Najam Participates in Bled Strategic Forum
Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, participated in and presented at the 2018 Bled Strategic Forum (BSF), held in Slovenia on September 10-11, 2018. He joined a panel that also included the former President of Slovenia, Danillo Türk, to discuss the emerging challenges of climate change and security.
Apart from President Türk and Dean Najam, the panel on climate change and security included Aira Kalela, Senior Adviser at the Office of the President Tarja Halonen, Finland and Ana Stanič, Founder and Director of E&A Law Limited, United Kingdom. The panel was moderated by Mome Saleem from the Heinrich Boell Stiftung. Najam highlighted the view that security, particularly in the context of climate change should be contextualized also as human security and also that we are already living in what he called “the Age of Adaptation” and we should “stop talking about climate change in the future tense. “It is here, it is now,” he said.
The BSF, now in its 13th year, has become the largest conclave on global strategic ideas held in Central and South East Europe each year. This high-level platform for discussion of pressing regional and global challenges, brought together multiple heads of states and government, foreign affairs and other ministers, representatives of international organizations and leading thought leaders and intellectuals.
Those presenting in 2018, also included the current and former Presidents and Prime Ministers of Slovenia; the current Foreign Ministers of Slovenia, Malta, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kazakhistan, Sri Lanka, Bosnia-Herzegovina, AUE, amongst others; Michel Barnier, the chief negotiator of the European Union (EU) on Brexit and former Foreign Minister of France; Thomas Greminger, the Secretary-General of OSCE; Aleksander Čeferin, the President of UEFA; Susana Malcorra, former Foreign Minister of Argentina; Stéphane Dion, former Foreign Minister of Canada; Amre Moussa, former Sercretary-General of the Arab League; Thomas Killion, NATO’s Chief Scientist; and many others.
Adil Najam is the inaugural dean of the Pardee School and a professor of international relations and also of earth and environment at Boston University. He was a co-author for the Third and Fourth Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); work for which the IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for advancing the public understanding of climate change science.