Najam Interview: Solving a Planet-Sized Puzzle on a Deadline

Prof. Adil Najam, Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Professor of International Relations and of Geography and Environment at Boston University, and a Lead Author of the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was interviewed by the German media group Deutsche Well (DW) during his recent media and speaking tour of Germany to discuss the future of global climate change policy (full report here).

The radio interview ran across the world as part of the program Living Planet and a radio version can be heard here (listen to interview audio). A transcript of the interview can be read here.

A key point that Prof. Najam raised in his assessment of the Copenhagen climate negotiations is that “Copenhagen wasn’t a success. But it isn’t a failure yet.” Some excerpt from the full interview.

We didn’t get the kind of targets, binding agreements or voluntary policy commitments we were hoping for from the major countries involved. And some people might be losing faith in the prospect of reaching a truly global agreement. I think that would be a terrible thing. We need a global process. We need a UN process. I think that is what we will be aiming towards in Bonn… this is a global problem, a planetary problem. You can’t exclude people from the solution. Having said that, I think different countries have different roles to play and the negotiations should involve different countries addressing different aspects, like solving a big jigsaw puzzle together. The idea that you can get a handful of “important” countries together to solve the problem is only going to land us with more problems… I think some people think there’s a magic formula. If we figure out which two or three countries should sit down and solve the Rubik’s Cube, everything will be alright. But I think it’s more like solving a huge jigsaw puzzle, one so enormous that you can’t do it alone, you need the whole planet.