Concept Note
The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) is holding its Twelfth Sustainable Development Conference (SDC) from 21-23 December 2009 in Islamabad, Pakistan. This year’s Conference is titled ‘Fostering Sustainable Development in South Asia'. Each SDC is designed to be a forum for sharing and exchanging dialogues on sustainable development with academia, practitioners, civil society and policy-makers. The SDC series has been established as a prime Conference in South Asia on development issues attracting leading intellectuals, development practitioners, communities and policy-makers to come together. Last year, the Conference hosted some 70 panelists from nine different countries at its Eleventh SDC. An anthology, based on peer reviewed SDC papers, is published and launched at the succeeding Conference.
When the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) held its Seventh Sustainable Development Conference (SDC) in December 2004, researchers, social scientists and scholars looked at the troubled times and governance in the age of extremes. They expressed their views and findings on governance and development issues, sharing of natural and institutional resources, concerns related to the marginalized, and on how to adopt practical strategies to avoid making mistakes committed in the past.
Five years down the road, the times are even more troubled than ever before with the looming issues of conflict, lawlessness, extremism, and, insecurity constantly on the rise. The South Asian region has been going through tumultuous times no doubt. Add to these woes the six ‘Fs’ crisis of food; fiscal; fuel; frontiers; functional democracy and fragility of climate. Scholars at the Twelfth Sustainable Development Conference will be looking at such pertinent issues and trends, examine where the region of South Asia has come since then, and propose viable strategies for sustainable development.
Call for Abstracts/Research Papers
The three-day conference shall have panels that will be open to thought-provoking questions and debate. Scholars from South Asia and those whose work focuses on this particular region will be invited to delve further and share with us where South Asia stands today vis-à-vis coping with the six “Fs” crisis facing the region. Scholars and researchers will be expressing their views and research findings on state of sharing of natural resources such as water, food, and energy in the region. The global financial crisis would be addressed and a South Asian response highlighted. They would apprise about pro-people governance and how can governance be further improved – whether it is that of natural resources or institutions. How can environment be made more sustainable when it comes to climate change and pollution? How can the menace of lawlessness and extremism be curbed? How can democracy be strengthened in order to face the challenges by South Asia? What role can education and history play towards sustainable development? Gender will remain a crosscutting theme during the Conference.
The Conference will not be limited to these queries alone but will also be addressing issues of wider interest to the audience, policy makers, civil society and other stakeholders as the panel titles suggest.
Abstracts followedby papers are invited for the panels under the overarching theme. Please refer to the Conference website for author’s guidelines and other details of the Conference. Contact information of the panel organizers is provided below to facilitate communication between a potential speaker and the respective panel organizer. Abstracts may be submitted to the panel organizers latest by 15 September 2009. A screening committee will review the abstracts. Speakers whose abstracts get approved will be required to submit their papers by 15 November 2009. Speakers are requested to follow the reference guide provided in the author’s guidelines available on the Conference website.
Conference Format for the SDC 2009
There will be one main plenary each day in which prominent keynote speakers will be invited to address significant areas of sustainable development such as natural resource management, peace and sustainable development, environment, and gender. The plenary each day will be followed by two to three concurrent sessions / panels on sub-themes covered under the overarching theme. The plenary will last for one hour and 30 minutes while the duration of each panel will be two hours and 30 minutes with three to five presentations.
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