Globalisation has accelerated the pace of internationalisation of higher education (IoHE) worldwide, including our 3 target countries in the South Asian (SA) region, Afghanistan (AF), India (IN) and Nepal (NP). The globalised market requires graduates to have international (int’l), foreign language and intercultural skills to communicate with int’l clients. Higher education institutions (HEIs) plays a critical role in preparing and facilitating a skilled, knowledge workforce, they are placing more importance on internationalisation. However, SA, home to a 25% of the world’s population & a youthful region with more than 600 million people under 18 (UNICEF 2015), has failed to respond to the demand on IoHE. The poor internationalisation practices in the region may jeopardise the socio-economic development by unfulfilling the preparation of students’ employability & limiting the int’l profile of the HEIs. MERGE has taken an endogenous approach to address the challenges. It commences with a benchmarking exercise to standardise internationalisation practice alongside 2 study visits to EU. After that, it equips 366 people (incl. non-consortium partners) via 6 trainings and 6 English courses to develop strategic goals for both IROs and institutions until 2025. Meanwhile, 5 national activities will be organised to promote IROs’ services, e.g. 6 mobility weeks and 6 video filmed. To enhance the student mobility services, 1 guideline will be developed which can be adapted by 6 PC HEIs and other HEIs. A 45-member regional network will be established to encourage regional cooperation and integration. To increase MERGE exposure on the international platform, 2 international conferences will be organised to stimulate cooperation and dialogue. The sustainability and long-term impact of MERGE is ensured by enhanced institutional capacity and engaging non-consortium partners.

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Deltas are economic and environmental hotspots, food baskets for many nations, and home to a large portion of the world population. They sustain rich, biodiverse ecosystems and related services. Most deltas are also international and regional transportation hubs that support intense economic activity. Yet, deltas are deteriorating at an alarming rate due to climate impacts (e.g., sea level rise and flooding), human-induced catchment changes (e.g., water and sediment flow reduction), and local exploitation (e.g., sand, groundwater, and hydrocarbon extraction). The international science community recognizes the need to develop a solid knowledge base for protecting these vulnerable coastal systems, and this BF initiative leads the way by coordinating and enhancing innovative international work towards the development of a science-based framework for delta sustainability. The project will develop a versatile modeling framework that may be applied from local to national levels to evaluate the unique functioning, critical stressors, and vulnerability of the world’s deltas. The framework will ingest social, economic, physical and ecosystem data into an open-access repository and will allow planners to model and deliver optimized, viable solutions for their region. In areas for which detailed data are sparse, an infrastructure for critical data gathering will be developed and modeling and prediction tools will be customized. The framework will initially be applied to three case-studies for which local and regional partnerships are already in place, including the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM), Mekong, and Amazon deltas. The team represents the BF-G8 countries: Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Norway, India, Japan, UK, and USA, and includes partners in the Netherlands, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. It is composed of government and university researchers, and NGO’s, working closely with policymakers. The training of graduate students and post-docs able to work across disciplinary boundaries and countries will also be a unique legacy of the project.