Sustainable Solutions: A Spotlight on South Asian Research was
launched on 1 December 2008 at the occasion of the Eleventh Sustainable
Development Conference. The anthology comprises eleven chapters based on
peer-reviewed papers presented at the Tenth SDC in December 2007.
Publishing the anthology is a year-long process in which the papers go
through a systematic review process and the ones that get approved are
edited and published in the anthology.
The anthology deals with research on real
life problems ranging from misconceived historical perspectives in South
Asia, threatened livelihoods, policy-led disaster management,
challenges and opportunities offered by trade liberalization and
globalization, and the neglected role of women in coping with the
challenges of non-sustainable development is presented to give the
reader an idea of the complexity and interdependency of these issues.
Whether research can play a role in offering
solutions to the challenges faced by sustainable development is a
much-debated question. While some argue that the research-policy
disconnect renders most research findings useless, others contend that
the theory-practice disconnect is the reason for policy failure. Yet
another school of thought believes that unless means of implementation
are not clearly defined at the research level the policy is bound to
meet failure. They feel that ensuring implementation is a policy
formulator’s task, and s/he should identify the means to turn theory
into practice.
It is in this context that policy researchers
at the Tenth Sustainable Development Conference, ‘Sustainable
Solutions: A Spotlight on South Asian Research’, deliberated not only
the predicament of formulating the right research questions, but also
took the opportunity to discuss the political economy of research
itself, i.e., is it supply or demand driven? What is meant by
sustainable development and who are its stakeholders? Why researchers
are not able to diagnose the problems correctly or why after having
diagnosed the problem cannot suggest the right solution owing to various
socio-political and/or economic constraints.