Pardee Researchers Going to Climate Talks Featured in Boston Globe Story

A Boston Globe news story on New Englanders who will be attending the upcoming global climate negotiations at Copenhagen features Boston University researchers from The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. The Pardee Center has designated observer organization status from the United Nations for these and future climate change negotiations.

Pardee Center Post-doctoral Research Fellow Dr. Miquel Munoz and Pardee Center Director Prof. Adil Najam, who will both be at Copenhagen and who have been working on a number of research initiatives on global environmental governance (here and here), were prominently featured in the report.

The article mentioned that Dr. Munoz’s will be be conducting field interviews at the meeting as part of his research on the costs of global environmental governance and in particular the cost of the Copenhagen meeting. The report also included quotes on the nature of such meetings from Prof. Adil Najam:

Those who have attended previous rounds of climate talks offer a caution for the novices: Confusion reigns. And, it can be hard to see your personal contribution at the talks.

“I am going with my eyes open but knowing it is like watching paint dry on the walls,’’ said Adil Najam, director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University.

A lead author of the IPCC who has been to other climate talks and is going with more than a dozen BU students and faculty, Najam has gotten requests from people who have no research or other reasons to be in Copenhagen. After explaining to them it probably would not be worth the money, many opted not to attend.

Still, he said, “for many, it is a Woodstock moment. There is a sense it’s important. And you need to be at a place at a particular moment in time to say you’ve been there.’’