Signature of a framework agreement by the founding members of the AIRD
14/11/2011 - Press release
CIRAD, the CNRS, the CPU, INSERM, the Institut Pasteur and the IRD, the founding members of the Agence inter-établissements de recherche pour le développement (AIRD), signed a framework cooperation agreement on 10 November 2011. This confirms and strengthens their commitment to research for development.
A framework agreement that strengthens commitments
The six AIRD founding members have already proved their determination to work together on research for development issues, but wanted to confirm and strengthen that commitment by signing a framework agreement, valid for three years. The agreement was signed on 10 November 2011, by Gérard Matheron, CIRAD President, Alain Fuchs, CNRS President, Louis Vogel, CPU President, André Syrota, INSERM Director General, Alice Dautry, Institut Pasteur Director General, and Michel Laurent, IRD President.
The partners have set up a Coordinating Committee to discuss the agency's strategy, plan its operations and pool resources (human, financial, scientific infrastructures, expertise, etc).
An agency of objectives, programmes and resources
The AIRD was founded in 2006 by six founding members: CIRAD, the CNRS, the CPU, INSERM, the Institut Pasteur and the IRD. It is now part of the IRD (decree no. 2010-594 dated 3 June 2010), and is in charge of mobilizing, leading and coordinating French research and higher education organizations and establishments to work on science for development issues, with a view to building a knowledge society in the South.
Its operating fields are:
• research, to generate knowledge and have real impact in the South
• training and scientific capacity-building
• innovation, to ensure better cultural, economic and societal application of research results in the South, better research coordination, and the establishment of pooled resources.
As an agency of objectives, the AIRD inventories issues and expectations in the South, through its networks in the region and backed by its Steering Committee, which has equal numbers of representatives from North and South. It uses those expectations to generate "South" programmes in the French, and in some cases European, road maps drafted by research organizations and research funding bodies.
As an agency of programmes, the AIRD supports the design of the major research programmes conducted in partnership between North and South, particularly by helping in the search for funding. It is intended to bolster the main regional, multi-organization and multi-topic research programmes, such as the Great Green Wall (Africa), Guyamaz (Brazil) and support management of research and watchkeeping centres on health issues. It works to implement programmes or conduct operations on behalf of its two supervisory ministries (Research and Foreign Affairs), such as coordinating the work of French research organizations in support of the rebuilding of a research system in Haiti. It works by coordinating projects or programmes and managing calls for bids.
As an agency of resources, the AIRD has the capacity to mobilize French scientific forces, first and foremost those of its founding members, whose teams working the South total somewhere in the region of 7000 people. It also relies on its founding members' facilities in the South: laboratories, observatories, satellite stations, documentation centres, etc.
It has institutional representatives based in the South, in close contact with its partners and thus in a position to assess their needs, who:
• provide a link between local scientific players, organizations and ministries, and the AIRD
• support the work done by the AIRD and its members
• help express the issues faced and expectations in the South
• follow the partnership's lines of research and programmes
• guarantee the regional application of AIRD policy and the implementation of programmes in partnership.
- Category: Institutional