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SD Conferences
Missing Links in Sustainable Development: South Asian Perspectives
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Sub-ThemesEnvironment The root cause of continued environmental degradation and poverty is lack of sustainable development. Sustainable capacity of human, economic and environmental resources and their accessibility, effective and just use leads to sustainable development. Lack of financial investment for environmental protection and non-consultative approach among the stakeholders for the development and implementation of control measures/action plan for pollution control have led to increased environmental degradation in South Asia. During the last quarter of the century, atmospheric pollution has increased significantly in the region, largely as a result of escalating energy consumption, and especially due to an increase in motor vehicles. Biodiversity and fresh water sources in the region are under a serious threat. The South Asian region has a poor record of safe drinking water supply and more than 500,000 infant deaths a year reported are due to dirty water and poor sanitation. Deforestation continues at an alarming pace. The Ninth SDC will examine the issues on sustainable development nationally and regionally. There is also a dire need to look at the manner(s) in which governments cooperate and exercise power in natural resource management in their respective countries and in the region. The participants of the Conference will share their experiences and discuss national and South Asian regional environmental issues pertaining to all segments of environment for sustainable development. The following panels will be organized under the sub-theme of environment: Panel 1: Myths and realities of deforestation in Pakistan: Implications for sustainable forest management South Asia is one of those regions where the rate of deforestation is very high. The remaining forests are very diverse in nature and are of significant importance for the country’s economy and livelihoods of the local people. Sustainable forest management cannot be carried out without understanding the myths and realities regarding deforestation. The panel on forestry will analyze the perception of forest dependent people regarding the forest use pattern, condition of forests, change in forest cover, factors responsible for the forest depletion and increase of illegal cutting on the one hand and various external (state, donors) polices adopted for sustainable forest management on the other. An intra regional comparison would be made to draw some conclusions for bridging the missing links towards sustainable forest management. Contact Panel 2: Forest degradation, resource rights and livelihoods: The institutional context A term commonly used to describe the vicious cycle of poverty and environmental degradation is the poverty-environment nexus. Poor, forest dependent, communities are viewed as willing or unwilling agents of degradation. Among the factors that contribute, directly or indirectly, to such behavior are cognitive awareness (of alternative opportunities), a high discount rate applied to the future, population growth, poverty and perverse incentives (high prices of forest products). Relatively little attention has been paid to the institutional context, specifically, to the historical resource rights and responsibilities of communities in accessing and managing forest resources; nor to how colonial, feudal and central authority has arrogated these rights over time and transformed communities from guardians to predators of the commons. The interplay of customary and statutory law can produce benign or harmful outcomes, depending on how transparent forest governance is. An historical institutional analysis, linking degradation with resource rights can offer valuable policy insights; in particular, it can sensitize policy makers to traditional community roles in forest management and how the potential to tap them still exists in an evolving economic, social and cultural context. The Conference would benefit from contributions in this relatively unexplored dimension of the poverty-environment nexus. Contact: Panel 3: Water justice and governance in South Asia South Asia currently faces a large-scale water crisis; its two prominent manifestations are declining per capita availability (water stress) and degrading water quality. This is the result of a growing mismatch between a given stock of water, and growing demand, reflected in a South Asian population growing at the rate of 1.8%, and the competing sector demands of agriculture, industry, and households. The sector imperatives also contribute directly to water toxicity with its attendant health problems. The macro imbalances transmute into equity concerns in urban settlements across the region, where affluence and poverty determine who gets the water and how it is disposed of. In other words, the provisioning, consumption, and distribution of clean drinking water is fraught with inequities with upper class neighborhoods being well serviced while urban slums face the brunt of the health risks associated with a polluted water supply, open sewerage systems, and lack of proper drainage. At the heart of this crisis is the capture of national water resources by the elite and the powerful, which leverage management interventions by development authorities, state agents, or private firms to their own benefit. While the broad contours of this water governance context are generally well understood, there is a seeming lack of high quality, academic studies that move beyond assertions such as “our impression is that….” to actually documenting how these processes of elite capture operate at the micro level throughout South Asia. The panel aims to present thematic or country case studies which address justice and governance concerns around water in a more rigorous manner. Contact:
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