About Development Practice

“The field of sustainable development is growing rapidly and facing challenges of increasing complexity,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University.“ Today's practitioners must confront the enormous and interconnected crises of climate change, extreme poverty, epidemic disease, hunger, rapid population growth, and environmental degradation. The new MPA Program in Development Practice will train professionals with the multi-disciplinary knowledge, including the natural sciences, tools and management skills they will need for success.”

Consider, for example, the many areas of core knowledge necessary to effectively address the challenge of combating chronic hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa:

Agricultural science is required to understand the biophysical factors contributing to the stagnation of crop yields and the technical solutions that could quickly boost food output and provide a source of quality nutrition in rural areas.

Environmental science is required to manage the agricultural land environment and to understand its interactions with climate change.

Health science and disease control are required to promote nutrition and labor productivity among farmers and to fight the parasites that contribute to undernourishment.

Engineering is required to understand the fundamental infrastructural requirements to support energy, irrigation, storage, transportation, and communications systems.

Economics is required to ensure that both farm- and macro-scale policy solutions are economically sustainable and supportive of long-term solutions to the poverty trap.

Political science is required to understand the social promoters and inhibitors of investing in rural areas.

Anthropology is required to ensure that priorities and innovations are relevant and manageable in local contexts.

Management and administration are necessary to promote institutional development at the local and national level, and participatory planning skills are necessary to ensure multi-stakeholder design of solutions.

None of these individual areas of knowledge is sufficient on its own to solve Africa’s hunger challenge. All are necessary, and more.

Creation of the program is one of the core recommendations of the International Commission on Education for Sustainable Development Practice, supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The year long Commission was co-chaired by Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and John McArthur, Executive Director of Millennium Promise, and was comprised of twenty top thinkers in the field of sustainable development.

This group of distinguished experts concluded that there is significant demand today for generalist development professionals, individuals highly trained in a set of cross-disciplinary core competencies that prepares them to effectively address the complexities of sustainable development work. Leaders in the field need multidisciplinary knowledge and skills to operate and problem-solve the increasingly complex development challenges.