Last July 2016, a partnership agreement between Central Mindanao University (CMU) and the Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC) to implement the five-year project on SOCIAL JUSTICE IMPLICATIONS ON LAND USE CHANGE IN THE PHILIPPINES: Analysis of the Socio-Economic Drivers and Impacts on the Land and its People (LUCID).
This partnership agreement provides the operational basis for the CMU-ESSC Memorandum of Understanding signed in August 2015 for Building Institutional Collaboration on Research and Extension, specifically through:
1. Interdisciplinary research that seeks solutions to social and environmental problems;
2. Collaboration with local government units, civil society organizations, and the private sector seeking greater capacity;
3. Development of knowledge products that communicate findings and lessons from interdisciplinary research and stakeholder engagements; and
4. Communicating joint activities with other universities and networks.
With funding support from the Belgian Agence de Recherche Enseignement Superieur – Commission Coopération au Développement (ARES-CCD), LUCID is a collaborative project involving five higher education institutions co-led by Université de Namur in Belgium (Prof. Stéphane Leyens) and Environmental Science for Social Change in the Philippines (Dr.Andress Ignacio), in collaboration with Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Belgium, Ateneo de Manila University, and Central Mindanao University in the Philippines.
Signatories to both MOU and Partnership Agreement were Dr. Luisa R. Soliven, CMU President and Sylvia SM Miclat, ESSC Executive Director, with Dr. Carolina Amper, Dean of the College of Agriculture, and Heide P. Magadan, Chair of Agriculture Economics, both for CMU, and Dr. Andres Ignacio, ESSC Planning and Geomatics Director, serving as witnesses.