Upcoming Seminar on Global Climate Change: Copenhagen and Beyond

With the United Nations Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen rapidly approaching, the Boston University Energy Club and the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future will co-host a panel discussion on Tuesday, December 1 2009,  at 5pm to discuss the prospects of what might come out of the Copenhagen negotiations, and what is likely to follow. The discussion will feature Prof. Adil Najam, Director of the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and Prof. Henrik Selin, Assistant Professor of International Relations and Faculty Fellow at the Pardee Center. The session will be moderated by Prof. Nalin Kulatilaka, of BU’s School of Management.

Both Prof. Najam and Prof. Kulatilaka will be traveling to Copenhagen, along with a number of other BU faculty and students, to be at these landmark global climate change negotiations.

The seminar event aims to shed light on the intricacies of this high-stakes negotiation. The implications of the UNFCCC are tremendous, and regardless of whether a binding commitment to reduce carbon emissions is agreed upon in December, the outcome will have far-reaching consequences for every nation involved. The perspectives of both developed and developing nations will be considered, as both will be approaching the negotiating table with vastly different considerations.

Dr. Adil Najam is the Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and has served as a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), work for which the IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with Al Gore. His work has focussed extensively on global environmental negotiations, and he has participated as a scholar, an observer and as a negotiator at a range of critical global environmental negotiations. In 2008 he was nominated by the United Nations Secretary General to serve on the United Nations Committee on Development Policy (UN CDP). In 2009 he was awarded one of Pakistan’s highest civil awards, the Sitara-i-Imtiaz by the President of Pakistan. His recent works on global environmental governance include a commentary on the possibility of a “Rio+20” summit in 2012 and a research paper on measuring the negotiation burden of multilateral environmental agreements published in the journal Global Environmental Politics. Both papers were co-authored with other Pardee Center researchers.

Dr. Henrik Selin, is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Boston University and Faculty Fellow at the Pardee Center. He has written and focused on the history of global cooperation and policy making on environment and development, trans-Atlantic environmental relations, and regional climate change action in North America. On these issues, he has published journal articles in, among others, Global Environmental Politics, The Journal of European Public Policy, Global Governance, International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Economics and Law, and Ambio. He has a forthcoming book on Global Governance of Hazardous Chemicals which will be published by MIT Press in 2010, and has recently published a co-edited book on Changing Climates in North American Politics: Institutions, Policymaking and Multilevel Governance.

Prof. Nalin Kulatilaka is the Wing Tat Lee Family Professor of Management and Professor of Finance in the School of Management at Boston University. He serves as the co-director of the university’s Clean Energy and Environmental Initiative. His current research interests include the investments in clean technology, economics of business platforms, valuation of early-stage firms, role of energy intermediaries, technology licensing and financial contracting. Professor Kulatilaka has published over 75 papers in scholarly journals, and is the co-author of the book Real Options: Managing Strategic Investment in an Uncertain World( Harvard Business School Press).

The seminar event will be held on Tuesday, December 1 at 5 PM in Photonics (8 St. Mary’s St, Boston) Room 206. This event is open to the public.