Najam Interviewed by IIASA on Living in the Age of Adaptation
Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was recently interviewed about his experience as a Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) Fellow at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), as well as the reality of living in a time of adaptation. IIASA is an international scientific institute that conducts research into the critical issues of global environmental, economic, technological, and social change that we face in the twenty-first century.
Najam was interviewed for a July 26, 2017 article by IIASA’s Nexus Research Blog, entitled “Interview: Living in the Age of Adaptation.” Earlier, last month, Najam had presented a keynote address on the same theme at IIASA, in Vienna, at the 40th Anniversary of the YSSP program.
From the text of the article:
Recently at the 40th anniversary of the YSSP program you spoke about ‘The age of adaptation’. Globally there is still a lot more focus on mitigation. Why is this?
Living in the “Age of Adaption” does not mean that mitigation is no longer important. It is as, and more, important than ever. But now, we also have to contend with adaptation. Adaptation, after all, is the failure of mitigation. We got to the age of adaptation because we failed to mitigate enough or in time. The less we mitigate now and in the future, the more we will have to adapt, possibly at levels where adaptation may no longer even be possible. Adaption is nearly always more difficult than mitigation; and will ultimately be far more expensive. And at some level it could become impossible.
How do you think can adaptation be brought into the mainstream in environmental/climate change discourse?
Climate discussions are primarily held in the language of carbon. However, adaptation requires us to think outside “carbon management.” The “currency” of adaptation is multivaried: its disease, its poverty, its food, its ecosystems, and maybe most importantly, its water. In fact, I have argued that water is to adaptation, what carbon is to mitigation.
To honestly think about adaptation we will have to confront the fact that adaptation is fundamentally about development. This is unfamiliar—and sometimes uncomfortable—territory for many climate analysts. I do not believe that there is any way that we can honestly deal with the issue of climate adaptation without putting development, especially including issues of climate justice, squarely at the center of the climate debate.
Adil Najam is the inaugural dean of the Pardee School and a professor of international relations and also of earth and environment at Boston University. 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. Najam was a co-author for the Third and Fourth Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); work for which the scientific panel was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for advancing the public understanding of climate change science.