Tun Hussein Onn Chair in International Studies public lecture: “The politics of climate change – role of science diplomacy ” with Prof Emeritus Tan Sri Dr Zakri Abdul Hamid

The international community started to discuss environmental degradation, particularly climate change, in the 1970s. The first United Nations conference on the human environment was held in Stockholm in 1972, followed by the seminal work of the Brundtland Commission and the publication of Our Common Future in 1987. The book defined the term “sustainable development”, which brought to focus the need for a balance between the conservation of natural resources and the right to development.

Geopolitics entered the debates right from the start, with countries from the Global South reminding the industrialised Global North of their responsibility to provide new and additional funding to the poorer countries to mitigate and adapt to global warming. This is especially compelling, as the North is the bigger emitter of greenhouse gases but the impacts of climate change are felt in the South. Efforts to secure consensus on the many issues of climate change are assisted by scientific evidence facilitated by multilateral dialogues in science diplomacy.

The speaker is the fifth holder of the Tun Hussein Onn Chair at ISIS Malaysia. He is a student of science diplomacy with more than four decades of experience as an academic, government official, negotiator and UN official.