UNDP Human Development Report Roundtable National University of Science and Technology Sustainable Development Policy Institute

1. Enhancing Social Justice, Equity and Sustainability
Dr. Vaqar Ahmed
Sustainable Development Policy Institute 1

2. Key Message of HDR
• Sustainability and Equity cannot remain a
marginal consideration, but must be
accepted as core imperatives in policy and
governance.
– Harvard Students: Teach us sustainable capitalism
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3. Rhetoric Vs. Schematic
Lifestyle
Hazards
VALUES
Health
Welfare Education Equity
Governance
Economics
The big academic divide 3

4. Sustainability 101
• Case study: Chitral in 1970s
• Nature of economy:
• Self-reliant  food secure  justice  social capital
• Then comes globalization (the bad one!)
• Provide irrelevant education without opportunity  brain
drain
• Sectoral reallocation away from agriculture  loss of
comparative advantage
• Ex-Chitral firms flood agriculture and industrial output
killing agriculture and low-end industry in Chitral
• In the end no agriculture, no industry for Chitral (recall
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2007 global food crisis)

5. Sustainability 101
• Now Chitral’s people migrate to cities
• Skill mismatch  exploitation in name of cheap labour
• Slums  environmental and health hazards
• Crime
• Result:
• We have destroyed production structure in rural economy
& and overloaded urban economy
• Please remember GDP is still growing
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6. Before Jumping to Remedies……
• Some questions:
• Who benefited from adopting bad forms of globalization?
• Power structure  imposed not adopted
• Why was no value attached with good form of globalization?
• Why not celebrate diversity!
• If one tries to answer these questions, one will not
blame political leadership rather ownself
• Revealed preferences
• Voted for external competition, urban living and
extravagance  choice (bigger and better)
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7. Before Jumping to Remedies……
• How to sustain extravagance  fiscal deficit?
• Where to finance subsidized production &
consumption?
• Debt
• Trade-off own natural resources
• Gas and water at throw-away prices !
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8. Now where to go from here……
• Kickstart growth  create sustainable
jobs
• Lets revisit our comparative advantage:
• Rural
• Agriculture (crop sector, livestock)
• Labour (unskilled)
• Urban
• Infrastructure
• Integrated markets
• Labour (skilled)  educated and healty
• Inequality is clear  not sustainable 8

9. Now where to go from here……
• To move towards sustainable jobs, give
rural economy what urban has
• Education with opportunity (relevant education)
• Food security and health
• How?
• Through inclusive markets and rural infrastructure
• Give large rural populations municipal services
• Need for local-area growth strategies
• Putting value on local-area production and diversity
• Not forcing Chitrali framer to go to cities for selling output
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10. But the story is not complete…
• The above mentioned is what East Asia has done e.g.
China [Rural Development Strategy] and Thailand
[Once Village One Product]  balanced growth
strategies
• But Chinese model will only kickstart growth  what
about sustainability and equity
• With local-area growth model ….need for local-area
sustainability and equity planning
• 18th Amendment to help!
• Planning Commission’s Growth Strategy important
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11. Thank You
www.sdpi.org
vaqar@sdpi.org 11