Talk about Emerging Technologies as panelist in “Pakistan’s First ever National SDGs Dialogues” at National University of Science & Technology (NUST).

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals are a set of 17 interconnected global goals intended to serve as a “roadmap to a better and more sustainable future for all.” The United Nations General Assembly (UN-GA) established the SDGs in 2015, with the goal of achieving them by 2030. They are included in the UN-GA Resolution known as the 2030 Agenda, also known colloquially as Agenda 2030.

NUST’s Office of Sustainability, collaborated with the SDGs Academy and the state media PTV Official, to host Pakistan’s first and only National Dialogues on SDGs. The dialogues were based on the quintuple helix model, in which public, privates, social, and academic sectors alongside civil society participated to collectively chart a roadmap for the government to expedite progress on SDGs. The most laudable feature of these dialogues were the youth participation, a number of students, student bodies heads were invited to participate in these conversations as “youth representatives”, and they were given a platform to voice their concerns on all the issues discussed. These cross-sectoral dialogues took place on the 16th and 17th of March 2022 at NUST’s Jinnah Auditorium, Islamabad.

The dialogues were jointly sponsored by Schlumberger, Hashoo Group, PODA, Millenium Roots Group, and the Subja Group, and the chief guests included Mr. Shehryar Khan Afridi, Chairperson of the parliamentary special committee on Kashmir, Mr. Syed Fakhar Imam, Federal Minister of Food and Nutrition, and Dr. Ahmadou Lamin Semateh, Gambia’s Health Minister. Both days of the dialogues witnessed a healthy turnover of more than eight hundred participants from various sectors of the civil society. Leadership of more than hundred companies and organizations participated in ten panel discussions scheduled on both days, which focused on collective strategies for Pakistan’s long-term socio-economic growth.