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Minutes

Meeting of the NR Group

Thursday 11th June 2009

Introduction

Members present: Ian Watson (IW), Ken Campbell (KC), Colin Tingle (CT), David Silverside (DS), Mark Ritchie (MR), Simon Eden-Green (SEG), Judith Pender (JP), Alan Mills (AM), Hugh Bagnall-Oakeley (HBO), Stephane Flasse (SF), Ian Grant (IG), Mike Holland (MH), Nick Willoughby (NW), Roger Bancroft (RB), Jim Williams (JW), Jonathan Coulter (JC), Cathy Mackenzie (CM);

Apologies for Absence: Lynne Barratt, Richard Tapper, Darren Connaghan, Ian Corker, Bob Douthwaite, Linda Ritchie, Marcus Robbins, Martin Stewart.

Minutes of last Meeting

Four corrections were made, prior to accepting the previous meeting minutes:

• Kate Meadows was omitted from the attendees list;

• The date of meeting was 12th march 2009;

• The date of the next meeting should read 11th June and not 18th June;

• Item 3 – Consultancy feedback: against SEG – delete “Taiwan”

Consultancy feedback

IW: Was participating in bids for food security and wildlife in PNG. All bids were through EU framework contracts. However, everything fell through. It is an effort to get on the short list, but you need to establish whether you are dealing with the Consortium leader or a consortium partner, as there is a financial dimension. Better if it is the consortium leader. CV has been circulated to other opportunities.

KC: Has undertaken more work for RIUP, but time now constrained due to caring activities. Nevertheless, there are a variety of prospects, particularly with the Norwegian Council for Research.

CT: As result of ill-health in Sept 08, all work was stopped or off-loaded. Kept 1 consultancy with “best foot forward”, which is a leading eco-foot print consultancy company. He is currently, working with “South East Diamonds”; a coalition of 9 cities and towns that are working towards self-sustainability. Involved in a lot of presentations, raised the profile of NR Group. Work has been well received. He is now working with partner on the Economics of Eco-systems and Biodiversity (TEEB).

DS: Been to Australia for daughter’s wedding, having not travelled since 2004. No work, but considering going back into consultancy. He is currently working with Cardno Agri-systems on livestock development in Nigeria.

MR: Mix of Consultancy and EIAs; an environmental Impact Assessment (in China) and an evaluation. An on-going Chinese environmental Impact Assessment, where the client wrote the EIA (badly), is causing problems. Now a published poet in Haiku.

SEG: Crop protection in coconuts, Mozambique is the current and on-going work. Has undertaken a lot of work for RIUP at the behest of NRInt; awaiting outcome. Notified meeting of management changes in RIUP, which is now pursuing new direction.

JP: Still working on locusts, with Linda Ritchie; up-dating the locust database using a GIS format. The locust database is now available in 22 countries. Have the French locust database to do.

AM: Not done a lot of paid work this quarter, but undertaken a lot of work with “Map-action”. Has a job in Namibia, which was rushed, still developing. Has 1 week in Nepal.

HBO: 3 back to back consultancies, project identification mission to Bhutan (EU), Western Orissa Rural Livelihood Project output to purpose review (DFID) and a week developing a logical framework approach for the National Food Security Mission (Government of India), Ministry of Agriculture, funded by the Japanese.

SF: Monitoring of EU project in Guyana. Otherwise developing UK business opportunities in helping businesses solve and integrate problems and issues into the normal running of these business enterprises. Case studies wanted.

IG: Undertaken environmental toxicology work for DFID, involved in numerous workshops for advisers. Some last minute work in April for EU on a risk assessment for Veterinary dept, Ghana on trypanosomiasis and Tsetse. He may have similar work in East Africa as all have an interest in Tsetse.

MH: Spent time on allotment.

JC: Left NRI on 31st January 2009, undertook a World Bank assignment in Burkino Faso; looking at ways of increasing agricultural production. He was bought in a marketing specialist; ideas going around in circle with little forward progress. Worked with UNCTAD, large EU programme, reviewed agricultural trade finance initiative.

JW: Recently submitted a project proposal to EU on climate change and infrastructure. Lot of richer countries are buying huge tracts of land, but details scant. These appear to be part of a strategy to gain access to assured food supplies. With Copenhagen in December 2009, all organisations and agencies are publishing documents on the effect of climate change, seeking the transformation of agriculture. There is a lot of cynicism, emissions still rising in 2008, in spite of economic downturn; Likely to be a lot of work in agriculture. Jim was going to Pakistan, but work postponed.

NW: Applied for a long term position in Sudan and Red sea; unsuccessful. He was now working with Scott-Wilson on the Lake Toba hydro-electric power scheme. Otherwise, he was working as a volunteer driver.

RB: See presentation

CM: Supposed to be in China on an EU – FLEGT, but it fell through. August 2009 – ADB project proposal – infrastructure development project.

Business Opportunities

The EU framework contract management has yet to be awarded, but is imminent. A posting will be put on the website outlining the winning consortia, when it is released.

A meeting entitled “focus on the aid funded business” to be held at the Royal Show on 10th July was publicised by HBO

SF stated he had a lot of francophone business opportunities emailed to him on a regular basis. SF was asked to publish the more relevant on a regular basis through the discussion forum.

AM told the meeting that funding to the UK dependent territories had been increased, after intensive lobbying by the Territories. The extra money was through the Darwin initiative, where the money was not ring fenced, so overseas territories were able to apply.

CT mentioned a World Bank (WB) project that was to review the post project management of Mauretania. Over time other West African countries would be covered by the same project. He would forward details to those interested.

Marketing and Advertising

SEG noted that many consultancy organisations were now setting up offices in developing countries as well as in Brussels (e.g. CardnoAgrisystems has recently established an office in Brussels, or LTSI had recently established a Kenya office).

Italtrain had asked for specialist technical assistance in Black Singatoka disease in West Africa. The post was difficult to fill. Members were urged in such situations to respond, even negatively, as a response increases the likelihood of further requests.

Website

CV’s and pen sketches are required from RB and JC (each to action).

There was further explanation of the format; ideally CVs must be in the EU or NRI format. All EU employees now complete a CV in “Europass” format. The CV is short and easily downloadable.

Action point: Europass format to be mounted onto the website.

Language skills are important: 1 = high degree of fluency (mother tongue); 5 = limited proficiency. In the European context language is important.

Marcus Robbins and George McBean have been active in developing and producing extension and information material. They found that illustrators in developing countries had limited skills, and have thus developed material that can be used to train local artists in illustration work. The objective is to have local artists produce more focused and easy to reproduce work, but a certain style is required to maintain clarity. The purpose of the training material is to provide guidance in and illustrate the required style.

The visual literacy study (Nepal) was a good example. Marcus wants some of the work to be mounted on the NR Group website. The copyright is free. Space on the NR Group website was an issue, nevertheless, by having the materials available may increase traffic. There are samples (or will be) samples of the work on the NRG members area.

Action Point: Subject to space on the NR Group website, it was agreed that this material should be mounted on the public area of the NR Group website.

Talk by new Members

Roger Bancroft and Jonathan Coulter made presentations of their work. These are mounted on the NR Group web site.

NR Group functioning as an Organisation

GIS Training

The question before the meeting was should fees be charged for services (be they courses, briefings or other activities) provided by a member for the benefit of other members. It was emphasised that the decision made at this meeting would set a precedent, and will cover all subsequent training, briefing and other such activities.

Training courses do take a considerable time to prepare, the preparation time should not be considered as free, and these are professional services rendered to the group. It was agreed that professional time, which included preparation time has to be charged. Who was to pay the fee was debated, with some members happy to pay the whole fee, others dissented.

The issue at debate was if a member offered a service, the member should be able to charge at the going market rate for this service. The activity offered was for the benefit of the group and all its members. As was pointed out, there was also a corporate benefit, through the improvement of member’s capability and capacity.

The discussion was initiated by the observation that the NR Group had a poor track record of decision making. Meetings frequently either deferred decisions or agreed to make no decision (the default position). It was pointed out that the group to date had had 2 meetings on the issue and had failed to come to a decision. It was important that the decision was as pluralistic as possible. In previous meetings a number of members were not able to attend the meetings, but they had the ability to express their views through the discussion forum.

Alternative views were expressed, that all members paid a subscription; the current bank balance was sufficient to cover all expenses. Currently these funds were not being used; we should therefore use the subscription money to cover the cost of training and other agreed activities. Nevertheless, the training provided skills to individuals, those directly benefiting from the activity must contribute. However, if group funds contributed to the activity, then the training material or other materials must be available on the website for all members to browse.

Action Point: A decision making process for the funding or part funding of activities was agreed, whereby an activity would be proposed, following demand from members. Funding would be 50% to be taken from the NR Group account, and the remaining 50% would be contributed by participating members.

A vote of all members present was taken: All members present, representing 17/31 (54.8%) members and was thus quorate (a quorum being one third of the membership). All voted in favour of the above action point. The motion was passed.

Improving the NR Group’s Decision Making Process

Discussion moved on to the decision making process: there was, at present, no mechanism for making a rapid decision outside of a group meeting. In the view of some members, there was a strong case to modify the group’s constitution to have a decision making process and a decision making structure; the decision making structure would be made up of the elected officers.

It was emphasised that for those taking on an executive role, it meant more work. Were those members elected to the NRG executive prepared to undertake the role and the responsibility? The need to discuss and analyse, make a decision and move on, was the goal. The NR Group must have procedures in place to reflect the process. When a proposal came forward the executive would discuss, make a decision and move on. Obviously the executive would report and justify its decision to the group as a whole, at the following quarterly meeting, if not in the previous quarterly meeting. There were questions about the executive’s mandate, which would be elucidated through the discussion forum, as well as discussing the issue at the next meeting.

Action Point: It was therefore agreed to revise the group’s constitution to give an Executive, the power to make decisions on behalf of the group (IW to draft). And for the group, at quarterly meetings to discuss options and decide on a course of action.

Action point: In future, the membership had to vote on proposals for training, briefing and other activities; two options were discussed, through the quarterly meetings, assuming the meeting was quorate. Alternatively voting through the website, this would need to be investigated.

Action Point: Investigate the possibility of voting through the website, if the quarterly meeting was not quorate. The above three action points will be on the agenda of the next NR group meeting.

Treasurers Report

The Treasurers report of 11th June 2009 was presented:

• 4 members were late with their 2008/09 subscription

• 2 new members, their subscriptions are now due

• The NR Group currently has 31 eligible members, 1 honorary member and 12 friends.

• Cash in the bank and in hand is £ 1,824.77

• No item of expenditure greater than £ 100 has been made since the last meeting.

• There are no funds to be banked.

IT Clinic

ExtraNet

The website has an FTP (File Transfer protocol) site, available for individual members; it will transfer simple data sets. It can be used for the temporary storing of data. Limited use is suggested.

C – Cleaner

Experience with software called “C–Cleaner”; the programme is supposed to clean your computer of unwanted material. Results have been unpredictable, in one case it cleaned out registry entries, causing the computer to crash. McAffee technical support is problematic (McAfee technical support to KC suggested deleting C-Cleaner). Based on experience, it is suggested to avoid this freeware.

AOB

Date of Next meeting: 17th September 2009, 13.00 at St Marks Hall, Maidstone.

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