking so far. Wolde presented his plans for exclosure work under WLE that could fit within the framework. Also developed a concept note on rice husks and coffee hulls as biochar. Question about whether we can use the framework to help link science and policy. Doug suggests that the target state is defined by policy makers and we need then to look backwards and seeing what interventions we have been testing that would lead us towards that target state. Some further population of the framework is still needed. Also need to develop short narratives around each element of the framework to help explain what they are about. We all need to help refine the framework – all of us need to contribute.

Call for abstracts has been drafted. Dates are 9-10 July to be confirmed today. A tentative workshop has been drafted. Suggestion to not be too prescriptive on session topics. Also would be good to have a mini-paper associated with each abstract. Best papers would be developed into full papers. Good to have some synthesis papers and some cross-disciplinary papers. Need to think about some non-cash incentives for people to submit papers e.g. attendance at international meetings.
 * Follow up science meeting ** **July 2013: Who, what, how?**