The 10th International Consortium for Social Development – Asia Pacific Biennial Conference will be hosted by the Philippines on 23 to 24 October 2024. The overall conference theme is “The Fifth Industrial Revolution Amidst Multifaceted Disruptions: Harnessing the Power of Social Development.”
Advances in scientific knowledge and futuristic technological innovations seemed to have little impact, if any, on alleviating global poverty and inequality. While global poverty recorded a decreasing trend before 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic reversed this (World Bank Group, 2022). The pandemic was aggravated by climate change-induced disasters, human-induced disasters, and domestic and cross-border conflicts. In the midst of all these, the financial sector suffered shocks as banks, too big to fail, collapsed.
Multiple crises take on different forms: cost of living crisis, natural disasters and extreme weather events, geoeconomic confrontation, failure to mitigate climate change, erosion of social cohesion and societal polarization, large-scale environmental damage incidents, failure of climate change adaptation, widespread cybercrime and cyber insecurity, natural resource crises, and large-scale involuntary migration (World Economic Forum, 2023). The impacts of all these simultaneous phenomena create a disruption not only on individuals but on society. Historian Adam Tooze described this as “If you’ve been feeling confused as though everything is impacting on you all at the same time, this is not a personal, private experience. This is actually a collective experience.” He calls this a polycrisis, a term that came up during the 2023 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland although this was originally used by French theorist Edgar Morin in 1970 and popularized by Adam Tooze. Amidst the polycrisis, the concept of the Fifth Industrial Revolution remerged with the potential of making technological innovations focus on the human person from the process to their impacts. Development for the sake of development or innovation for innovation’s sake is considered passé. This new paradigm of technological revolution fits into the vision of social development.
Picking up from the idea that we are on the verge of a polycrises amidst technological advances and a rapidly changing world, the theme focuses on how social development responds to the multifaceted disruptions brought about by these simultaneous and seemingly interrelated crises. Thus, the theme of the conference will be The Fifth Industrial Revolution Amidst Multifaceted Disruptions: Harnessing the Power of Social Development. As the theme suggests, the conference aims to showcase the role of social development such that social innovations and responses to disruptions create effective pathways towards the eradication of poverty and inequality.
Although social workers and community development workers have been using the perspective of social development early on, social development gained recognition as a development perspective during the 1995 World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen. The Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development has been used as the framework in the arena of social development work. Social development is focused more on people than economic growth. Based on the Copenhagen Declaration, social development is founded on human dignity, human rights, equality, respect, peace, democracy, mutual responsibility and cooperation, and full respect for the various religious and ethical values and cultural backgrounds of people.
The time for the Philippines to host the 10th biennial conference has come, and we can do this in 2024. For close to five decades, the College of Social Work and Community Development of the University of the Philippines Diliman has been advancing social development through its curricular programs: Community Development, Social Work, and Women and Development. To consolidate further the competence of its base programs, the CSWCD launched the Doctor of Social Development Program (DSD) in 2009. Hosting the ICSD-AP 10th Biennial Conference will be an opportunity for the CSWCD to contribute to the advancement of social development not only in the Philippines, but also in the Asia-Pacific Region and hopefully at the global level. The 10th biennial conference will coincide with the 50th year of ICSD and the 15th year of CSWCD DSD Program. The ICSD-AP is an opportune occasion to forge the ICSD partnership with the University of the Philippines.
For details:
https://cswcd.upd.edu.ph/icsdap-2024-conference
https://www.socialdevelopment.net/icsdap2024conference
