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Summary:

The world is changing rapidly in ways that often affect poor countries most. For example, in coming decades climate change, population movements and higher oil and food prices could challenge the livelihoods and resilience of millions of people in developing countries.

The UK government believes that research is essential for understanding and tackling challenges like these. Through the Department for International Development (DFID) it will invest up to £1 billion on development research in the next five years. Our new Research Strategy explains how we will use these funds to put research at the heart of efforts to reduce poverty in developing countries. It builds on the success of our past work and takes it in new directions.

DFID knows that development research is a good investment, and we already have a reputation for providing the wider development community with cutting-edge research and analysis. We want to use research not only to improve the knowledge and choices available to our partners across the world, but also to strengthen our own decisions and to make sure that they are based on sound evidence.

This strategy will help provide solutions to challenges and opportunities for Africa and South Asia. But we will also learn lessons and adopt innovation from other regions.

In the next five years we will:

• Strike a balance between creating new knowledge and technology and getting knowledge and technology - both new and existing - into use;
• Make the most of our ability to influence policy to make sure research makes an impact;
• Use different methods of funding to join up national, regional and global research efforts, so that they are more relevant to what matters most to developing countries and to achieve a bigger impact on poverty reduction;
• Redouble our effort to strengthen developing countries' capability to do and use research; and
• Help our partners predict and respond to development challenges and opportunities beyond the 2015 target date for achieving the MDGs.

To get these results, we will focus research on six areas:

1. Growth
We know that growth is even more important in reducing poverty than was previously thought, and we want to put it at the heart of international development. The challenge now is to take knowledge about what influences growth and apply it to the priorities of developing countries. Our new International Growth Centre will introduce a major new research programme to support individual countries with their growth strategies. Our research will also address questions that matter across countries and regions for building an economy that poor people can take part in, as well as growth that can be sustained for future generations.

2. Sustainable agriculture
The livelihoods of 75% of the world's poor will continue to depend on agriculture for the foreseeable future. At the same time, rising food prices are likely to make problems of hunger and poverty worse for urban and rural people. Research that produces innovation in agriculture is therefore more important than ever for reducing poverty. DFID has promised to double funding for research on agriculture, fisheries and forestry to £80 million a year by 2010. To meet that promise, we will continue to work on the research priorities in the 2006 Strategy for Research on Sustainable Agriculture. We will also focus on key emerging issues related to agriculture and natural resource management that fit our broader agenda of inclusive growth and climate change.

3. Climate change
Climate change is likely to have enormous social, political, economic and environmental consequences. We know that it will affect poor countries first and worst, and that the poorest people will be most exposed and vulnerable. We will rapidly expand and diversify our research, as part of a wider effort to tackle climate change across UK government. We will research: climate science, especially in Africa; how to tackle climate change in national and international policy; strategies for adapting to climate change; and mitigation and low carbon growth. We will establish an International Climate Change Network to provide in-country research and advisory services.

4. Health
There are still major barriers to achieving the health MDGs. But the burden of ill health is also changing rapidly, and non-communicable diseases are an increasing threat to the majority of the world's population. International funding for health research is growing. We will work with developing countries and other funders to achieve faster results. Our research will focus on three inter-dependent priorities:

• operational research to make health programmes more effective;
• research on health systems; and
• developing drugs and vaccines for HIV and AIDS, TB and malaria and other diseases that most affect poor people.

5. Governance in challenging environments
We know that stronger political processes improve living standards and reduce poverty faster. But overall, standards of governance across the world are not improving fast enough. The poorest and most disadvantaged people need more opportunities to take part in economic growth, including growing numbers of young people. We will build on the commitments set out in the 2006 White Paper on International Development to examine the links between power, politics and poverty. We will find new ways of tackling the toughest social and governance problems in the most fragile and challenging environments. Our five research themes will be:

• conflict, state fragility and social cohesion;
• social exclusion, inequality and poverty reduction;
• building strong and effective states;
• tackling the MDGs that are hardest to reach;
• migration.

6. Future challenges and opportunities
Research needs to prepare us to deal with future challenges and opportunities. This means setting aside resources to tackle fast emerging issues but also future 'unknowns' - those issues that could take us by surprise in years to come. As this is a new area of work, we will initially examine two themes: looking "beyond aid" to find out what makes development processes more likely to succeed; and how to make sure developing countries can make the most of new and emerging technology (such as biotechnology, ICT and nanotechnology).