Najam Presents Seminar on Climate and Security at Uppsala
Dean Emeritus and Pardee School Professor Adil Najam was invited by Uppsala University, Sweden, to present a seminar on Climate and Security at its Department of Peace and Conflict Studies on April 12, 2023. Speaking to an audience faculty and students from the University and researchers from SIPRI and other institutes, Najam laid out a framework for conceptualizing climate change as a security issue, not just in the context of human security but as an existential threat at every level: global, national, and individual.
Najam introduced the notion that we are now firmly in the ‘Age of Adaptation’, a notion that he has been suggesting as a framework for future climate policy, and argued that the advent of actual climate change impacts has turned climate change from being a ‘potential threat’ for the future into a ‘real and tangible threat’ today. This, he suggested, is the basis of re-evaluating how climate and security linkages are understood both in research and in policy.
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). While currently on sabbatical he is based at the University of Oxford’s Wolfson College and the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. His research focuses on issues of global public policy, especially those related to global climate change, South Asia, global governance, environment and development, and human development. Read more about Najam on his faculty profile.