ISET Celebrates 20 Years of Work on Integrating Social and Physical Sciences to Promote Sustainable Development
In June 1997, ISET was founded by Marcus Moench, Denise Bebbington, Ajaya Dixit, Dipak Gyawali and Elisabeth Caspari. This month marks ISET’s 20th anniversary, and we asked one of our founders, Marcus Moench, to reflect on some past challenges and accomplishments. This is what he had to say:
‘‘Rather than Western organizations leading research and formulating the issues to be addressed, ISET’s founders emphasized the necessity of developing a horizontal platform through which individuals in different regions could contribute on an equal basis in defining and developing solutions to major global environmental and other challenges. ISET’s initial work focused heavily on water, forests and livelihoods, all informed by an understanding of the increasing consequences of climate, demographic, economic and other global change processes. During its initial years the institute became increasingly recognized for the innovative nature of its research on water in complex social-ecological systems with flagship publications on water (Rethinking the Mosaic in 1999 and The Fluid Mosaic in 2001) and the impacts of climate change (Adaptive Capacity and Livelihood Resilience in 2005). As recognition of the institute grew it expanded with partnerships across South Asia and South East Asia, forming the basis for its current work on urban climate resilience and other topics.’’
In 2014, Marcus handed over the role of ISET President to Ken MacClune. In discussing ISET’s current and future direction, Ken notes:
"Today, ISET's focus extends well beyond water and livelihoods to encompass local sustainable development planning, the challenges of urbanization, and the potential solutions to be found in resilience, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Across our full range of work, we retain our collaborative research approach, incorporating that collaboration into how we design and implement projects. However, the challenges of urbanization, sustainability and resilience require more than just collaboration - they require transformative approaches that integrate knowledge across scales, sectors, disciplines, and organizations. Using our values as the seed, our work has grown to focus on knowledge integration — across scales, disciplines, frameworks and geographies — while retaining our commitment to collaborative engagement and learning. Through this approach to shared learning, visioning and planning we look forward to working with existing and new partners to promote the transformation needed for sustainable development."
