SDPI’s Ninth Sustainable Development Conference 2006
By Saad Saud

ISLAMABAD—The Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) held a curtain raiser press conference to announce its Ninth Sustainable Development Conference (SDC), titled ‘Missing Links in Sustainable Development: South Asian Perspectives’ from 13 to 15 December 2006.
The Conference will be held at a local . Dr. Saba Gul Khattak, SDPI’s Executive Director, addressed the press conference and briefed the media about the forthcoming international Conference and gave an overview of the preceding eight conferences in the series. The Ninth Sustainable Development Conference (SDC) will host a number of reputed national and international scholars, academicians, researchers and activists, both from civil society and the government.
Atta-ur-Rehman, Chairman Higher Education Commission, will be the Chief Guest for the inaugural session of the Conference and will launch the Eighth SDC anthology.
The Conference will be addressed by prominent keynote speakers including Dr. Walden Bello, Director of Focus on the Global South, Bangkok, a project of Chulalongkorn University’s Social Research Institute, and Professor of Public Administration and Sociology at the University of the Phillipines; Ms. Urvashi Butalia, a publisher and a writer, co-founder of India’s first feminist publishing house, Kali for Women, and Director Zubaan; Mr. Dipak Gyawali, Research Director, Nepal Water Conservation Foundation; and, Institute for Social and Environmental Transition, Nepal; and Mr. I. A. Rehman, Director Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Apart from Pakistan, delegates will be coming from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, North America, Canada and Europe.
The Ninth SDC, she said, would examine the multiple facets of sustainable development in the contexts of South Asia.This year’s Conference thus aims at identifying the missing links in SD for South Asia and proposes fillers for those. Questions addressed at the Ninth SDC will include why benefits of globalization have failed to trickle down to the region’s vast population and steps towards a process of global economic integration that benefits the marginalized. It asks, which channels exclude women from access to resources, such as land, decent work, and human security, and how these structures can be changed.
For this task, the region’s pool of cutting-edge academics have been tapped and top researchers invited together with policy-makers, activists and other relevant stakeholders for a vibrant three-day debate, explained Dr. Khattak.