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Inagural session of 20th Sustainable Development Conference

Twentieth  Sustainable Development Conference organized by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) was held at Islamabad, Pakistan from 5 to 7 Dec 2017, with the theme ‘Seventy Years of Development: The Way Forward’.

The Conference provided an interactive platform to meet experts from various countries including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, China, Nepal, Sri Lanka. It created an opportunity to share ideas, find similarities and solutions from each other’s learnings. It provided a good opportunity for South Asian delegates to share their country specific development experiences to attain Sustainable Development Goals in future for South Asia and beyond. Various think tanks discussed about the role of thinking community, their contribution and shared their future agenda. They focused on collaborative actions from the public and private sector.

The conference had featured sub themes as socio-economic development, regional integration, SDGs, social justice, women empowerment, violence against women, minority rights, pluralism, climate change, information technology, energy, regional cooperation, and role of think tanks among others. Inaugurating the session, Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri, Executive Director, SDPI  said that the conference would explore ways to achieve sustainable development goals in future for South Asia and beyond.

Kritagya Regmi, Communication Officer at HERD during the session 

I participated at the event as one of the speakers for the session “Pathways to Realize Health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs)”. The panel seeked to explore the challenges and opportunities in health sector on moving towards a framework for implementation of health-related SDGs.

The panel explored the existing institutional mechanisms to implement the SDGs at national and provincial levels and how these arrangements are interlinked with each other; role of other stakeholders in this regard; gaps and challenges in implementing the integrated and multi-sectoral approaches to achieve the health sector goals; how data gaps be filled and what collaborations are needed and what monitoring mechanisms are useful in this respect. It further explored about the challenges and opportunities for health policy institutions to align their plans and policies with SDGs; how we can incorporate the social determinants of health in plans and policies within and outside of health sector to achieve the goal of healthy lives and well-being; best way to align the health goals with other sectors and what could be the framework for implementation in this regard.

I got an opportunity to share the Status of health related SDGs adaptation in Nepal and the frameworks and pathways being considered to achieve the health related SDGs. The audiences and the panellists were made aware regarding how serious the government is in aligning SDG with its plans and policies. In addition, I also shared what is being done by various sectors and the ways forward. The session was very interesting considering the fact that all the panellists shared their experiences and ideas.

I also attended various sessions related to Violence Against Women (VAW), role of think tanks, South Asia’s biggest development opportunities among others. The sessions were very informative in terms of flourishing the knowledge regarding various development issues. The issues faced in different countries of the South Asian Region was similar. There was a lot to learn from each other. The suggestions and way forward shared if implemented would definitely make some difference in the current scenario. I believe these sessions has definitely helped me gain knowledge on various issues and also provided the platform where I got an opportunity to share my views.

Photo Credit: Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI)