Prof. Adil Najam Briefs Commonwealth Ministers at the United Nations

Director of the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Prof. Adil Najam, and David Runnalls, President and Chief Executive Office of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) were invited to brief the committee of Environment Ministers from the Commonwealth countries on the forthcoming Rio+20 negotiations at a special meeting of the Commonwealth Consultative Group on the Environment (CCSE) held at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Friday, May 14, 2010.

The briefing, made at the conclusion of the 18th session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development and right before the commencement of the preparatory negotiations for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (sometimes called Rio+10 Earth Summit) was based on a background paper written by David Runnalls, Adil Najam, Mark Halle and Jessica Boyle on request from the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Prof. Adil Najam’s remarks at the briefing built upon the background paper and many of the points reflected in recent Pardee Center research and publications, including the centrality of a sustainable development and an accountability focus on global governance decisions, and on the need use the Rio+20 to bridge North-South divides as well as push for meaningful but focussed change in global development management.

The Pardee Center has been active as a research node in the run-up to these negotiations, including publishing a number of papers, holding a special Pardee Center seminar at the United Nations headquarters prior to the negotiation and writing op-eds (here and here). Pardee Center research already focuses on many of the development issues that are at the Center of the Rio+20 agenda and will continue to do so (see here).