Aujourd’hui encore, les forêts restent un enjeu vital. Ceci alors que le développement accéléré de beaucoup de régions provoque une pression croissante sur les écosystèmes forestiers. Parc Yasuni en Equateur, parc national des Virunga en RDC, ou plus largement forêts tropicales au Brésil ou en Indonésie, on peut multiplier les exemples de conflits socio-environnementaux où la question de l’utilisation et de la propriété des ressources forestières est l’objet de luttes féroces entre populations indigènes, ONG environnementales, multinationales et gouvernements, etc.
While the Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI) initiative provides data and analysis of domestic public and private spending on agricultural research and development for a wide range of developing countries, the literature pays little attention, if any, to foreign assistance to agricultural, fishing and forestry research and agricultural extension. The objective of the present study is to fill this gap.
A growing variety of public and private agricultural advisory services are available today, leading to increasingly ‘pluralistic service systems’ (PSS) where advisory services are provided by different actors and funded from different sources. This is generally regarded as an important step forward, as it steers away from relying on purely state-led or privatised service systems. PSS hold the potential to overcome constraints related to funding, staffing and expertise, and to make advisory services more demand-driven.