Property rights and collective action play key roles in determining agricultural productivity and food security, access to natural resources critical to sustaining rural livelihoods, and the likelihood that resources will be available to meet future needs. Therefore, a deeper understanding of the nature and alternatives offered by these institutions is essential for developing effective solutions to combat poverty.

CAPRi aims to facilitate sustainable management of natural resources of particular importance to food, nutrition, and agriculture (land, water, trees, and genetic resources) and to contribute to policies and practices for efficient, equitable, and sustainable natural resource use to alleviate rural poverty. In particular, CAPRi’s objectives are to:

• Increase knowledge on Collective Action and Property Rights institutions in natural resource management and their effectiveness under different conditions;
• Identify concrete policy instruments that facilitate and encourage the formation, improved functioning, resilience, and spontaneous evolution of organizations of users and property institutions that assure optimal resource use, and promote partnerships between local organizations, states, civil society, and private entities;
• Strengthen the capacity of national and CG research centers, non-governmental organizations, universities, and local organizations.

Regarding CAPRi’s structure as a CGIAR systemwide program, the following should be noted in connection with the Science Council’s MTP guidelines:

• CAPRi equates with one MTP project under the Science Council guidelines in terms of overall size.
• CAPRi is supporting two projects led by IFPRI and ILRI, conducting research on gender and collective action in Bangladesh and Nigeria respectively. A recent call for proposals will fund additional projects led by other centers.
• CAPRi has started a process to turn its wealth of experiences, lessons, and outputs into training materials including, a resource book, learning cases, and a participatory curriculum. The program aims to devolve some of its capacity strengthening activities to partners in the regions, starting in Eastern and Southern Africa and South Asia.
• The remaining CAPRi activities support all CGIAR centers and a range of NARS. This includes training and workshops (and publications) each year, hosted by different CG centers and supporting different sets of NARS.
• Outputs of the CG-led empirical projects are technically “secondary,” and reported by each CG center; however, because these projects are comparatively small (up to $150,000), and add-ons to existing work, CAPRi’s contributions may not be identified separately in CG centers MTPs.
• There are over 250 other projects in the CGIAR that relate to collective action or property rights. Any of these can participate in and contribute to CAPRi publications, workshops, and training; however, because these activities are not directly funded by CAPRi, they are unlikely to be reported separately by CGIAR centers.