Major: Environmental Health and Technology for Developing Economies

Because

Developing economies are increasingly facing environmental degradation due to population growth, rapid urbanization, and inefficient environmental management. Reaching unsustainable pollution levels, this results in a heavy burden of death, disease and disability. At every level of development, the countries in question must make the appropriate technological and policy-related choices to reach economic prosperity. This may or may not be entirely different from the past and current choices made by the developed nations. In the latter context, developing nations have big opportunities: the absence of existing infrastructure allows greenfield developments, leapfrogging existing approaches and immediately make sustainable choices for effective environmental technology.

If you are passionate to learn how environmental degradation impacts human and environmental health, and if you are eager to acquire know-how and skills to tackle these problems in a developing nations setting, studying Environmental Health and Technology for Developing Economies at Ghent University (Belgium) is exactly what you are looking for.

Become an expert

With this specialization study, you will:

• Acquire the ability to discuss, in a multidisciplinary context, important aspects of public and environmental health. This will include knowledge of the pathogenesis and epidemiology of viruses and parasites found in water and in the environment as well as the possibilities for control;
• Be able to select and design key existing and emerging technologies appropriate in resource-limited settings for the treatment of human and industrial waste streams whilst recovering their valuable and marketable resources to the maximum;
• Be able to plan and manage holistically and at different scales of intervention, by engaging relevant stakeholders and by taking into account relevant socio-economic factors.

Benefit

• You can choose to major and perform thesis research in Environmental Health and Technology for Developing Economies  during the entire second year of the two-year master program in Environmental Science and Technology.
• The teaching staff of this program is dedicated to train a new generation of professionals that is ready to provide creative, sustainable and workable solutions for increasingly complex and wicked environmental problems, from local to global scale, both in developed and developing economies, from oceans to mega-cities, duly accounting for the driving forces of global climate change.
• Ghent University is a top 100 university on the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities (66^th overall, 37^th for life sciences) and top 100 for environmental studies on the QS top universities ranking. 
• The teaching staff of this master program has been in involved in worldwide renowned research in the area of Environmental Health and Technology for Developing Economies. For instance, Ghent University has together with the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation developed technology that sanitizes effluents of community toilets in India. The technology is fully electricity driven and links with the strive for zero-chemical-input, decentralized technologies. We are also working in Ecuador where we combine electrochemical disinfection with constructed wetlands to limit environmental and health risks.    

Be involved

The application deadline for the Environmental Science and Technology programme is February 29^th 2020 for non-EU and scholarship seeking students (EU or non-EU) and June 1^st for EU students