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Joint Efforts Needed to Save the Climate

Saleem Sheikh on 31, Dec 2011 | 1 Comment | in Category: Around the World

Saleem Sheikh

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Achieving development in all spheres of the life with fast depleting natural resources without compromising on needs of the future generations have become a serious challenge today for socio-economic planners, policymakers, researchers and scientists in South Asian countries.

There is, thus, now a greater emphasis on prudent use of the natural resources at all levels to attain sustainable development goals. Findings have concluded that collaboration among planners, policymakers, researchers and scientists is highly critical for socio-economic growth.

Researchers and scientists have already identified novel methods and developed technologies, which can be deployed for sustainable use of the natural resources for attainment of the goals of sustainable development. But, absence of their collaboration with planners and policymakers with planners and policymakers in the regional counties has been a major roadblock to why state of the socio-economic maladies including poverty, hunger, mounting food insecurity, poor agriculture performance, inefficient irrigation water use, joblessness, slowed industrialization, energy crisis, health diseases, contaminated drinking water, poor sanitation and hygiene situation in almost all South Asian countries, continues to deteriorate.

Dr Nadeem Ul Haque, Deputy Chairman Planning Commission of Pakistan was right in telling to the 14^th South Asia Sustainable Development Conference that there is an urgent need of collaboration among scientists, researchers, academicians and policymakers to determine actionable and creative research agenda for socio-economic growth of in all the regional countries including Pakistan and India and make the development more durable.

The three-day regional conference was organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) a non-governmental organisation, in Islamabad, which concluded on December 15.

“Shifting (the) focus of federal policies of the regional governments from mere political agendas to science, research and technological advancement is critical for sustainable development,” Abid Qaiyum Suleri, executive director, Sustainable Development Policy Institute.

Accessibly of the governments’ policymakers and planners to information produced as a result of scientific research is of high value and needed to fight social, economic, environmental, health, education, water, sanitation problems in the South Asian countries. No or poor research will always add more to the state of the socio-economic ills being confronted by the societies in these countries, where nearly 600 million poor of the world live.

Peter Taylor, programme specialist at Canada’s International Development Research Centre, remarked that while policymakers’ access to quality, objective information generated through independent research was crucial, in most South Asian countries, this is produced outside national policy contexts.

“Such collaboration gaps must be plugged by the governments themselves to develop and implement policies in the light of results of scientific research that would help lead to more equitable, prosperous societies,” he underlined.

It is also true that benefits of whatever technological advancement has been attained by the regional countries have hardly reached to the majority of the people in the region. There are various reasons behind this problem, with lack of collaboration among the policymakers, researchers and government’s policymakers at top to blame on.

Eak Bahadur Rana Magar, project coordinator at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, said that the benefits of technology and access to technology have not reached a huge number of the poor in the region. Because, market pressures and the needs of developed countries, rather than those of poor countries, influenced technology development and dissemination.

The regional conference also heard that adequate preparation for tackling climatic change effects, meeting Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and ensuring pro-poor governance is the only way forward to provide comfortable livelihood along with food security to the 600 million poor in South Asia.

Bipul Chatterjee, executive director at the Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS) International, India, believes that food insecurity and livelihood threats are further intensified by the impacts of climate change in South Asia. However, an well-though plan to mitigate climate change effects on all socio-economic sectors is need of the hour.

“Absence of which will only deepen miseries of all of us, particularly of the marginalised and the deprived. Besides, adopting climate change-resilient initiatives including low carbon economy to reduce the effects of climate change, which causes large scale devastations as being observed in Pakistan,” he said.

Bipul Chatterjee said that over the last several years India has made great strides in science and technology.

He listed medicine, water conservation, renewable energy, high-yield crops, astronomy and computation as areas in which India has made progress that can be shared in the region.

“These technologies and relevant scientific and technological knowhow can be transferred to other regional countries if better collaborative science and technology policies are implemented,” he said.

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