Dr. Adil Najam serves as the President of WWF International and as Dean Emeritus and Professor at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University.

Dr Adil Najam is a global public policy scholar whose teaching, research and public engagement focuses on international environment and conservation policy with a particular emphasis on climate change, on global governance, and on international and human development; particularly in developing countries. An active researcher, he was a lead author for the Third and Fourth Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and has written over 100 scholarly papers and book chapters.

In 2014 he was named the inaugural dean of Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, a position he stepped down from in 2022 when he was appointed Dean Emeritus. He is also a Professor of International Relations and of Earth and Environment at Boston University. Earlier he served as the Vice Chancellor of Pakistan’s Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS); and prior to that as a professor of negotiation and diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

In 2009 he was appointed to the Committee for Development Policy (UN CDP) by the United Nations Secretary General. The government of Pakistan has conferred on him two of the highest civil awards for his global contributions to education and to climate change research: in 2010, the Sitara-i-Imtiaz (Star of Excellence); and in 2023, the Hilal-i-Imtiaz (Crescent of Excellence), both awarded by the then President(s) of Pakistan.

Adil Najam holds a PhD (in environmental policy) and two master’s degrees (in technology policy and in environmental engineering) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a Specialization in Negotiation from the Program on Negotiation at the Harvard Law School, and a bachelor’s of engineering degree from the University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Pakistan.

Dr Najam is a former Trustee of the International Board of WWF International (2012-2019) and has served on multiple other Boards including as Chair of the Luc Hoffmann Institute (2017-2020) and South Asian Network of Development and Environment Economics. He has frequently served as advisor to international organisations and NGOs, and to governments across the world.