NOVEMBER 6, 2013
“Making sustainability the next metric: the post 2015 development agenda” is the Center for Poverty Analysis (CEPA)’s symposium this year. Our Member Chandrika Kumaratunga will chair the session “Shared Societies and Governance”
Cassam Uteem, former Prime Minister of Mauritius, will participate In this session, organized in collaboration with SAPRI (South Asia Policy and Research Institute) that feature key elements of the Club de Madrid Shared Societies Project. You can check this symposium’s agenda here
The aim of the meeting is to discuss Asian perspectives and ideas into the global discussions on the post-2015 development framework. With this in mind the symposium will bring together key South Asian resource people and invited participants to discuss the position papers and other solicited inputs through 6 key sessions structured as interactive discussions with panelists and selected group of invitees.
To this end, the Centre for Poverty Analysis, in collaboration with the Centre for Policy Dialogue (Bangladesh) and Sustainable Development Policy Institute (Pakistan), and Practical Action (Sri Lanka) aims to advance and compliment the Southern Voice Initiative (Centre for Policy Dialogue) that has spearheaded the effort to increase southern think tank perspectives and ideas with a strong potential to influence the high-level discussions on the post-2015 development framework. The Southern Voice Initiative is already engaging with many international forums communicating concerns of the ‘global South’ related to the post-2015 development framework, and CEPA’s symposium will add to the knowledge hub that is driving the ongoing international conversations on post-2015 goals.
Objectives
The concept for this initiative came from a sense that key global environmental indicators are now deteriorating with frightening rapidity and if the post-2015 agenda does not focus on the need for growth and development to take place in a fundamentally different way, then it will only perpetuate the existing problems and will also not meet some of the key goals of poverty reduction. In this sense, the proposed activities are aimed at creating opportunities to bring to the fore, the issues of Sustainable growth within resource limits that will directly affect poverty reduction and development in South Asia. Second, it is hoped that the symposium will serve as a forum to relay post-2015 discourse stemming from various international fora; to gain a deeper understanding of issues that are being highlighted at the global level. Thirdly, the event will look to formulate informed proposals addressing Southern concerns and interests in relation to development.
The two themes guiding the content of this symposium are
1) the nature of development goals that address issues that are crucial to the South Asia region and
2) the process of incorporating these goals into the post-2015 development framework.