Najam Presents at CDPR on Climate and Sustainable Development
Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, spoke at the Consortium for Development Policy Research (CDPR) in Lahore, Pakistan, as part of their ‘Lahore Policy Exchange’ series.
The afternoon seminar brought together the development policy and academic community in Lahore for what was a lively session on “Climate Change and Sustainable Development.” In addition to Najam, a presentation was also made by Ahmed Rafay Alam, a leading environmental lawyer of Pakistan. The session was moderated by Dr. Naved Hamid, a Director of CDPR and Professor of Economics at the Lahore School of Economics.
Najam spoke about the shifting global context for climate change and sustainable development while Rafay Alam followed with a case study of Pakistan. Najam argued that we are now living in what he called “the age of adaptation” but that the challenges have compounded in recent months because this age of adaptation is now confronted with four major realities: the post-Trump world, the post-Paris world, the post-Truth world, and for Pakistan also the post-CPEC world. He suggested that this shifting reality required developing countries like Pakistan to take the lead in climate and sustainable development themselves and not wait for the United States or others to first step forward.
Adil Najam is the inaugural dean of the Pardee School and was a former Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore Pakistan. He is the author of over 100 academic papers and author or editor of about a dozen books. He was one of the lead authors for the third and fourth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Learn more about him here.