With the challenges of climate change, hunger and dwindling
freshwater supplies, educators have begun an academic movement
to produce a new generation of leaders who will safeguard and
help sustain essential resources. The MacArthur Foundation
recently committed $15 million to jump-start a two-year master’s
in development practice (MDP) program at a dozen institutions
across the globe. Columbia University will be the first to offer
the degree, starting in the fall of 2009, and schools in various
countries, including Ghana, Nigeria and China, may follow suit
in the next few years. This effort is significant because “most
of the training programs throughout the world do not address
sustainable development in a global way,” says Goolam
Mohamedbhai, secretary general of the Association of African
Universities and part of the MDP’s international commission. The
MDP movement plans to rectify such gaps by creating an
international classroom that cuts across disciplines—including
public health, social science, physic