Scaling innovation is about delivering greater impact. For ACIAR, this means supporting crucial development objectives such as improving livelihoods and food security, managing natural resources sustainably, and enhancing nutrition. It also includes improving gender equity, fostering more inclusive market chains, and building capacity within our partner countries.
This stage of scaling is complex; it is not enough to produce more widgets and call it a day. Scaling is about integration of solutions into complex systems and may therefore necessitate technology transfer or influencing decision-making. Even once an innovation is seemingly validated in one context, scaling beyond known constraints can change the nature of the problem and solution.
Yet scaling is, at its heart, about creating sustained value. Continuing to generate and strengthen impacts makes innovation a worthwhile endeavour.
Fish ‘ladders’ to build sustainability and livelihoods in Indonesia
ACIAR is supporting a new project to establish fish passes, or ‘ladders’ that allows fish to traverse rivers despite obstacles such as dams, in Indonesia. This builds on previous research in the Mekong where fish passes helped to improve ecosystems and increased access to fish. As Indonesia rapidly expands river infrastructure, impacting fish stocks and fishing communities, bringing fish ladders into this new context starts to scale an existing solution, hopefully resulting in even greater development impact.
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