2012 CGIAR Stakeholder Perceptions Survey: Update and Highlights

In the second half of 2012, the CGIAR Consortium commissioned GlobeScan to conduct an independent assessment of the perceptions of CGIAR Stakeholders, in an effort to have a clearer picture of where and how we need to improve our partnership efforts. The full report is expected by mid of May 2013, but this fact sheet provides some early highlights. The results of the survey make it clear that while there are generally positive impressions from stakeholders, there is still much work for us to do to improve how we work with our partners. This report will serve as a valuable baseline against which we can measure progress in the years to come, and will help us focus our attention on areas for improvement

The CGIAR’s 2006 Stakeholder Perceptions Survey: Report on the CGIAR Overall

This report details the results of the 2006 Stakeholder Perceptions reputation research conducted by GlobeScan Incorporated, on behalf of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). This report was discussed during the Business Meeting at AGM06

Respondents' feedback or advice to charitable foundations

"An analysis of the open-ended responses given to question 5.2 from the second Global Stakeholder Panel survey.

2012 CGIAR Stakeholder Perceptions Survey Final Public Report

Strong, collaborative partnerships are vital to the success of CGIAR. As such, CGIAR commissioned GlobeScan to undertake a global survey of current and important potential stakeholders and partner organisations. The purpose of the survey is to gain insight into how stakeholders perceive the organisation to be performing with regard to partnership, and to also gain a better understanding about how it currently partners with its stakeholders

Respondent's feedback on the second GSP survey

"An analysis of the open-ended responses given to question 6.5 from the second Global Stakeholder Panel survey.

Plant conservation in the Anthropocene - challenges and future prospects

Despite the massive efforts that have been made to conserve plant diversity across the world during the past few decades, it is becoming increasingly evident that our current strategies are not sufficiently effective to prevent the continuing decline in biodiversity. As a recent report by the CBD indicates, current progress and commitments are insufficient to achieve the Aichi Biodiversity Targets by 2020. Threatened species lists continue to grow while the world's governments fail to meet biodiversity conservation goals. Clearly, we are failing in our attempts to conserve biodiversity on a sufficient scale. The reasons for this situation are complex, including scientific, technical, sociological, economic and political factors. The conservation community is divided about how to respond. Some believe that saving all existing biodiversity is still an achievable goal. On the other hand, there are those who believe that we need to accept that biodiversity will inevitably continue to be lost, despite all our conservation actions and that we must focus on what to save, why and where. It has also been suggested that we need a new approach to conservation in the face of the challenges posed by the Anthropocene biosphere which we now inhabit. Whatever view one holds on the above issues, it is clear that we need to review the effectiveness of our current conservation strategies, identify the limiting factors that are preventing the Aichi goals being met and at the same time take whatever steps are necessary to make our conservation protocols more explicit, operational and efficient so as to achieve the maximum conservation effect. This paper addresses the key issues that underlie our failure to meet agreed targets and discusses the necessary changes to our conservation approaches. While we can justifiably be proud of our many achievements and successes in plant conservation in the past 30 years, which have helped slow the rate of loss, unless we devise a more coherent, consistent and integrated global strategy in which both the effectiveness and limitations of our current policies, action plans and procedures are recognized, and reflect this in national strategies, and then embark on a much bolder and ambitious set of actions, progress will be limited and plant diversity will continue to decline

Responsibility and Economics

Empirically, responsibility is a concept increasingly made use of in order to address societal issues. At the same time, it is a concept mainstream economics has, so far, hardly touched on. The paper shows that the application of economic reasoning to the responsibility concept can instruct a twofold learning process: First, the very tradition of economics allows to better understand and elaborate the semantics of responsibility. Here, the paper develops the concept of ordo-responsibility that differentiates between the initial basic game and the related meta-games. The focus thus shifts to the rule- setting processes and rule-finding discourses for which the actors can accept governance responsibility and discourse responsibility, respectively. Second, the rational-choice analysis of the responsibility concept also produces important insights for mainstream economic theory. Building on a simple model that delineates the responsibility aptitude of an actor, the paper explains why standard economics tends to attribute the rule-setting function exclusively to state actors. Yet, as the underlying nation-state paradigm depends on social determinants that are not universally given, such economic theory shows a double blind spot. Against this backdrop, the paper sketches out how to broaden the conventional perspective and identifies policy recommendations for state actors and business corporations

Sustainability reporting practices and their social impact to NGO funding in Italy

This study analyses the growing social trends of sustainability reporting practices in non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Taking a preliminary step toward NGO funding, we consider the current lack of information disclosure in existing reporting practices, which are diverse and unsustainable. We investigate key organisational information in order to discover any potential links between funding sources and disclosure practices. In Italy, today there is an on-going effort to encourage public engagement in civil society. A percentage-tax law allows taxpayers to dedicate ‘cinque per mille’ (one-half percent)of their income to NGOs, which is then deducted from their tax obligation (Hereafter, ‘5 per thousand’). Our primary research objective is to understand if there is a link between the ‘5 per thousand’ donations that NGOs receive for providing social impact, and their reporting practices. Therefore, we critically analyse if and how sustainable reporting practices are achieved within the top 100 most funded NGOs that receive the ‘5 per thousand’ donation. We examine public data from official government records published by the Italian Revenue Agency. The findings suggest that sustainability reporting offers a number of financial and social advantages, including social impact that builds trust towards the idea of civil society and its funders. © 2019 Elsevier Lt