The NARDT project funded by IFAD is designed to form a consortium with flexible cooperation mechanism where think tanks of different stakeholders of Myanmar, Lao, Cambodia and Vietnam (CLMV) can work together to improve the quality of policies in agriculture and rural development (ARD) and facilitate the up-scaling and institutionalization of good practices, innovations and lessons learnt from the programs supported by IFAD and other donors.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES:
Objective 1: To improve the cooperation through the establishment of researcher networks – including members who are able and willing to cooperate from multi-stakeholder cooperation networks of the four countries - to share policy experience and information toward a mutual sustainable ARD;
Objective 2: To identify regional opportunities, challenges and key issues for ARD, and implement joint policy actions including joint policy research, formulation, implementation and advocacy; knowledge sharing; and capacity building; and
Objective 3: To facilitate the institutionalization of relevant innovations, hence sustaining the impacts of projects funded by IFAD or other development partners in the Mekong countries.
NARDT VISION: To become an effective and sustainable network that connecting the agriculture policy think tanks and their alliances in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar and develop toward being an capable partner of CLMV in agricultural policy research field
NARDT MISSION:
- Serving as a platform for: promoting the collaboration and harmonization of the policy research institutions; continuously supporting the capacity enhancement of different network members, and enabling the multi-dimensional advocacies in agriculture sectors across the region.
- Becoming a self-sustaining member-owned and driven network which is able to provide agriculture and rural development policy research and advisory services to clients and target stakeholders and market development;
- Encouraging network members and their partners to engage in project consultancy services and policy advocacy at local, national and regional levels.
PROJECT TARGETS:
-The NARDT project directly benefits ARD policy think tanks of ministries, research institutes, agribusiness associations, farmer organizations, NGOs, etc. Improve the research quality and make research activities more practical.
-The NARDT project targets a large number of farmers and rural residents in 4 countries of CLMV by providing access to knowledge and experiences through the ICT-based platform, and benefits from better evidence-based ARD policies, and more efficient demand-driven ARD policy research and consultancy.
-Beneficiaries of the NARDT project also include regional economic cooperation agendas - such as WGA-GMS, AMAF, and CMLV summits, national ARD policy making agencies, private sectors, researchers and NGOs/CSOs. Such interested parties can access to the information and knowledge that they need for decision making, data standardisation for comparison among countries, shared understanding for mutual cooperation and supports, better trade and investment cooperation among the member countries as well as between the Mekong Sub-region’s countries and other ASEAN member countries and ASEAN’s partners.