Editorial: The 25th Blog

7 Apr 2021 3 Comments

It has been five months and three weeks since we started our blog last year in October 2020 and today, we come with our 25^th blog. Hooray!! A small victory for us and we thank all our contributors from the bottom of our heart for helping us to achieve it. Without your help, motivation and support we would not have come this far.

We would also like to thank our readers for your reviews, critique and sharing of our dreams. Without your valuable insights, we would not have dreamed big. So this time, we bring to you a small editorial: a thank you note and a projection of our dream for a sustainable future.

We started the NEDA blog with an attempt to discuss sustainability and to provide a platform for young researchers and professionals to write about developmental concerns of Northeast India. We wanted to showcase our local sustainability issues and how our cultures have been influenced by nature, the economic growth we require and changes that we can bring together as a society.

Over the last five months, our blog contributors have come from varied educational and professional backgrounds, and this has been reflected in the plethora of articles we received. We tried to cover conservation, waste management, local industries, indigenous culture, climate action, water resources, gender-based violence, etc. which are all integral parts of Sustainable Development. Sustainable Development is not just limited to the environment or climate change. It also encompasses the social and economic aspects around us. Hence, while talking about sustainable development we also take social inclusion, decent work, gender equity, education and above all peace into consideration. Society and its members play an important and integral role to achieve and sustain it. Keeping our goals in mind, through our blogs we have tried to incorporate the different virtues of Sustainable Development Goals and its broadness.

We also take this opportunity to portray our organization’s work. Northeast Development Agency (NEDA) is the research wing of The Enajoree Foundation (TEF). In the recent year, we have successfully conducted a review on the sustainability issues of Assam and the origins of these issues. Currently, we are working on various research projects on climate change, land degradation in Northeast, groundwater management and a project to understand and draw a plan for the rural transport system in Assam. NEDA believes in promoting sustainable solutions for livelihood, economic growth, decent work and dignity across all social strata while trying to preserve the beauty of our region for our future generations. TEF too has been promoting various awareness campaigns and connecting with society. Soon TEF hopes to bring a change in the current linear economy, promoting a green and circular economy.

We understand that we have been covering various topics majorly in Assam; unfortunately, we have not been able to undertake much research on other States of the Northeast due to the ongoing pandemic situation. However, sustainability is not just a local issue (though acting locally will help us to achieve it globally) but has transboundary repercussions and we genuinely seek to undertake research in other parts of Northeast India. We would like to welcome professionals and academics across the Northeast to contribute to our blog as well as collaborate with us on topics they deem important for society. This summer we have launched a Call for Articles (Summer 2021) for prospective writers who would like to submit articles to our blog (details here). We would love to continue our endeavour to connect to peers from the region and bring out interesting excerpts for our readers. We hope our blog will develop into a platform for the injunction of science and policy with a liberal academic connotation.