With the climate conference in Copenhagen less than two months away, Pakistani climate expert Adil Najam talks about unresolved issues and explains why he thinks China will save the world.
 | Adil Najam, Pardee Center for the Study of Longer-Range Future, Boston University, Lead Author of the 3rd and 4th IPCC Report"All of us need to understand climate change is a long-term game, not a sprint. Copenhagen is not the end. Copenhagen is just one pit stop in a longer race." (Photo: Adil Najam) |
Adil Najam is the director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and professor of International Relations, Geography, and Environment at Boston University. Najam was lead author of the third and fourth assessment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for which the IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore and other scientists.
The top UN climate official Yvo de Boer recently called China the new leader in fighting climate change. Do you agree?
Yes. I have big hopes in China. China will do things its own way, but ultimately it will do the right thing because it knows it is in its own interests.
China is tackling climate change as a developmental issue; it is not going to cut emissions the way the U.S. or Europe will, because its development trajectory is different. But here is a country that understands climate and takes it very, very seriously.
And it’s a country that is central to the success of the Copenhagen meeting. Beijing has begun bending the curve on its emissions. It is growing, but each new dollar of growth comes with less emissions. In some ways, other developing countries will also have to learn to ‘bend it like Beijing.’
Speaking about Copenhagen, what do you expect from the upcoming UN climate conference?
I think Copenhagen will be an important milestone, but it is not a destination. All of us need to understand climate change is a long-term game, not a sprint. Copenhagen is not the end. Copenhagen is just one pit stop in a longer race.
There are many things that are still undecided: China is undecided, India is undecided, and the U.S. is undecided. A lot of these decisions will need to be made before real headway can be made. That headway may not itself be made at Copenhagen, but if Copenhagen can be a step in the right direction, then it will be worth all the effort.
Has the U.S. stance changed under Barack Obama?
The U.S. stance had already changed even before Barack Obama became President. They’re still not a party to the Kyoto Protocol, but they have slowly begun to accept that they cannot totally sit out of the global climate regime.
That started happening in the last days of the Bush administration, and now under President Obama these processes has speeded up. But clearly it has not speeded up enough. Not yet.
But the economics of climate change have become clearer. Before, the U.S. and others would argue that if we do something big it will cost us a lot. Now, over the last two or three years, we have come to realize that if we don’t do anything it might cost us even more. That is the biggest change.
What are the top unresolved issues at the upcoming climate negotiations?
A couple of things need to be resolved: First, the issue of the U.S. and what they will do.
Second, the issue that industrialized countries haven’t really met their Kyoto targets. And that makes it very difficult for them to say to developing countries: We didn’t meet Kyoto targets but now you take more targets. So that’s the conundrum.
Another thing that needs to be tackled is adaptation. Up to now, we have seen climate change as a mitigation problem: reduce emissions so that climate change doesn’t happen. It is now clear that at least some climate change is happening no matter what. And then the question becomes: “What do we do about that? Who pays for that?”
Because the people who are going to suffer are the ones who had the least to do in creating the problem. They are poor people in developing countries, on islands, in low-lying countries.
Industrialized countries haven’t met their Kyoto targets. Did the Kyoto Protocol fail?
I don’t think so. And this is odd, because I was never a fan of the Kyoto Protocol. They rushed it very much, which is what I fear they might do in Copenhagen.
But in retrospect it did not fail. In terms of meeting its targets, Kyoto was not really a success. But it gave the world of policy a push. And the smart companies said: “Let’s take the first move“.
Prius is a good example. It said: “Here comes a car from Toyota, not from General Motors, I’m a cool car, I’m a normal car, and I give you twice the mileage.” So the argument that if we take on the environment the cost is going to be horrendous started chipping away.
What else needs to happen to tackle climate change successfully?
What I wish to happen is that we will turn climate change into a development issue. As long as we make it only a carbon issue there is no solution to this.
We really need to put it at the center of our economic, social, and development planning. And that would mean not doing it as a climate treaty or a carbon treaty, but really as a development treaty.
Your personal take action tip in the fight against climate change?
I think the difference is only going to be made by personal action. The national action only gives me and you the space to do the actions we need to do. What I would say to people is: Act. Do anything, but do something.
The good news is that we can reduce our impact on the climate and the earth by a huge amount without making that big a difference to our lifestyle. First action has to be: Cut waste in whatever way you can. Some of the easiest are energy consumption, water consumption, and natural resource consumption as in paper.
If each one of us would cut his usage by 10 percent, it will make a fairly small difference to our personal lifestyles but a huge difference to the planet.
editor: Miki Yokoyama
publishing date: October 26, 2009
Do you have something interesting to add? Write a comment and discuss this topic with other readers. Comments should be on-topic, non-commercial, and not contain abuse of any kind.
Comment Policy
