IDEAS hosts Pathways to Development Conference 2022
In collaboration with its institutional partners, IDEAS hosted the inaugural Pathways to Development Conference in December 2022, a multidisciplinary conference that brought together empirical and historical research by economists, political scientists, sociologists, legal and constitutional scholars, and law and policy reform experts, within and outside Pakistan, to document and describe the scale of challenges facing Pakistan and to organise discourse about ways in which these can be mitigated. The event brought together a growing corpus of historical and applied primary research from different disciplines to take stock of the country’s trajectory and the reform strategies available to put it on track for development.
Over the three days of the event, researchers and practitioners participated in 22 engaging panel sessions presenting the latest development work on Pakistan in the areas of climate change, economic growth, gender, agriculture, political participation and social justice. Among other esteemed presenters, conference participants had the privilege of hearing Dr. Miftah Ismail, Dr. Sania Nishtar, Justice Athar Minallah, Dr. Imran Rasul and Dr. Zeba Sathar speak about wide ranging topics pertinent to sustainable development such as inclusive growth, poverty alleviation, judicial reform and population planning and welfare. Prominent policymakers in attendance included Mohsin Khan Leghari and Makhdum Hashim Jawan Bakht who participated in the panel discussions on fiscal foundations and the rural economy respectively.
Mr. Mueen Afzal, IDEAS Chairman of the Board of Directors welcomed conference participants during the inauguration session held on Dec 19th, at Lahore University of Management Sciences. On the objectives of the conference, he shared the following: “Our expectation is for this conference to serve as a platform for interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge and collaboration, and to provide a space for developing discourse and dialogue on development.” Dr. Rabea Malik, CEO IDEAS shared the following: “We hope that this effort continues in the coming years as one of the best outcomes of the conference has been the large consortium of organizations that has come together to collaborate for this event.”
The conference was hosted jointly by the following institutions: Institute of Development & Economic Alternatives (IDEAS), Chaudhry Nazar Muhammad Department of Economics at LUMS, Mahbub ul Haq Research Centre at LUMS, Institute of Development Studies at University of Sussex (IDS), Consortium for Development Policy Research (CDPR), International Growth Centre, and Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP). The video recordings from the event are available at this link.