Nairobi, 8 June 2010 – New Site License Agreement with ESRI Providing GIS technology in Centers Around the Globe as They Work to Increase Food Security and Agricultural Productivity
ESRI announces that the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has signed a site license providing access to ArcGIS software across its 15 research centers throughout the world. CGIAR works in collaboration with hundreds of government, civil society, and private organizations to reduce poverty and hunger, improve human health and nutrition, and create greater ecosystem resilience. ESRI’s GIS technology will be implemented in the centers in order to foster programs for sustainable agricultural growth benefiting the poor.
“ESRI is pleased to work closely with the CGIAR as they continue to strive to provide food security for every nation,” says John Steffenson, Manager of ESRI Federal Civilian and Global Affairs team in Washington, DC. “We strongly support the critical research of these centers as they improve agricultural production, sustainability and resilience globally. “
“This site license agreement will ensure that scientists in every center have free access to the GIS technology they need to continue with their important work including creation of data collections on population, poverty, climate, soils, crops, livestock, transportation, and biodiversity,” says Enrica Porcari, CGIAR Chief Information Officer who signed the contract of behalf of the CGIAR “The centers will provide spatial applications that help users more readily see and understand interrelationships between such subjects as urban and rural markets, crop production, deforestation, and soil erosion.“
“The new agreement with ESRI represents a major advance in the ability of geospatial scientists in the CGIAR and their partners to build and share location specific agricultural and natural resource knowledge products to help overcome poverty and hunger” says Stanley Wood, Coordinator of the Consortium for Spatial Information (CSI) of the CGIAR and IFPRI Senior Research Fellow.
ESRI’s ArcGIS will provide the platform for collaborative efforts in GIS-based agricultural research at global, regional, and local levels in every center. This will allow CGIAR to continue creating online applications such as the “iniciativa Amazonica” a GIS tool that allows for dynamic queries about biomass and deforestation in the Amazon. More than 10 CGIAR datasets and applications are also available as services from ArcGIS.com, a hosted Web site available for anyone to create, find and use maps, applications and tools.
For more information on ESRI’s agriculture solutions, visit www.esri.com/agriculture.
In the picture: from left: John Steffenson, Stan Wood, Enrica Porcari
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