IDRC In a Changing World
Program Directions: 2000–2005

As the International Development Research Centre sets its course for the future, it looks to its past — 30 years of endeavour to advance the theory and dream of development. We have learned much about the practical application of research to development problems in the South, and these lessons continue to carry our work forward. Our focus on scientific research, our support for networks of scholars, our emphasis on knowledge, and our multidisciplinary approach to development issues count among the milestones that mark our evolution, both in philosophy and in organizational structure. The Corporate Strategy and Program Framework (CSPF) is the next step in this evolution, a signpost that will guide us for the next five years.

The constant in the life of the Centre is the International Development Research Centre Act, the federal Act of Parliament that established IDRC and sets out our mandate. Its creative and far-sighted objectives give us a clear purpose: “to initiate, encourage, support and conduct research into the problems of the developing regions of the world and into the means for applying and adapting scientific, technical and other knowledge to the economic and social advancement of those regions ....” While providing an anchor to our work, the IDRC Act also allows us the flexibility to face new challenges.

This duality is reflected in the CSPF, which gives pride of place to the conviction that researchers in developing countries must take the lead in producing knowledge for the benefit of their own communities; that men and women must control their own social and economic destinies; and that the acquisition and use of knowledge is key to progress. At the same time, the CSPF takes stock of the changing context of international development and how our programing must be recast to address the urgent challenges of our day.

FOUNDATIONS The cornerstone of the Centre's work will be an ever stronger link to the aspirations and needs of the people in the developing countries of the world. Sustainable and equitable human activity depends on men and women's control of their own social and economic progress, on equitable access to knowledge, and on an indigenous capability to generate and apply knowledge.

IDRC called upon its worldwide network of researchers, scientists, and policymakers to help define these challenges and determine how to meet them. This unprecedented level of consultation, not only with our partners in the South but also with staff, our Board of Governors, and representatives of the Government of Canada, resulted in a document that is at once a five-year blueprint for our strategic objectives and a framework for achieving them. It stays true to our key principles while pointing to new directions, among them an emphasis on governance, a greater exploration of the relationship between research and knowledge, and increased attention to gender issues in development. Programing centres on three areas of enquiry: Social and Economic Equity, Environment and Natural Resource Management, and Information and Communication Technologies for Development. Our concentration on these broad areas will stay fixed, but specific research questions may change as new issues emerge.

There is enormous poverty and unfulfilled human potential in the developing world, and IDRC plays its small part in the search for greater global equity. In this search, we find inspiration in the words of former Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson when he was chair of IDRC’s first Board of Governors:

There can be no peace, no security, nothing but ultimate disaster, when a few rich countries with a small minority of the world’s people alone have access to the brave, and frightening, new world of technology, science, and of high material living standard, while the large majority live in deprivation and want, shut off from opportunities of full economic development; but with expectations and aspirations aroused beyond the hope of realizing them.”

We are working to help them realize that hope.