CIRAD (French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development)

Founded in 1984, CIRAD is a public-sector industrial and commercial enterprise (EPIC) under the joint authority of France’s Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation and the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs. CIRAD is headquartered in Paris, France, but also has regional offices in France and overseas.

CIRAD is the French agricultural research and international cooperation organization working for the sustainable development of tropical and Mediterranean regions. CIRAD is a multi-disciplinary research institute focusing on sustainable agriculture including sustainable management of natural resources. Our main topics are food security, climate change, natural resource management, reduction of inequalities and poverty alleviation. CIRAD works with more than 100 countries worldwide to support agricultural development and to promote sustainable management of natural resources. It puts its scientific and institutional expertise at the disposal of policymakers in those countries and global debates on the main issues concerning agriculture.

Our knowledge of the field and our strong collaboration with local and national partners make us a key partner for promoting, developing and implementing restoration programs. Because of its multi-disciplinary approach and skills, CIRAD can provide an integrated landscape approach taking into account the land use systems, markets and the different stakeholders and decision makers.

Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) is a thematic priority of CIRAD’s Forests and Societies unit. As a result, it has extensive experience in activities, such as building national and international partnerships in research and development projects, designing restoration plans, projects, and monitoring systems.

In Latin America, CIRAD has carried out long-term projects at the landscape level to promote FLR, such as Floagri (2005-2010) and Ecotera (2011-2017). It currently pursues a collaboration with CATIE in Peru, Colombia and Brazil. Most of the activities of CIRAD in Latin America are in the Amazon basin and particularly in the Brazilian Amazon, where we have been developing strong local and national partnerships with Brazilian research institutions (Embrapa), universities and NGO (see website: https://www.dp-amazonie.org/en). In the Brazilian Amazon, our research and development activities aim to build and to promote with all the stakeholders production alternatives that respect the environment and to structure the stakeholders in the territory so as to promote sustainable forms of development.

Tropical forest ecology and management is a key area for CIRAD, mainly supported by the research unit “Forests and Societies,” whose main mission is to propose and to promote sustainable forest management practices, combining the long-term conservation of forests' environmental services with the provision of incomes to rural populations.

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