December 16, 2006	Saturday	Ziqa'ad 24, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 15: Sustainable development cannot be achieved in South Asia without an effective sustainable governance based on principles of accountability, transparency, participatory approach and meritocracy.

The need for good governance was highlighted as one of the main links during the final and third day of SDPI’s Ninth Sustainable Development Conference ‘Missing Links in Sustainable Development: South Asian Perspectives’ here on Friday.

Research Director, Nepal Water Conservation Foundation and Institute for Social and Environmental Transition, Nepal, Dipak Gyawali has called for the need to re-define sustainability away from neat but static ‘proceduralism’ towards a more clumsy but dynamic ‘constructive engagement’ between the bureaucratic hierarchism of regulatory state, the risk-taking innovativeness of the market and the cautionary criticism of the egalitarian social auditors.

He lamented that despite sustainability presenting itself as an obvious idea with inherent appeal, it had proven to be notoriously difficult to pin down or put into practice.

Sharing examples from Nepal’s water and power sector where community management of resources has been successfully practiced, he said it was important to move the debate on sustainability to the plurality of the policy terrain.

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar during the session on ‘South Asian Peoples’ Movements: Bringing Development Home’ has discussed the role of the state and its justification for dominating society by invoking the imperative of ‘national security’ or ‘national development’.

He shared how this had been the pretext for the suppression of many people’s struggles for livelihood, national rights, shelter and ecology. He said military was directly involved in the suppression of movements and struggles considered to be threatening national security or being anti-development.

He particularly highlighted the case of the struggle of landless farmers on state lands in Punjab centered on Okara military farms, and the struggle of coastal fishing communities in Badin and Thatta.

Dr Bishnu from Nepal looked at the people’s war waged by the Communist Party of Nepal and the people’s movement of April 2006.

He discussed how the civic movement of April 6-24, 2006 proved that people’s power could defeat autocratic, feudal regime by peaceful means. He recommended that non-violent civic movement need discipline, commitment, ability of leadership and believe on people’s inner strength to settle conflict and building peace.

Dr Karin Astrid Seigmann from the SDPI in the session on ‘Water Justice and Governance in South Asia’ recommended that water conservation should be given priority over large storage projects and that health implications of water-related interventions should be accessed before embarking on them.

There should be economic incentive such as secure property rights, improving access to water for the marginalised and more efficient use of scarce resources, she said.

Dr Peter L. Thomsen from Denmark discussed public-private partnership (PPP) of water resources. Pervaiz Amir commented that since Pakistan was now a water stressed country there was need for comprehensive planning, policy development and implementation in this sector.

Prof Parimala from the University of Delhi in the session on ‘Educational Policies in South Asia’ shared that South Asia continued to suffer from high drop out rates, especially a high incidence of young girls dropping out of schools due to increased demands on women labour.

There is also a class and gender disparity in the classroom as well as in the textbooks, she said. She recommended that schools, rather than politicians should have the autonomy to choose their own syllabus.

Sarfaraz Khan from the University of Peshawar discussed the role and policies of the HEC, while Shahid Siddiqui from Lums Lahore, examined the relevance and impact of teacher-training programmes in Pakistani classrooms and the return to the status quo in spite of these trainings.

The panel closed by raising questions on the relationship between knowledge and power and the hierarchies between transfers of knowledge.

The participants pointed out that Pakistan’s educational policies were silent on the education of disabled students and recommended that educational policies on the macro-level should be combined with micro-level strategies.