Najam Keynotes Australasian Aid Conference 2022
Adil Najam, Dean Emeritus and Professor of International Relations and Earth and Environment at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, was a keynote speaker at the 2022 Australasian Aid Conference, which was held at the Australian National University (ANU) from November 28-30. The conference was organized by the Development Policy Center of the ANU’s Crawford School of Public Policy in collaboration with The Asia Foundation (TAF), where Najam is a Trustee of the Board.
The conference, now in its eighth year, has become a major event for scholars and practitioners from across Australia and from all over Asia and the Pacific who are working in international development, including senior government policy leaders from across the region. This year, the conference attracted over 600 participants.
Najam’s keynote address at the conference dinner was titled “Climate IS Development” and he posited that “the onset of climate change fundamentally changes the nature of climate policy and of climate politics, and in the ‘Age of Adaptation‘ climate IS development.” He argued that because we are now already living in the “Age of Adaptation,” we can no longer afford to look at climate and development as two separate areas of policy but need to integrate our thinking in these two areas. He suggested that while this idea is broadly acknowledged in the abstract, practitioners in both realms are still resistant to practically linking policy in the two realms. Najam pointed towards a number of challenges and opportunities in development policy that is not only being impacted by global climate change but where adaptation-focused development policy could be a source of improvements both in development and environmental outcomes.
For further details on the conference, visit the Australian National University’s website.
Adil Najam is a global public policy expert who served as the Inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and was the former Vice-Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). 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. Read more about Professor Najam on his faculty profile.