Global Challenges to Development in Practice (Natalia Kryg, PhD, and Juan Marmol)

In the roundtable to close the joint course “Global Challenges to Development”, Natalia Kryg, PhD, and Juan Marmol talked about “Global Challenges to Development in Practice”. They presented some practical approaches to development from the perspective of the banks and finance market as well as in the special case of agriculture in Kenya.
Natalia Kryg is economist with over 10 years history of working in the financial industry. A former Citigroup analyst, currently a principal evaluator at a multilateral developmental investment bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, on a secondment at IMF. Research areas: bank performance and resolution mechanisms, financial stability, development outcome and crisis evaluation.
Juan Marmol is agricultural engineer specialised in water resources and irrigation/drainage engineering with twenty years of experience in designing and implementing water resources plans and irrigation investment projects, modelling water resources and conducting hydrological studies. He is currently working at the AHT Group.
The joint course “Global Challenges to Development” discusses theoretical concepts and approaches to development in order to understand current global challenges brought about by globalization processes in different parts of the world. Presenting different (and sometimes antagonist) views on development, the course offers students an overview of the debate, presenting the different challenges faced by “developed” and “developing countries”, and the existing alternatives to development in theory and practice. The course alternates theoretical debates based on guest lecturers’ presentations and students’ projects related to sustainability, education, creative industries, geopolitical instabilities, and health.
This course is attended by more than 20 students from seven different countries: Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Mexico, Turkey, and Spain. It is organized by Glaucia Peres da Silva, Global Awareness Education/TRACS, University of Tübingen (Germany) in partnership with Prof. Maurício Reinert do Nascimento and Prof. Sara Picheth, State University of Maringá (Brazil) and Prof. Ronney Ncwadi, Nelson Mandela University (South Africa), and also offered in the CIVIS micro-programme Global Awareness