Najam Attends and Speaks at Climate COP28

Pardee School Professor and Dean Emeritus Adil Najam, who also serves as the President of WWF International, has had a busy two weeks attending, speaking at, and commenting on the global climate negotiations, or COP28, held at Dubai. These latest round of climate negotiations for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are referred to as conferences of the parties (or COP) and have now also become the largest annual gathering of policy makers, activists, businesses, civil society, and world leaders on global climate change. This years meetings also brought together over 100 heads of state and government from across the world. Professor Najam is a leading scholar of global climate negotiations, and especially of the UNFCCC.
On the first day of COP28, on November 30, Prof. Najam spoke at the launch of the WWF’s ‘Panda Pavilion’ on expectations and hopes for COP28. Najam stressed on the urgency of the climate challenge and the need to keep our ambitions high and focus on tangible actions rather than grandiose promises. He also presented opening remarks at another panel on climate communication organized by WWF China.
While in Dubai for COP28, Najam was invited to speak at a leaders summit on Climate and Security organized by the Munich Security Conference, where other speakers included Senator John Kerry, the special representative of the US President on Climate Change. Najam highlighted the importance of human security and outlined why climate is now an existential threat to so many countries and people in the world. He also participated in a high-level COP28 roundtable hosted by the Prime Ministers of Spain, Senegal and Brazil on the launch of the International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA).
On his third and final day at COP28, Prof. Najam featured in a fireside chat on ‘Faith and Environment’ at the UNEP Faith Pavilion where he argued that climate change in particular and the environment in general was as much a moral issue as it is a scientific or economic issue today, especially for young people. He argued that if the goal is to change human behavior to bring back a balance in our relationship with nature, then we should look at climate as a moral issue. Najam was also the lead speaker at an event at the Pakistan COP28 Pavilion on ‘Living Indus’, a policy vision for Pakistan for which Najam was the lead author. The Interim Prime Minister of Pakistan, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, presided over the event and presented Najam with a traditional Sindhi Ajrak (shawl) in recognition of his services to environmental and climate policy and scholarship in Pakistan.
Later in the week, Najam participated at a COP28 event organized by the Malala Fund where he presented his recent research on girls’ education and climate change, particularly in developing countries. He presented a model of interaction which suggests that climate change can be a threat multiplier for the existing challenges for girls’ education while education as a whole, including girls’ education, can possibly be a solutions multiplier in the efforts towards combatting global climate change.
Meanwhile, throughout COP28, Najam has also been commenting on the substantive negotiations at COP28, especially for the BBC (e.g., here, here, and here).
Adil Najam is Dean Emeritus and Professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and since July 2023 also serves as the President of WWF-International. He served as the Inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies from 2014-2022. He is also a 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 Pardee School faculty profile.