Najam Keynotes at IIASA Anniversary in Vienna

As a graduate student Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, spent the summer of 1994 in Vienna, Austria, at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) as part of their Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP). As IIASA marked the 40th Anniversary of the YSSP program, on June 20-21, 2017, they invited Najam to return to Schloss Laxenburg to be one of the keynote speakers at the anniversary celebrations.

Najam’s keynote address was titled “Living in the Age of Adaptation” and where he presented the argument of his recent work to argue that we are already living in the ‘Age of Adaptation’ and, for too many people particularly in poorer countries, climate change impacts are no longer a possibility for the future but a reality of today. He elaborated on how we as a planet and as a species have stumbled into this Age of Adaptation (which, he argues, we were never supposed to live in) and went on to highlight key elements of what this means for the life of the most vulnerable communities.

In particular, Najam highlighted the importance of water in the Age of Adaptation. “Climate change can no longer be simply about carbon management. Water is to climate adaptation what carbon was to mitigation,” he said.

A video of the session Najam spoke can be viewed below:

IIASA was created in 1972 by representatives from the then Soviet Union, the United States and 10 other countries, to use scientific cooperation to build bridges across the Cold War divide and to confront growing global problems on an international scale. It is housed in the refurbished Schloss Laxenburg near Vienna was made available by the Austrian government. In the 1990s broadened its mandate to achieve a greater global focus. Today IIASA brings together a wide range of scientific skills to provide science-based insights into critical policy issues in international and national debates on global change, with three central research focuses.

Since 1977, IIASA’s annual 3-month Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) offers research opportunities to talented young researchers whose interests correspond with IIASA’s ongoing research on issues of global environmental, economic and social change. Over 2000 young scientists have participated in this program over these years, many going on to make significant intellectual contributions in their fields.