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 neighbourhood.
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.
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