Najam Interviewed on Climate and Security
According to Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School for Global Studies at Boston University, “the key challenges from the climate and security nexus relate to climate impacts as threat-multipliers, primarily but not only, to internal security and very often in terms of human insecurities.” He said this in an interview published in the May 2018 issue of the new security studies Pakistan Politico.
Najam, who is undertaking a major research project on climate and security in Pakistan along with Prof. Henrik Selin, also of the Pardee School, highlighted the ‘law and order’ maintenance aspects of security and its link to climate change:
Look around Pakistan or at South Asia as a whole, even in the last ten years, and you see a constant procession of climatic crises that not only make the lives of people miserable, they actually make them insecure. It is not just that every time there is a flood or drought or disaster it distracts the security apparatus from its ‘traditional’ duties by turning them into relief officials. It is also that each episode also imposes new law and order burdens and ultimately they gnaw away at efficacy and effectiveness of the security apparatus.
Asked what he thought was the most important aspect of climate change and security, he said:
Water. Above all else.
There is no doubt in my mind that water is one of the biggest security challenges for Pakistan. It is existential. It is no longer long-term; it is immediate-term. It may even be as big or bigger than any inter-state threat we have from our very hostile neighborhood.
The full interview can be read online, here.
Adil Najam is the inaugural dean of the BU Pardee School and former Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). His books, amongst others, include, Environment, Development and Human Security: Perspectives from South Asia. Read more about him, here.