On 15 September, AIT President Said Irandoust and
Professor Peter Haddawy, Vice President for Academic
Affairs, met Dr. Srikantha Herath, Senior Academic
Programme Officer, Environment and Sustainable Development (UNU-ESD)
Programme, United Nations University (UNU), Tokyo, Japan, and AIT
alumnus, to discuss a possible joint degree program to foster higher
education in the Asia Pacific region. This initiative is in line with
the recently concluded Intensive Program on Sustainability (IPoS 2008)
which was hosted at AIT. AIT is also actively collaborating with the
University of Tokyo and several other partner institutions under the
IPoS initiative.
Within the current AIT-UNU proposal for joint postgraduate programs,
UNU-ESD tasked with consolidating and streamlining existing
postgraduate programs. The main focus of such efforts is to customize
global knowledge in a sustainable manner and to better address local
environmental problems of the developing countries in order to untilize
global knowledge and experiences. UNU-ESD proposes to develop a
coherent postgraduate program that will lead to UNU-AIT-local
university joint degree programs. Aside from AIT, the UNESCO Natural
Science Division (Japan), The University of Tokyo, Kyoto University,
Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Tsinghua University, Monash
University, Singapore National University, IIT (India), University of
Peradeniya, Moratuwa (Sri Lanka), University of the Philippines, Lahore
University, University Putra Malaysia, Gadjah Mada University, Bandung
Institute of Technology (Indonesia), Institute of Engineering (Nepal),
IHE-UNESCO, Netherlands, ITC Netherlands have expressed interest in
joining this initiative.
According to the proposal, students would undertake a master’s program
spending the first 9 months in the postgraduate program of a local
university, the next 6 months at UNU and the final 9 months at a
partner university for example AIT. The initial postgraduate research
themes identified are been identified as: adaptation to climate change;
water management; disaster risk reduction; chemical risk and life cycle
assessment for environmental policy; and local adaptations to
environmental variability.
The trio also discussed undertaking joint activities in Africa. UNU
has expressed interest in participating with the planned AIT visit to
Africa set at the end of this year. In addition AIT and UNU are also
planning to host a conference or workshop for intergovernmental
universities to discuss and share ideas and develop common activities.
AIT could serve as the secretariat for such a grouping of
intergovernmental universities. AIT’s new Charter would enable the
Institute to increasingly host such important platforms and engage
itself in important regional and global forums.
During the meeting, they also discussed possible collaborations with
UNU on climate change issues. It was agreed to jointly kick-off the
climate change adaptation workshop planned in 2009. Focusing on climate
change, an interesting partnership discussed was to bring in partners
who can commit themselves to the development of online models based on
case studies from different parts of Asia. The Vice President for
Academic Affairs and Vice President for Research will follow up on the
above initiatives.
Dr. Herath was deemed as an excellent example of an AIT alumnus
by the AIT President, who continues to actively partner AIT in new
innovative forms of partnership, through his professional network and
linkages.