General Agreement and Bylaws of ICEDS
Link to Living Spaces Project / ICEDS
A Brief Introduction to ICEDS
Toru Terao
Co-conveners of ICEDS, Kagawa University
The International Consortium for Earth and Development Sciences (ICEDS) was established by Kagawa University in Takamatsu, Japan, to accelerate multidiscipline communications on the global and regional environment and society.
The Consortium originates in the General Agreement concluded in 2010 between Kagawa University and Gram Bangla, a private institution for environmental action research and practices in Bangladesh that started its mission in 1992 in a district called Kanchanpur, where it engaged in drilling wells, women’s health, occupational training, agricultural development, and early childhood education.
In February 2015, the two parties renewed the General Agreement and established Bylaws in order to expand the consortium into a unique network of academic cooperation agreements based on individually concluded agenda. We welcome new members representing different spheres, and seek collaboration with different groups in Japan and overseas to mutually learn about what is occurring in our world and to explore the necessary responses and solutions. We hope to encourage exchange among students and private entities as well.
Our concept is well described in the following passage by Rabindranath Tagor:
Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin. I am proud of my humanity when I can acknowledge the poets and artists of other countries as my own. Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine. (Rabindranath Tagore, Letters to a Friend, London: Allen & Unwin, 1928, extracted from Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999)
We look forward to hearing from interested institutions and organizations and joining hands with a diversity of agencies in a wide range of earth and development sciences.
