'Diversity contributes to progress of nations, humanity'

Diversity contributes to the progress of the nations and humanity at large with human diversity endowing humanity with tremendous potential. Dr Mahendra M. Shah of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria made this observation while delivering a lecture at the GC University, Lahore.
'In the 21st century, knowledge will be the key to human progress and we need to understand, what comprises the right balance of diversity. We saw unprecedented changes in human diversity in the 20th century', he said. 'Food and water are the universal human rights besides education, healthcare, social security, clean and safe environment across the world', he observed. He maintained that four to five billion people of the present day world are the followers of Islam, Christianity and Hinduism while 1.6 billion people follow other beliefs and religions. Today, at the dawn of 21st century, there is mistrust and unrest among the people because of their basic fundamental rights are not properly looked after, he maintained.
'We can also view the language diversity with over 6,800 languages in the world loosing 2 languages every month', he said. In terms of fashion diversity, he elaborated that one third of the world population wear blue jeans and shirts. In addition to this, latest culinary skills adopted by multinational food corporations have driven the change in the food consumption, he added.
Talking about the transport diversity, he said, in Amsterdam, people use bicycles for ride whereas the dominance of motorcars across the world, which is a growing phenomenon, has added to the pollution. He bewailed over the knowledge diversity by arguing that diversity of traditional knowledge is declining. He further said that threats to nature's bio-diversity, air, water and land pollution are the major concerns while extinction of species are of great worry and we are loosing species one million per year. There has been tremendous change in the agriculture sector recorded in the last 300 years, he said and added that now we are planting 'Monno cropping'.
He quoted Secretary General United Nations Organisation (UNO) who said in 2001, our biggest challenge in this new century is to take an idea that sounds abstract sustainable development and turn it into realty for the entire world's people. Talking about education, he said education comprises a life long learning system and observed that universities would have to play pivotal role in disseminating knowledge based quality education to students and knowledge is the most important element in future development, he added. 'Nations must make the coalitions and commitments against poverty alleviation and for removing economic disparities', he maintained.
Vice-chancellor GC University Professor Dr Khalid Aftab said on the occasion that diversity has many dimensions and we need to ensure diversity at the national and international levels.