‘Corridors of Knowledge for Peace’ opens tomorrow

Islamabad: The Sustainable Development Policy Institute IS holding 21st Sustainable Development Conference (SDC 2018) and the 11th South Asia Economic Summit (SAES XI) here tomorrow (Tuesday).

This 4-day event under the theme “Corridors of Knowledge for Peace” will discuss economic and other corridors of connectivity and knowledge that can steer us towards peace and development. The researchers, academicians, scientists, policy makers, legislators, and experts from different fields are expected to come up with their evidence-based policy solutions. They will share the best practices and present workable solutions to the emerging challenges related to sustainable development in the region.

The sessions at the conference largely include economy, poverty, hunger, health, education, climate change, gender equality, water, sanitation, energy, environmental and social justice and Sustainable Development Goals with many more sub-themes relevant to Pakistan and other countries.

In the SDC plenary sessions, keynote speeches will be delivered by prominent scholars, policy makers and practitioners under the umbrella of the overarching theme. One plenary is dedicated to the Journalism Awards to acknowledge media professionals' untiring efforts in highlighting the issues of sustainable development.

The South Asia Economic Summit (SAES XI) will focus on the topics and issues important to the South Asian region's current political economy. Apart from the plenary sessions aiming to discuss strengthening of broad-based dialogue across SAARC member countries, concurrent sessions would aim to discuss business-to-business and people-to-people connectivity, creating and strengthening trade and investment value chains, regional trade in services, cooperation in energy and water sectors, and strengthening dialogue mechanisms to tackle the impact of climate change in the region.

Given the presence of the regional think tank community, this year's SAES will also discuss how Track 2 and Track 1.5 efforts could support the formal SAARC process in areas such as trade, energy, transport, environment, climate change, disaster risk reduction and water.

The SDC will launch a peer reviewed anthology based on the conference papers presented during the 20th SDC held in 2017 on “Seventy Years of Development: The Way Forward,” along with other publications. SDPI will compile the policy recommendations from the 30 plus panels and plenary sessions which will be communicated to the respective Ministries and at regional level institutions. The compiled recommendations along with detailed reports of the sessions will be published in a special edition of SDPI's Research and News Bulletin. The Conference will provide an interactive forum to meet with experts and to find relevant ideas and solutions in an atmosphere of sharing and exploring.