The horrific school attack in Peshawar occurred just before the annual LEAD-Pakistan (Leadership in Environment and Development) meeting in Islamabad, whose theme could not have been more appropriate this year: “Regional Dialogue in Development, Democracy and Peace”.

General Retired Talat Masood who was invited to the dialogue had this to say: “If there is any silver lining, at least on the surface, it is that there is now a consensus on fighting the militants. Pakistan has no future unless this threat is addressed — we cannot link ourselves to the modern world.” In his opinion, despite being a democracy, in Pakistan “the civil military balance has to be restored. But you need performance for that … if you have performance then you can exert yourself and get the confidence of the people. Performance is the key to moving forward”. In his view, Pakistan is now in transition and “when a ship is taking a turn it takes time. Our neighbours need to cooperate with us and support our efforts”.

Sartaj Aziz, currently advisor to the Prime Minister of Pakistan on National Security and Foreign Affairs, was invited to give the keynote address and he chose to focus on all of South Asia rather than Pakistan itself. He noted that “democracy has now spread to almost all of South Asia” and there were many lessons to be learnt for promoting inclusive growth so that the basic needs of the people are met. He called for South Asia to “intensify networking and find common solutions … the world is integrating and moving forward and we need a South Asian (economic) union in a phased and planned manner.”

According to the latest UN report, the impacts of climate change on South Asia will get worse.

A number of experts from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India had been invited for the dialogue, including the Indian head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri who gave the inaugural address. He pointed out that “Terrorism will devour our societies … in-depth dialogue is needed on what kind of development we need, instead of blindly following the West. Resource intensive development is not suitable for us … values we have nurtured for thousands of years are eroding. Dialogue needs to be intensified, look at the challenges we are facing.”

The IPCC is the UN’s voice on climate change and this year they released their latest scientific report called the 5th Assessment Report (AR5). According to Pachauri, “There is a huge amount of new information in this report including what we are doing to the oceans … 30 per cent of greenhouse gases have gone into the ocean which has led to a rapid rate of acidification affecting marine life.”

A number of people in South Asia are dependent on resources from the sea so this is worrying. The AR5 was written by around 800 authors (mostly scientists) from all over the world — in itself a “massive scientific exercise in human development”.

From the report it is clear that the impacts of climate change on South Asia will become even worse — disasters like floods will become more frequent and intense with increased risks for human life, property and the economy. What South Asia urgently needs, according to Pachauri, is to come up with adaptation strategies. “This does not involve any politics — let’s organise ourselves on a common basis. Early warning systems can be set up on when rivers will flood. In systems like these we can meet the impacts of climate change and we can create win-win situations”. He also called for investments on a massive scale in solar energy to ensure future energy security in the region and move away from our dependency on fossil fuels oil and coal. Like Sartaj Aziz, he called for South Asia to work together to set its own model of development that can be hailed by the rest of the world. “Let this be the beginning of an intensive debate and discussion across South Asia — we owe it to ourselves and the coming generations”.

According to Prof Akmal Hussain who teaches economics at Beaconhouse National University, who also spoke at the inaugural session, “60pc of our population is young and unemployment in this country is a crucial issue. We need to set up vocational training centres and match skills with employability. The quality of education in this country is also worrying — we need to improve the quality of schooling.” He pointed out that many of his students attribute problems like terrorism in the country to some international conspiracy. “They can’t bring evidence to bear and don’t seem to understand cause and effect. Our text books are also terrible and spreading xenophobia.”

Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, the head of LEAD-Pakistan who summed up the proceedings agreed that our youth bulge and the growing inequality in our society needs to be addressed. “We have to make the young feel that they are part of the future.” His NGO does its part by training a cohort of young professionals (journalists, bureaucrats, private sector professionals and teachers) each year in sustainable development issues facing Pakistan. The trainees are taken on field trips across the country and given lectures and presentations by national experts in water problems, food security matters

and energy issues. This year LEAD-Pakistan is training Cohort 18 and celebrating their 20 years of leadership in this field (1995-2015).

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, December 28th, 2014