SEI established its Asia Centre in January 2004 to strengthen its role in bridging science and policy to help advance sustainable development. It built a diverse team with strong connections in the region, and made it a priority to build capacity in local institutions as well, most notably through two programmes: SUMERNET (Sustainable Mekong Research Network), and the Regional Climate Change Adaptation Knowledge Platform for Asia (Asia AKP).
Today, the Asia Centre has just over a dozen full-time staff, but SEI’s goal is to grow it to 20-25 staff with a wide range of expertise relevant to the challenges facing Asia today. Eric Kemp-Benedict, who assumed leadership of the centre on February 15, answered questions about his new position.
Q: Before becoming director, you had been seconded to Asia from SEI-US for almost a year. What drew you here?
A: I have been working with the deputy director, Chayanis Krittasudthacheewa, for some time on a project in the Northeast Thailand – a local study as part of the project Exploring Mekong Regional Futures, led by CSIRO. It was one of SEI’s first studies of the water-energy-food “nexus” and featured regular and substantial interaction with policy actors and other stakeholders. That work brought me to Thailand several times, included for a month-long stay in Khon Kaen. So when Chayanis asked if I would consider being seconded to the Asia Centre to help build the centre’s research capacity, I agreed.
Q: How much have you worked in Asia?
A: I am becoming more connected. I have now worked to some degree on projects in Southeast Asia – the Mekong Basin, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam – as well as in India and China. I have also traveled to Indonesia for collaborations with CIFOR. My engagement started with the Mekong Basin Focal Project, part of CGIAR’s Challenge Program for Water and Food. However, as my work is mainly about modeling, scenario development, and training on methods, I do not feel that I have the deep understanding that a field researcher would have.
Q: What makes Southeast Asia such a compelling area for research on sustainable development?
A: The entire world is interesting from a sustainable-development perspective, but Southeast Asia has special characteristics. It is a rapidly growing region containing countries at very different levels of economic development. The notion and reality of ASEAN as a regional group is still in its formative stages, and it is interesting to see that evolve. The region is also closely connected to China and influenced by India, whose development is likely to be transformative both for the region and the world.
Q: How successful has SEI Asia been in its first few years?
A: The Centre has done some impressive work, especially hosting the SUMERNET Secretariat. As a research network that is meant to have a policy impact, SUMERNET is putting into place practices that SEI wishes to implement in all of its projects, such as a thorough-going boundary partner model, with appropriate monitoring and evaluation. I would also say that the Northeast Thailand Futures project was quite successful both in generating new knowledge and in linking to policy.
Still, there have been difficulties, at least in part due to high turnover of Centre Directors – which was mainly due to personal reasons, but still created challenges. So the Centre has not been as visible as it could be. However, between our existing core staff and some excellent recent hires, I think we now have a team that is very strong on both research and programme management, and we will be bringing in additional staff.
