Round Up

Harvard Project on Climate Agreements Discussion Paper Summaries

The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements prepares two-page summaries of many of its discussion papers, with the goal of making these papers more accessible to policy makers, leaders in business and non-governmental organizations, and other interested readers. The two-page summaries generally provide an overview of the paper, background on the topic, key findings, and conclusions.

For more information on this publication: Belfer Communications Office
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2 Items

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Policy Brief - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Carbon Sequestration in the U.S. National Parks: A Value Beyond Visitation—Summary

| September 2015

Plants draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, sequestering the carbon in biomass and thus helping to mitigate climate change. This mitigation has an economic value commensurate with reduced damages from climate change. However, the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) has not calculated the carbon-sequestration benefits provided by the 84 million acres of land it manages, even though 85% of this land is vegetated.

The NPS has a dual mission—to foster both tourism ("visitation" to those researching this topic) and land stewardship. Measuring the value of carbon sequestration would complement ongoing attempts to measure the economic value of tourism by providing an initial estimate of the economic importance of one component of the NPS's stewardship obligations.

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Policy Brief - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, Belfer Center

Climate Accession Deals: New Strategies for Taming Growth of Greenhouse Gases in Developing Countries—Summary

    Author:
  • David G. Victor
| December 2008

Managing the dangers of global climate change will require developing countries to participate in a global climate regime. So far, however, those nations have been nearly universal in their refusal to make commitments to reduce growth in their greenhouse gas emissions. This paper describes how a set of international "Climate Accession Deals" could encourage large policy shifts that are in developing countries' interests and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.