In his first address to the University community as a Columbia Global Fellow, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke to a capacity audience in Low Rotunda about leadership and climate change on Wednesday, Sept. 23. Annan delivered the Gabriel Silver Memorial Lecture, an annual lecture series on world peace and international relations, as part of the World Leaders Forum, co-hosted by the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

 

Annan’s talk came a day after the United Nations’ first-ever Summit on Climate Change, which brought diplomats from around the world to New York to discuss how to confront what the former UN leader called a potentially “irreversible and catastrophic” problem. Annan said the summit was a chance to “catalyze the growing momentum on climate change” as countries prepare for the UN Climate Conference this December in Copenhagen.

 

“Even though there is now wide agreement among our political leaders that deep cuts are needed in global greenhouse gas emissions,” Annan said, “this has not led to the tough political decisions and radical actions needed to address the challenge.”

 

Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger noted in his introduction to the lecture that Annan “has been sounding the alarm about the dangers of climate change for a long time.” Bollinger described Annan’s appointment as a Global Fellow as only the latest highlight in a long-running friendship with Columbia. During his tenure as UN Secretary-General, Annan “often came to speak on our campus and always left us better informed, more enlightened and armed with new, innovative and reasoned approaches to many of the world’s most pressing problems,” said Bollinger.

 

During his lecture, Annan called on developed countries, in particular the United States, to lead the way to reform, claiming that industrialized nations must reduce their emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020, as well as offer financial incentives to developing nations—which currently rely on fossil fuels to spur economic growth—to curb emissions. The least developed nations will require additional funding, as well as technology and knowledge, to adopt more sustainable methods of building their economies.

 

Annan asserted that a new international agreement on climate change must exemplify what he called climate justice, which would include a “polluter pays” principle applicable to countries, companies, institutions and individuals.

 

“It is a tragic irony,” he said, that the world’s least developed countries, which have contributed less than two percent of the greenhouse gasses in the earth’s atmosphere, will suffer the worst consequences of climate change, including an intensification of war, famine and disease.

 

Yet leadership is not limited to the world of politics, Annan said. He called on business leaders, academics, civil society groups and individuals to raise their voice in favor of substantial new regulations, saying that together “we can create such a noise that our leaders will not be able to ignore it, or want to.”

 

The Gabriel Silver Memorial Lectures were inaugurated in 1950 at the School of International and Public Affairs to foster international understanding and world peace. The first lecture was given by Dwight D. Eisenhower. Annan’s talk on climate change coincides with a range of Columbia-hosted events showcasing other leaders on the issue, including Sir Nicholas Stern, noted economist; Denmark's minister for climate and energy, Connie Hedegaard; and the University’s own experts in climate science and policy.