23rd Annual General Meeting and Conference, The Pakistan Society of Development Economists.
Siddiqui, Rehana
Honourable Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, President of PSDE,
Dr Rashid Amjad, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to the 23rd Annual
General Meeting and Conference of PSDE. We welcome all the guests who
have come from different parts of the country and from other countries.
Their knowledge and experience will enrich the proceedings of the
conference. We also welcome the representatives of our sponsors DFID,
ENGRO, South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics.
and the FES-Pakistan office for providing financial and other support
for the conference.
Ladies and Gentlemen: I feel greatly privileged to present the
Secretary's report this year to update you on the Society's
progress and activities. The society has provided the forum to promote
dialogue between academics and researchers in social sciences,
policy-makers and all other stake holders in the development process.
Currently, we have about 400 members of the society from different parts
of the world. The support and active participation of the members in
this event is vital for maintaining its standards. The hard work of PIDE staff has provided the critical impetus to keep the society vibrant and
maintain the standards.
During the last 22 conferences, about 930 papers have been
presented in sessions on various critical themes. This year the theme
is: "Environment and Natural Resource Management: Issues and
Challenges". This year 90 papers were submitted but after review
only 51 papers are selected for presentation in 3 technical sessions
(4-concurrent sessions). These technical session cover various
sub-themes of the conference, viz., natural resource management,
valuation of resources, environmental fiscal reforms. environment and
poverty, trade and environment, energy and various others. All these
issues are important and we look forward to a fruitful interaction
between researchers, policy-makers and civil society.
In addition, we have two invited lectures. First lecture will be
delivered by Prof. John Gowdy. The paper deals with important issue of
climate change and its impact on economic development. The issue is
critically important for all of us. The second invited lecture will be
delivered by Professor Mansoob Murshed. The title of the paper is:
"What Turn a Blessing into a Curse? The Political Economy of
Natural Resource Wealth." We have organised panel discussions
revolving around critical sub-themes like "The Impact of Climate
Change", "Population: Resource or Source of Depletion",
"Water and Land Use" and "Impact of Forest
Degradation".
Ladies and Gentlemen: Environment and resource use is a
cross-cutting theme. Therefore, we have experts in different areas
participating in the panel discussions. The responsibility of resource
conservation and controlling environmental damage is not of economists,
scientists or makers alone, it is the responsibility of each individual.
Furthermore, it is not for one country alone, global efforts is needed
to control the impacts of resource degradation. The responsibility of
developed countries is larger.
I hope we will all gain from the presentations and discussions in
the 3-days conference and from the interaction with academicians,
researchers, students, and policymakers. Hopefully we will accomplish
the objective of sharing the knowledge and experiences successfully and
will be ready to make efforts collectively and individually to control
the environmental and resource degradation.
In the end, I would like to congratulate and thank the staff of
PIDE for their hard work and support. Thanks to all the sponsors and to
all the guests for responding positively to our invitation.
Rehana Siddiqui
Secretary, PSDE
Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad.
