Najam in The News on Sunday on Climate Change
Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston Univeristy, was quoted in several articles on climate change and the current record-high heat in South Asia.
Najam was quoted in three articles in The News on Sunday on June 5, 2016, the first entitled “The Climate of No Change.” Najam discussed the current attitude toward climate change in Pakistan, stressing the need for climate change to become a high-priority political issue in order for progress to be made.
From the text of the article:
“Experts talk about climate change and journalists write about it as a ‘global’ issue rather than a Pakistani issue,” says Najam, adding that only when it becomes a high priority ‘political’ issue will media become serious.
“That means people will have to start getting angry about environmental degradation — about needless deaths in floods in Gilgit, about heartless neglect of drought in Thar, about manageable heatwaves in Karachi… get angry about it the same way we now get angry about corruption. When that happens, maybe we will see change,” he exclaims.
Najam was also quoted in the article “How Green is Really Green?,” discussing what the term “green living” means in developing countries compared to the meaning in developed countries.
From the text of the article:
Dr Adil Najam, Dean of Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, dwells on the issue in purely local context. He says, “My first and most important point would be that the so-called ‘green life’ would mean something very different in a developing country like Pakistan than what it might mean in more affluent countries, or for affluent Pakistanis. Frankly, I do not like the term too much because it has come to imply something of a ‘fashion statement’ as if green living is what ‘hip’ people do.”
“To me, it means living in a way that respects nature. It means living without being arrogant. Living as if the world around you matters. Living in the realisation that this planet and its resources have to be shared with others. Living, above all, with a constant sense of planetary justice,” he says.
Najam was quoted in a third article, entitled “Pakistan’s Vulnerability,” where he discussed potential mitigation efforts Pakistan could make in response to climate change.
From the text of the article:
According to Dr. Adil Najam, Dean, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University and former Chairman Board of Governors, Leadership for Environment and Development (LEAD) Pakistan, a think tank, “In terms of mitigation, there is fairly little that Pakistan can do. Given that Pakistan is a fairly small emitter, our mitigation may not make a huge global difference. However, Pakistan should certainly care about efficiency and especially about energy waste, given how energy poor we are.”
When asked how cities can be made resilient to climatic impacts, Najam says, “Pakistan should be very carefully looking at its burgeoning cities and easing life there. Massive concrete structures do make the challenges greater. The best test of whether a city is environmentally sensible is to see if it is livable, especially for its most marginalised citizens. Meet that test, and you will mostly also meet the climate test.”
Dr. Adil Najam (عادل نجم) is the inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University which was founded in 2014 with a $25 million gift from BU alum Frederick S. Pardee. Earlier, Prof. Adil Najam served as Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Lahore, Pakistan and as the Director of the Boston University Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. His research focuses on issues of global public policy, especially those related to global climate change, South Asia, Muslim countries, environment and development, and human development. You can read more about him here.