Najam Interviewed on Climate and Development Policy
Adil Najam, Dean of the Boston Univeristy Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, was interviewed on the podcast Soch Bichar (in Urdu) on the link between climate change and development, globally and especially in Pakistan.
Najam, who is a leading global expert on the subject, was interviewed on what global climate change means for developing countries, including in regards to energy policy. Najam explained what climate change is and why the subject has become what he called “needlessly controversial” as a topic of global public policy. This was followed by a discussion on what a “developing country logic” for action on climate change is and why such action can possibly be beneficial for developing countries, especially in terms of leapfrogging to cleaner renewable energy technologies. Najam synthesized the key strategies that a country like Pakistan can adopt that are win-win both in terms of climate change and of development.
You can listen to the entire podcast here:
Soch Bichar is Pakistan’s widely heard podcast on development and is hosted by Dr. Nadeem ul Haque, former Planning and Development Minister and head of Pakistan’s Planning Commission.
Adil Najam is the Inaugural Dean of the Pardee School at Boston University and a former Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan. He serves as a Trustee on the International Board of WWF and was the Board Chair of the South Asia Network of Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE) and of LEAD-Pakistan. Prof. Najam was a co-author for the Third and Fourth Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); work for which the scientific panel was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for advancing the public understanding of climate change science. Read more here.