Dean Najam Presents at UN Workshop on Global Governance
Dean Adil Najam of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston Univeristy was invited by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to present at a workshop on global environmental governance and “Achieving Environmental Sustainability for Sustainable Development.”
The workshop was held at the United Nations in New York City from July 21-22, 2016, and included a session on the contributions of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) and the High-Level Political Forum for Sustainable Development (HLPF) during which Najam delivered a lecture.
In his presentation, Najam focused on the development of the global environmental governance agenda in parallel to the sustainable development agenda and argued that the two are not contradictory but are two sides of the same coin. He suggested that this is no where more true than in the emergence of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the concurrent development of the UNEA and the HLPF. In particular, Najam reviewed the role of UNEP in global governance and argued that the UN agency for the environment needs to more forcefully realize its given mandate of being the “environmental conscience of the world.”
The workshop was attended by a small but select group of leading experts and practitioners of global environmental governance including Amb. Julia Pataki (Romania), Dr. Elliott Harris (UNEP), Elizabeth Mrema (UNEP), Astrid Schomaker (European Commission), Prof. Norichika Kanie (Keio Univeristy), Prof. Maria Ivanona (UMass Boston), Faye Leone (IISD), Jamil Ahmad (UNEP) and Hossein Fadaei (UN Geneva).
Adil Najam is the inaugural Dean of the Pardee School of Global Affairs at Boston University, where he also serves as a Professor of International Development and of Earth and Environment. He is the former Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (Pakistan). Dr. Najam was a lead author for the Third and Fourth Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In 2008 he was invited by the UN Secretary-General to serve on the UN Committee on Development (CDP). He is the author of over 100 schoalrly papers and over a dozen books, including Global Environmental Governance: A Reform Agenda (2006). A past winner of MIT’s Goodwin Medal for Effective Teaching and the Flecther School Paddock Teaching Award, Dr. Najam serves on the International Board of WWF and is the Board Chair of the South Asia Network of Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE).