MASTER OF SCIENCE IN BIOLOGY

Summary

Nearly half of the world population lives in tropical ecosystems (TE) or depends on them, many in socio-economically vulnerable conditions. TE thus are life-support systems. TE play regulatory and resource-providing roles of global importance, comprising most of the world’s diversity, while being unproportionately prone to climate change and overexploitation. With TE in large decline, humans depending on TE functions, goods and services are threatened in livelihood and well-being. Mundus tropicalis will train young S and N students to become the future scientists, conservationists, managers and policy-makers who will make a difference for the TE on which their home countries and regions depend. Excellent education/research/science, professionalisation, networking, and capacity-building skills will be their leverage in an era of change. M. tropicalis will do so by in situ teaching that TE cannot be viewed as self-contained, as this is not conducive to build TEs’ functional resilience to impacts and change. Instead M. tropicalis will focus on scientific interconnectedness of TE but also on how to transcend knowledge acquisition towards practice, pragmatic actions, policy-making, expert-based advocacy, implementation, enforcement and adaptation. This demands skills in science communication to a range of audiences, which graduates will acquire. This will be put into practice in collaboration with 4 core (BE-KE-PH) and 9 network partners (BE-EC-KE-TZ-ZA), who will co-create transferable educational, research and program development formats, which can be integrated into curricula of core partners and of the network beyond. M. tropicalis students will also be trained to finance curiosity-driven, need-driven and policy-preparing research at the international level. When integrated in research and policy, graduates will be knowledgeable in activating and valorising financing mechanisms at the benefit of S-S and N-S networks. (abbreviations in Annex 4 Fig. 1).

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