Dicussion brings together sustainable development perspectives

Seven panelists discussed the greatest challenges in attaining sustainable development at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy yesterday evening. The panelists all play important roles in implementing development policy in their respective countries.

When attempting to advance development, economic and environmental policy is often biased towards the interests of more developed countries without comprehensive consideration of the realities, the speakers said.

Each country is taking slightly different paths in hopes of reaching the goal of sustainable development through the collaboration of the Regional and International Networking Group (RING), a colloquium for collaborative research and policy advocacy.

The panelists defined developed countries as "northern" and other nations as "southern" to help understand central global conflicts.

Panelist George Varughese described the difficulties of coping with wealth gaps worldwide between the elite and the impoverished in his own home country of India. "The top 20 percent of people enjoy 80 percent of the wealth," Varughese said. "It's extremely difficult to get these different kinds of stratospheres to work together."

Panelist Hernan Blanco from Chile noted how countries are trying to make deeper, structural changes. "We've recently tried to link trade with corporate and social responsibility," he said.

Blanco said dependence on natural resources can have negative consequences for underdeveloped environmental issues. "There is an endemic concern here -- dependency on natural resources for trade can easily lead to unhealthy use of natural resources," he said.

Another problem Varughese highlighted was how rural communities in lesser developed countries are nearly always rejected for financial credit, and cannot improve their conditions. "Nobody wants to work on this," he said.

The availability of technology plays a huge role in a country's development. "Technology creates livelihood enterprises. We don't know how to do academic research, and we need help from technologies that are sustainable in the grand mechanisms," Varughese said.

The panel was part of Fletcher's First Annual Sustainable Development Week.