A panel of speakers gathered in Barnum 104 yesterday evening to discuss the future of developing countries in a "climate-constrained world," as part of an event titled "The Rising Tide: Development and Climate Change: Where is the Justice?"
The program hosted three speakers: Adil Najam, an outgoing assistant professor at Fletcher and the new director of Boston University's Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future; Sivan Kartha, a senior scientist and the director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Stockholm Environment Institute; and Tariq Banuri, the Stockholm Environment Institute's director of the Future Studies Program.
All three helped to author the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, which recently won former Vice President Al Gore a Nobel Peace Prize.
Julian Agyeman, the chair of Tufts' Department of Urban and Departmental Policy and Planning, opened the event by stressing the need to frame the climate change crisis as a moral dilemma, not simply a scientific one.
"If we can take this away from science and bring it into the realm of morality, then people will think of this as something that has to be done," Agyeman said. "This is going to start to push us toward a much more serious and much more productive discussion."
From there, each speaker outlined the moral obligations of wealthy carbon-emitting countries like the United States to rescue the climate. Poorer countries contribute little to the problem but are most vulnerable to the consequences.
"What Al Gore and environmental groups have been pushing hard for is the need for the U.S. to recognize its responsibility," he said. "What hasn't been discussed is that the U.S. has an obligation to the rest of the world."
The solution, the speakers explained, will not be easy to implement.
Kartha outlined a need to identify a global poverty line, which he approximated should exist at about $25 a day for an average worker; people above that threshold would have an obligation to address climate change.
The presentation differed from other recent programs about climate change because all of the panelists had already accepted its existence.
"[It's like] a movie where the creepy old person is pursuing the hero, and you're waiting for something to come and save him," Banuri said. "By 2007, we've realized that we're alone and no one is coming to save us."
He proposed an investment-based solution, which he argued would appear most attractive to leaders of developing countries.
"If we don't act now, then we're just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic," he said.
Najam closed the event by stressing the importance of balancing sustainable development with climate stabilization.
"The time for half-baked solutions is over," he said. "We need to start some conversations."
He explained that such a solution would have to include fulfilling commitments to the Kyoto Protocol, encouraging broad participation among nations and investing in decarbonization technologies.
"The bad guy is not just George Bush," Najam said. "It's the Germanys and the Britains who also haven't made their commitments. The world has to stop worrying about the U.S. Only when the world stops taking the U.S. seriously will the U.S. decide to change."
