Pardee Director Gives Keynote at 10th Berlin Conference

Prof. Adil Najam, Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and Professor of Geography and the Environment and Boston University gave the opening plenary address to the 10th Berlin Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change held at the Freie Universitat Berlin on October 8-9, 2010.

The 2010 Berlin Conference was the 10th conference in the well established series of European Conferences on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change. This year’s conference focused on the “Social dimensions of environmental change and governance,” and Prof. Adil Najam’s opening plenary address looked at “The Equity and Governance Dimensions of Environmental Change and Climate Adaptation.” Later, Prof. Najam also spoke at a ‘semi-plenary session on “Governance of Sustainable Development: Rio+20.”

The conference brought together over 300 participants from around the world to a packed and intellectually rich agenda that included over 50 panel, four ‘semi-plenaries’ and four plenary sessions. The conference was also web-cast and included virtual participation from audiences at the University of Cape Town (South Africa), United Nations University (Japan) and Colorado State University (USA).

In his plenary presentation, Prof. Najam highlighted the need to look at climate change as a development challenge rather than just as a ‘carbon management’ challenge. In his semi-plenary presentation Prof. Najam presented the emerging findings of various Pardee Center activities around the Rio+20 conference, including an early Pardee Center paper on the subject, a Pardee Center panel held at the 2010 UN CSD meeting, and the forthcoming Pardee Center Task Force report on the subject.