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Long-Term Solutions for a Short-Term World

Canada and Research Development

Edited by Ronald N. Harpelle & Bruce Muirhead
Subjects Political Science, Globalization, Business & Economics, Sustainable Development, Social Science, Development Studies
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Paperback : 9781554582235, 246 pages, June 2011
Ebook (EPUB) : 9781554583539, 246 pages, June 2011

Table of contents

Table of Contents for
Long-Term Solutions for a Short-Term World: Canada and Research Development, edited by Ronald L. Harpelle and Bruce Muirhead

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The International Development Research Centre and Ressearch for Development

Chapter One: The Underpinnings of Canadian Development Assistance | Ronald Harpelle

Chapter Two: IRDC: Forty Years of Research for Development | Bruce Muirhead

Chapter Three: Development Dharma and International Co-operation in a Changing World | Dipak Gyawali

Chapter Four: The Rebirth of the Argan Tree or, How to Stop the Desert While Giving a Future to Amazigh Women in Morocco | Zoubida Charrouf and Dominique Guillaume

Chapter Five: Under Fire: Doing Research in Warlike Conditions | Rita Giacaman, Yoke Rabaia, and Viet Nguyen-Gillham

Chapter Six: Informal Waste Recycling and the Landfill in Dakar | Oumar Cissé

Chapter Seven: Digital Technologies and Learning: Their Role in Enhancing Social and Economic Development | Clotilde Fonseca

Chapter Eight: Past, Present, and Future of Biological Control of Malaria with the Community Participation in Peru | Palmira Ventillosa

Chapter Nine: Participatory Research on Information and Communication Technologies for Development and the Logic of the Network Approach | Heloise Emdon

Chapter Ten: The Role of Private Academic Centres and Foreign Aid in Developing Social Sciences during Military Dictatorship | Diego Piñiero

Conclusion: Long-Term Solutions

General Bibliography

Contributors

Index

Contributors’ Bios

Zoubida Charouff is a professor at the Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco. Her interest lies in the phytochemistry of Moroccan medicinal plants and the evaluation of their chemical components in nutrition and cosmetics. A woman of action and conviction, she has contributed to the betterment of rural women's lives through money-making schemes using medicinal plants, through literacy, training (in management, marketing, and communication) and through the protection of the environment. Zoubida Charrouf was behind the first argan oil co-operatives in Morocco, which now employ more than 2500 women who form task groups to collect and begin the process of argan oil production, followed by extraction of the oil, and an economic interest group (GIE) Targanine that is concerned with the marketing of the products. She has been active in obtaining geographical guidelines for argan oil as there are many false claims both inside and outside Morocco. She is the author of over a hundred publications and articles on argan oil.

Oumar Cissé is a civil engineer who holds a master’s degree in environmental studies and a PhD in urban planning and environment from the Université de Montréal. Since 1997 he has served as Executive Secretary of the African Institute for Urban Management (IAGU). His previous positions include a stint as municipal engineer and environmentalist at the Urban Community of Dakar, where he founded the subdirectorate of the environment in 1992. He is a researcher in urban environments, specializing on issues of urban waste, and has trained African professionals in urban areas as a lecturer at the Institute of Urban Planning at the University of Montreal since 2000 and associate professor at the international French-language Senghor University in Alexandria, Egypt, since April 2007. Dr. Cissé has acted as an international consultant (UNDP, CIDA, UN HABITAT) and authored several articles and international communications in urban environment. He has also served as president of the Network of African Institutions Urban Management (ANUMI) since 2003 and was coordinator of the Regional Centre of the Basel Convention on hazardous waste in French-speaking Africa from 2004 to 2006. The main areas of intervention are municipal waste, environmental planning, public-private partnership in urban services, urban agriculture, and international co-operation in urban areas. Dr. Cissé is the main initiator and coordinator of the “Discharge Mbeubeuss: Analysis of Impact and Development of Channels of Waste and Urban Agriculture to Diamalaye (Malika)” project funded by IDRC under its Urban Poverty and Environment initiative (PURE).

Heloise Emdon leads Acacia, an International Development Research Centre program that works with African partners to apply information and communication technologies to Africa’s social and economic development. Before joining IDRC, Ms. Emdon was a communications sector analyst for the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA). At the bank, she worked on telecom and broadcast investment projects and operational policy as well as other ICT-related projects in Southern Africa. She also led, for the DBSA, a development-oriented community radio pilot project in a remote peri-urban and rural South African community. Ms. Emdon also has ten years of experience as a journalist for the print press, as well as experience with a news agency.

Clotilde Fonseca is the director and founder of the Programa de Informática Educativa de Costa Rica. The program was created in 1988 by the Fundación Omar Dengo and the Ministry of Public Education. She was also the executive director of the Fundación Omar Dengo from its founding in 1987 until 1994 and from 1996 to the present. She was also the president of Instituto de Asistencia Social de Costa Rica (1994–95). Clotilde Fonseca is a member of the Consejo Consultivo del Ministro de Ciencia y Tecnología (2000–1) and the Proyecto del Estado de la Nación (2001). She has also served as a consultant to numerous international agencies and was a professor at the Universidad de Costa Rica. Clotilde Fonseca is the author of Computadoras en las escuelas de Costa Rica and the author of several articles.

Rita Giacaman is a professor of public health at the Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University, occupied Palestinian territory. She is a founding member of the institute and has worked there for 31 years. During the 1980s, she participated as a researcher and practitioner in the Palestinian social action movement, which led to the development of the Palestinian primary health care model. During the 1990s, she participated in building the Palestinian community-based disability rehabilitation network. Since 2000, Rita has been focusing on understanding the impact of chronic warlike conditions and excessive exposure to violence on the health and well-being of Palestinians, with an emphasis on psychosocial health; and ways in which interventions could generate the needed active and positive resilience and resistance to ongoing warlike conditions, especially among youth. She has published extensively, including articles in scientific journals, chapters in books published internationally, as well as several volumes and reports published locally.

Dominique Guillaume is a professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne (France). He is an expert in natural product chemistry and has been working with Professor Z. Charrouf (University Mohammed V-Agdal, Morocco) on the argan tree since 1995. Dominique Guillaume’s initial work on argan tree secondary metabolites focused on the search for biologically active molecules, but he rapidly oriented his activity toward argan oil. His work has led to the design of analytical methods of ascertaining argan oil purity and quality. These methods have been implemented in the argan oil women’s co-operatives and have undoubtedly permitted the commercial success of argan oil. Dominique Guillaume has authored or co-authored more than 100 scientific papers, is a regular reviewer for several scientific journals, and is consultant to two start-up companies working in the therapeutic and nutrition field.

Dipak Gyawali is a member of the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology. By profession he is a hydroelectric power engineer (Kafedra Gidroenergetiki, Moskovski Energeticheski Institut, USSR,1979) as well as a resource economist (Energy and Resources Group, University of California, Berkeley, 1986) specializing in water and energy issues. For the past two decades he has been an independent researcher and consultant on development issues and has been pursuing his own interdisciplinary research agenda on society-technology-resource-base interface. After the democratic changes in Nepal in 1990, he was called by the new government to help define a new energy development policy in the changed context in Nepal. He is currently a director of Nepal Water Conservation Foundation and the editor of its journal Water Nepal, as well as a member of the Oxford Commission on Sustainable Consumption.

Ronald Harpelle is a professor of history at Lakehead University, where he is also the co-director of the Advanced Institute for Globalization and Culture. His association with IDRC dates from 1998, when he was awarded a Canada and the World grant to undertake a study of the West Indian community of Central America. With Bruce Muirhead, he authored a commissioned history of IDRC.

Bruce Muirhead is a professor of history and the associate dean of graduate studies and research in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo and senior fellow at CIGI. He is the co-author of a history of the International Development Research Centre and has undertaken the writing of a history of Canadian official development assistance policy from 1945 to 1984 with a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. He continues to work on the topic of the development of Canadian foreign economic policy in the 1960s and 1970s.

Viet Nguyen-Gillham has a background in social work and psychotherapy. She has a PhD from Boston University in sociology and social work and has worked internationally in conflict areas (Thailand, Bosnia, Guinea/Sierra Leone, East Timor, Palestine) in programs related to refugees, torture victims, and social development. She is currently working as an independent consultant and researcher in mental health and community development at the Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University.

Diego Piñeiro is dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Universidad de la República, in Uruguay. He has worked and published extensively in the area of rural sociology. With a PhD in sociology, Piñeiro has received research grants from several organizations, including CLACSO and the Ford Foundation. Because he was a researcher in Uruguay during the military dictatorship, Piñeiro’s later work reflects the importance of supporting research during times of repression.

Yoke Rabaia conducts research with the mental health unit of the Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University, in the occupied Palestinian territory. She is also working on her PhD dissertation with the VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Palmira Ventosilla is an expert on tropical disease vectors and for years has toiled to control malaria by targeting the spread of the Anopheles mosquito. With funding from IDRC, Ventosilla and her colleagues at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute of Tropical Medicine in Lima have developed a low-cost, environmentally friendly alternative to pesticides through biological control of mosquito larvae. Through an educational program using posters, comics, and games, the three major schools of Salitral, the town where the program is based, are involved, and the whole community has been reached; future plans include expansion to more towns, schools, and ponds. Palmira Ventosilla also volunteers with the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) project in Mozambique to evaluate the range of microbiology capacity within Mozambique.

Description

Long-Term Solutions for a Short-Term World demonstrates the complexity of the challenges that poor countries face and introduces the readers to the concept and impact of participatory research for development. Participatory research requires researchers to work with communities, governments, and other relevant actors to deal with common problems. Finding solutions requires participants to reflect critically on the cultural, economic, historical, political, and social contexts within which the issue under investigation exists.

The book contains a collection of essays from development researchers and professionals, each of whom is an activist who has made significant contributions to the struggles of the poor in their own societies. Essays are presented as case studies and, in each, the contributor explains the specific development problem, the paths followed to solve the problem, lessons learned as a result of the research, and the development challenges on the horizon in his field of research. Together, these essays present a fascinating picture of how some of today’s most pressing development issues are being dealt with through research, demonstrating how interdisciplinary and alternative approaches can be implemented in new and innovative ways.

Reviews

``This book provides a uniquely insightful account of Canada's special contribution to the profound changes that have occurred in the role of international development in a changing world. It is a story few Canadians know but of which all can be proud. Yesterday's poorer developing countries, notably China and India, have become the most rapidly developing economies and are experiencing both the benefits and the accompanying environmental and social problems. Canada showed early leadership in supporting the research and development that is the key to the success of a knowledge economy. The experiences and news of the developing-country experts documented in this book demonstrate how Canada's modest investments made a disproportionate contribution to development and influenced the programs and policies of others.''

- The Honourable Maurice F. Strong, P.C., C.C., LL.D., Honorary Professor, Peking University