Adil Najam: ‘Climate change hits poorest first’
June 7, 2010
Climate expert Adil Najam believes that one of the major challenges associated with climate change involves the options that people have to adapt to change. And there is a big difference between the North and South. “Climate change hits poorest first, hits the poorest hardest and hits the poorest disproportionately“, said Najam in an interview with Deutsche Welle. He named Haiti as an example. As a result of the latest earthquake in 2009, so many people had died because they were poverty stricken, living in huts and houses in disrepair.
An American citizen who was born in Pakistan, Najam is professor of global policy at Boston University and director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. He was a leading author on the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, and is just one of the many experts attending the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum. This year’s conference, entitled “The Heat is On – Climate Change and the Media”, will take place from June 21-23 in Bonn.
Najam puts the responsibility on industrialized nations. “According to the polluter pays principle the industrialized nations assured the developing countries in 1992 that they would reduce greenhouse gases and advance the cause of post-carbon society. But the industrialized nations haven’t even remotely kept their promise.”
According to Najam, another major challenge lies in the balance between national and global interests. He said that the climate summit in Copenhagen last December showed all too well, other powers have come to determine the international negotiations, especially the emerging economies of China, India and Brazil. He went on to say that “the most important players are no longer just the nation states” – the business world and civil society have become important, too. “What we need is a real partnership between the three.”
More than 50 individual events
In 2010, the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum once again offers more than 50 events including podium discussions and workshops, interactive presentations and exhibitions, networking and interesting side events. It takes place at the World Conference Center Bonn, close to Deutsche Welle’s headquarters.
Deutsche Welle is cooperating with many different organizations for this interdisciplinary conference, including the UNESCO, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the International Human Dimensions Program on Global Environmental Change (UN IHDP/ESSP), EU Commission and the World Bank, the Wuppertal Institute, World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), NABU and the Climate Alliance, the Institute for World Business Kiel, German Development Institute (DIE), the Center for Development Research (ZEF) and many others.
Co-host of the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum is the Foundation for International Dialogue of the Sparkasse in Bonn. The convention is also supported by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, the Family, Women and Integration Ministry of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, European Funds for Regional Development, the city of Bonn, DHL, the KSB Group and Faber-Castell.