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INTERVIEW | Postgraduate Education


Into Africa

Patrick Freyne B.A.,M.Phil (1996) talks to Professor David Taylor F.T.C.D (1989) about the future of sustainable development and a new Masters Degree in Development Practice.


Sustainable Development

This year, the US-based MacArthur Foundation awarded $7.6 million to nine universities in seven countries to establish a series of Masters in Development Practice programmes (MDP). $900,000 went to a joint proposal from Trinity College, UCD, the University of Rwanda, Kimmage Development Centre, The Ethical Globalisation Initiative, the Chancellor of the University of Dublin and Trócaire.

“There were 74 proposals from over 120 different universities,” says a justifi ably proud Professor David Taylor from TCD Geography Department. “We were the only European proposal chosen. The idea is that we can become the European hub in this global network. The MDP, we hope, will become the development equivalent of the MBA.”

Sustainable Development was essentially defi ned in the Brundtland Report in 1987 as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The MacArthur Foundation concluded in the face of climate change and economic disaster that studies in this fi eld required a more hands-on and multidisciplinary approach.

Taylor, who days after our interview was on his way to Rwanda for a six month stint as part of this new programme, said this conclusion had independently been reached in Trinity’s Geography Department. “We’d been talking about the need to do something very similar when we fi rst became aware of the funding,” he says. “We felt there was a real need to bridge the divide between theory and practical skills in the fi eld. Hence, there are fi eld-based parts to this programme, which we call ‘clinical training elements’. The one I’m heavily involved in developing is based in Rwanda in association with the University of Rwanda at Butare.”

In keeping with this, the course will be enhanced by the input of Trócaire personnel who’ve had plenty of practical experience dealing with development problems at the coalface. The MDP also requires a multi-disciplinary approach and students will be subjected to an academic boot-camp before they’re offi cially on the course. “It is very interdisciplinary,” says Taylor. “There’s a strong emphasis on bringing together a pool of skills from health sciences to the natural and environmental sciences to the social sciences. The students will see how problems like, for example, malaria, which is seen as a health issue, are also linked to poverty and climate. It is very important for students to see how those problems are actually being dealt with on the ground.”


Rwanda

Furthermore, in deference to the increasingly globalised economy and the internationalist bent of the course, there will also be input from Rwandan academics and eight scholarships will go to students from sub-Saharan Africa. The Rwandan connection is crucial.

“I have had a lot of contact with that part of Africa over the years,” says Taylor. “I did my Ph.D. in Uganda [in tropical ecology palaeoecology] and spent a lot of time there. My main interest is in climate change, how climate influences development if you like, and how ecosystems have adapted and responded to climate change in the past and may do so in this future. I was in Western Uganda 25 years ago and I’ve been going back to Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya doing research on climate change since then, so I’m quite familiar with the landscape, the language and the people.”

Of course, Rwanda has had a very specifi c and tragic history. “I visited in April of this year and it coincided with the 15th anniversary of the start of the genocide,” says Taylor. “So there were a lot of memorials and there was a lot in the media about the genocide. It is still at the forefront of everybody’s minds. Most of the University staff and students (Continued on page 31...)


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