Najam in CSM on Acting on the Paris Climate Deal
Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was recently interviewed on an announcement by the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) that global carbon dioxide levels have passed a symbolic threshold.
Najam discussed whether the announcement will force countries to act on last year’s Paris climate deal in an October 24, 2016 article in the Christian Science Monitor entitled “CO2 Levels Reached Milestone in 2015: A Prompt to Turn Paris Deal Into Action?”
From the text of the article:
“If 400 has any real meaning – it’s just a number nature doesn’t know – it’s that climate change is no longer an issue of the future. It’s one of today and now,” Adil Najam, dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, tells The Christian Science Monitor.
“You cannot lull us by saying we will do something tomorrow,” says Dr. Najam, who was a co-author for the Third and Fourth Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “Let’s start doing something now.”
But Dr. Najam believes that in order for the Paris deal or Marrakesh to have any significance, countries must agree to reduce carbon emissions now, not in the future. Wealthier nations must also help less developed countries already feeling the effects of climate change.
You can read the entire article here.
Najam is a past winner of MIT’s Goodwin Medal for Effective Teaching, the Fletcher School Paddock Teaching Award, and the Stein Rokan Award of the International Political Science Association, and the ARNOVA Emerging Scholar Award. In 2011, he was elected a Trustee on the International Board of WWF; and in 2013 elected a Trustee of The Asia Foundation (TAF). Learn more about him here.