Najam Interviewed on Impacts of Climate Change & Need for Adaptation
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 interviewed for the annual issue of Aurora – Pakistan’s leading advertising, marketing, and media magazine – on climate change, climate adaptation, climate justice, and much more.
In the interview, Najam repeats his claim that we are living in the Age of Adaptation, in which the world – particularly poorer and more vulnerable countries – is forced to confront the impacts of climate change and adapt to them. He argues that “we don’t have the luxury to just mitigate, we have to adapt,” meaning countries must decouple economic growth from carbon production so that future global strategies are conscious of environmental impacts and their ongoing presence in the world.
In discussing Pakistan, developing countries, and their calls for climate justice, Najam notes that these are not new demands. He emphasized that Pakistan and other developing counties should raise the climate justice argument, which should be for a more just international climate order while not precluding individual action.
An excerpt:
The golden rule is don’t mess with nature. The hubris with which we have not only ignored, but laughed at nature over the last 30 years, is what is having an impact now. I don’t say this lightly. There is this sense that we will ‘manage’ it. We are the ones who ‘tamed’ the rivers and ‘conquered’ the mountains. And all this is true – but without the realization that what gave humanity the ability to become what it has become is not our victory over nature – it was the bounty of the natural system we were endowed with.
The web version of the interview can be viewed on Aurora‘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 Najam on his faculty profile.