NORTH-SOUTH CENTRE - ETH - North-South Centre North-South ...

Editorial
The year 2009 marked a milestone for the North-South
Centre. We elaborated the “Strategy 2010–2016”, which positions
us within the ETH Zurich and vis-à-vis our Swiss
peers. In our strategy, we specifically highlight the approach
of research for development (R4D) as basis for contributing
to sustainable development for human well-being. The
“Focus” section of this year’s annual report is dedicated to
this challenging approach. R4D is a long-term engagement.
It not only demands flexibility, persistence and cultural empathy
of the researchers involved, it also needs efforts in
building up mutual trust in an interdisciplinary and interinstitutional
environment. In addition, it calls for a review of
the academic evaluation and reward system. Members of
the North-South Centre and several scientists representing
our peers contribute to the discussion and provide their specific
perspective on R4D.
In the future, the North-South Centre will broaden its
thematic portfolio by focusing on four main topics: “Food
security”, “Natural resource management”, “Urban and rural
transformation”, and “Technology and infrastructure”. While
the North-South Centre has an impressive track record in the
two former topics, new efforts are necessary for the latter
two. Several activities related to the launch of “Urban and
rural transformation” as new research topic of the North-
South Centre are presented in this annual report.
channelled into ETH Bachelor and Master projects. The
North-South Centre is willing to support such student
projects with partners in the developing countries by providing
travel and seed money. In the autumn semester 2010,
I plan to visit the engineering departments of the ETH Zurich
in order to convince my colleagues that such projects would
be fascinating and rewarding.
In conclusion, I hope the breadth of research topics that are
presented in our annual report inspires you to continue or to
newly embark on research for development.
Wolfgang Kinzelbach, President
1
My personal goal for my final year as President of the North-
South Centre is to get the topic “Technology and infrastructure”
off the ground. This subject fits a technical university
as ours very well. However, ETH researchers in these areas
are traditionally focused on the high-tech side of development,
which is usually not taking place in poor countries.
Our natural allies in directing more attention to the developing
world are the ETH students. They show a considerable
concern for the poor and are willing to contribute to the solution
of technical problems in the less privileged parts of
the globe. I believe that this source of energy could be
Wolfgang Kinzelbach,
President of the North-South Centre
Editorial