Comment pubs.acs.org/est
The Right People for a Difficult Job
O
We can start by training more graduate students from the countries that we are trying to help. Historically, international students have accounted for a large fraction of the graduate students conducting research in developed countries. Undoubtedly, the emergence of China, South Korea and other rapidly developing countries as research leaders can be traced back to the experiences that graduate students from these countries had in the US, Europe and Japan decades ago. Upon their return, these foreign-trained students became the professors and administrators who built the national science foundations and modernized the universities of their home countries. After such a transition has succeeded in creating topnotch university graduates, it is easy to forget the challenges of language and cultural integration faced by the first wave of exchange students. As part of our program for researchers from underserved countries, we need to recruit and support graduate students who are driven to improve conditions in their home countries but lack the language skills or exposure to advanced technology needed to hit the ground running. There are several approaches that can be used to open up the pipeline of graduate students from developing countries. First, fellowship programs based in the home country, working in partnership with international donors, can identify promising candidates, fund the first part of a student’s graduate studies, and provide assistance with the cultural transition. This is the model employed by the Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF)a program that has been supporting the training of top Vietnamese graduate students pursuing science and technology research in the United States since 2000. Another option involves the creation of programs that have a mandate to train students from developing countries. For example, students at the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in Delft receive training in The Netherlands, conduct research in their home country and return to Delft to analyze their data under the supervision of their faculty advisor. These and other models provide a means of training students who will contribute to the improvement of environmental conditions in their home countries. To expand these types of programs, we need to do more than lobby for additional fundingfaculty members in developed countries have to commit some of their scarce time to mentoring students who might not have been their first pick on the basis of test scores and past experiences alone. Research partnerships also offer a means of helping build capacity in underserved countries. Joint research projects, in which partners from developing and underserved countries collaborate on a problem facing a developing country, can improve environmental conditions while simultaneously helping local researchers access funding and build their capabilities. Such projects are mutually beneficial because the partner from the developed country can contribute state-of-the art technologies to the project while the local partner provides insight into cultural and political factors that are likely to affect
ver the past two decades there has been a surge in interest from our community in the environmental problems facing the developing world. The grass-roots efforts of concerned students, faculty members and professional researchers have led to the development of small-scale technologies to remove arsenic from contaminated groundwater, low-cost household water disinfection systems and even prototypes of a reinvented toilet designed to serve densely populated communities that lack access to centralized wastewater collection and treatment systems. These initiatives have benefitted members of the Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T) community who live in developed countries in several ways. First, they have helped our universities attract and retain talented students seeking careers in which their technical abilities can serve humanity. The experience of working on these critical problems also has had profound impacts on our students. After conducting research on problems of developing countries, some students choose to continue technical work in the developing world, or they pursue careers at home, leading nongovernmental organizations responsible for coordinating international development projects. The students who take jobs that are not directly related to developing countries bring their passions and skills to domestic companies, utilities and government agencies responsible for addressing complex problems like climate change and infrastructure renewal. The compelling needs of the developing world also have convinced university leaders to create new faculty positions and private foundations to allocate resources for research on these problems. In addition to supporting our community and providing us with invaluable experiences, these efforts have undoubtedly benefitted people in the developing world. But I’m not convinced that our current approach is commensurate with the scope of the problem. In recognition of the need to achieve results that benefit billions of people, researchers are starting to pay more attention to the creation of scalable business models that can be replicated by local communities. Furthermore, it is evident that the needs of the developing world are much broader than the water and sanitation challenges that initially garnered much of our attention. As economic development continues to drive migration to cities, urban problems such as air pollution, workplace exposure to chemicals and the need to create climate change-adapted cities will become more important to the wellbeing of people in the developing world. If members of the ES&T community from developed countries are going to play a more substantial role in solving these problems, we need to concentrate on the most important local resource: people. In the next stage of our effort to engage the developing world, we need to supplement our efforts to create new technology and policy tools with actions that benefit the engineers and scientists who have been underserved by past investments in environmental science and technology research. In other words, we need to train, mentor and collaborate with our counterparts in the developing world. © 2015 American Chemical Society
Published: February 3, 2015 1233
DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b00374 Environ. Sci. Technol. 2015, 49, 1233−1234
Environmental Science & Technology
Comment
the outcomes of the research. Two recently published ES&T studies serve as examples of the strength of this approach (10.1021/es504005q and 10.1021/es503945x). Joint research programs also are important because they support travel of midcareer researchers to the developed country where their partners are based. In my experience, funding for midcareer researchers from developing countries to interact with colleagues and attend conferencesexperiences that are crucial to career developmentare often difficult to obtain from existing funding sources. Examples of programs in the United States that support research partnerships include the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research (PEER) Program, the State Department’s Obama-Singh Initiative (for India) and the Fulbright Program. Identifying potential research partners and learning how to communicate across long distances and overcome cultural divides can be challenging if relationships have not already been established. If our community is going to create meaningful partnerships with researchers in the developing world, we need to dedicate more of our international travel to conferences and visits to universities in underserved countries where we can meet prospective partners and identify research topics of mutual interest. Graduate student training and collaborative research projects are just two examples of how our community can help build capacity in developing countries. Although more funding from governments and private foundations is needed to expand these types of programs, opportunities already exist for training and research partnerships. Many of these programs receive too few applications from our community because we have yet to prioritize engagement with students and researchers from developing countries. In my opinion, integrating people from developing countries into our research is essential to any serious effort to solve the huge environmental challenges facing the developing world. Like the affirmative action programs that are addressing gender disparities and integrating traditionally underrepresented communities into the ranks of our profession at home, an affirmative action program for underserved countries is going to require a sustained commitment, measurable goals and a willingness to experiment with alternative approaches. It also means that we may need to rethink some of the ways in which we conduct research on the problems of the developing world. If we are serious about solving the myriad of problems facing the developing world, it is crucial that we engage the people who have the biggest stake in the outcome.
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David Sedlak, Editor-in-Chief AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS. The authors declare no competing financial interest.
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b00374 Environ. Sci. Technol. 2015, 49, 1233−1234
