From Survival to Sustainable Development: Overcoming Challenges for Achieving a Just World.
Friday, May 11th 2018 at the Asian University for Women in Chittagong, Bangladesh
To be held at the Radisson Hotel, Chittagong
By all accounts, the earth’s people have never had it better—we live longer and healthier and more productive lives than any time before in history. Our average incomes have never been higher. Every day ushers in innovations that can only be described as extraordinary triumphs. Yet, there are tens of millions of people whose lives are at risk in the face of persecution, violence, or from extreme poverty that denies them even the basic necessities for sustenance, or ecological disasters that banish the prospect of any reasonable life. Nature has been unkind in certain areas, no doubt, but human misadventure and incompetence have pushed millions more to the brink of disaster and death. When desperate people flee inhumane conditions, they find doors are increasingly closed to them. This symposium will highlight that while the imperative of sustainable development must be supported to ensure an even better future for the world overall, our attention cannot be lost on those who live so perilously close to death—such as the Rohingya ethnic minority now assembled in just about 100 kilometers away from the site of this symposium in Chittagong, Bangladesh. We hope that this symposium will help awaken all of us to the urgent issues at stake in overcoming threats to survival as well as continuing our progress towards a more sustainable future. There can be no sustainable development as long as so many people continue to struggle for basic life.
