Given the multiple
crises in the West, daunting challenge of poverty at home, and the emerging
needs to look towards East, paradigms of sustainable development in South Asia
need to be redefined, said the speakers at the inaugural session of 14th
Sustainable Development Conference (SDC) ‘Re-defining Paradigms of Sustainable
Development in South Asia’ organized by Sustainable Development Policy Institute
(SDPI) here on Tuesday.
The region, which
hosts the half of the poor of the world, needs to redefine its approach towards
poverty reduction. Its orientation towards development also needs to be
redefined with greater regional cooperation and integration.
Speaking at the
inaugural session as Keynote Speaker, Dr Sabina Alkire of the Oxford
University’s Poverty and Human Development Initiative said the measurement of
poverty needs to take into account multi-faceted nature of deprivations faced
by the poor. She shared the salient findings of the Multidimensional Poverty
Index (MPI) 2011 with particular reference to South Asia, which was earlier
launched by the UNDP Human Development Report Office.
According to the MPI
2011, as many as half of the population of Pakistan is poor and the country
needs to adopt its national multidimensional poverty line so as to take into
account the multiple deprivations in education, health and living standards
that 82.7 million MPI poor face.
Syed Naveed Qamar,
Minister for Water and Power, said the South Asian region has a common history
and shared future, instead of embroiled with the different kinds of conflicts
tormenting the lives of billion of people, we should cooperate and promote
feelings of one region as it will benefit all the regional countries with
regard to poverty alleviation, social development, social justice and natural
resource management.
He said that the
region has always followed the policy of ‘looking at the West’ for development
but it missed where it wanted to go and now the time has come to adopt a policy
of ‘looking at the East’ keeping in view the regional economic cooperation and
neighborhood. Talking of MFN status to India and Pak-China joint initiatives he
said cooperation and partnership between the countries in the region is of
utmost importance which would enable us to resolve our issues and challenges. He
appreciated SDPI for its independent expert contributions for national
policy-making in past and hoped that it will continue its people-centered work
in future.
Dr. Saeed Shafqat,
Chairperson BoG, SDPI said, this year‘s theme, has special significance not
only for the region as the states prioritize policy agendas for the 2nd decade
of 21st century but also for SDPI itself as it struggles to re-set
its goals and re-interpret its institutional mandate, defined as the enhancement of peace, social justice and
well-being, within and across generations.
Dr. Abid Qaiyum Suleri, Executive Director, SDPI launched the SDC 2010
Anthology, ‘Peace and Sustainable Development in South Asia: The Way Forward’.
Citing global current crisis involving economic, social, political,
environmental dimensions, he said that prevalent development paradigms in
developed world have not been able to take care of the current generations what
to talk of future generations. He said
the conference would help us to analyze as to whether the Western
prescriptions prescribed to us so far were relevant, financially viable, their
relevance with countries’ political will, capacity to meet the demands at
grassroots level and expertise at implementers level to deliver, and also
whether all of the abovementioned factors or none of these factors were
responsible for poor recovery of our patient—the underdevelopment.
“This conference
would also try to come up with new normative for our existing problems and we
hope that revised normative may lead to revised solutions” added Dr Suleri.
In the session on
‘Livelihood options in conflict affected situations’ lack of awareness is one
factor that goes unnoticed when it comes to identifying the reasons of low
coverage of Social Safety Nets in Pakistan, said Dr. Babar Shahbaz of
Faisalabad University. Gayarthi Lokuge from Sri Lanka said rivalries amongst
ethnic groups was a major cause of non-cooperation in the fishermen community
and can be tackled if the government provides a working support system for all
fishermen. Richard Mallet from the United Kingdom and Dr. Ashfaq Hasan Khan,
Safal Ghimire from Nepal highlighted the use of information, technology and
communication as a means to increase livelihood options.
During the session on
‘Literature in South Asia: building bridges through fact and fiction’, Ameena
Hussein, writer and publisher, Sri Lanka, Sushma Joshi, writer and film-maker,
Nepal, Ayesha Salman of SDPI, Harris Khalique human rights activist and
development practitioner, said the literature works as a means of expanding
minds and providing deep insights on social and political issues that must be
expressed to attain the greater goal of human development. They said the
literature has helped to bridge the gap between different societies of not only
South Asia, but also throughout the World.
During the session ‘Analysis of land rights situation in Pakistan’
jointly organized by Mehnaz
Ajmal Paracha, of Oxfam GB and chaired by MNA Sharmila Farooqi, Nasar Hayat,
Independent consultant, Fatteh Marri, researcher and Zulfiqar Shah of Institute
of Social Movement gave their expert insights. It was highlighted that land
right issues in Pakistan were directly linked with poverty, food insecurity,
un-sustainability and social unrest. The
size of land and productivity coupled with judicious access and supply of water
resources are equally important with the land rights. The experts agreed that
the last three land reforms in Pakistan did not comprehensively address all the
paradigms of Land ownership issues and there is a dire need of formulation of
National Land Policy and defining the Land reforms contextually. The effective
land reforms with judicial land distribution system were considered to be an answer
to the prevailing challenges in the country.
|
