Environment & Climate Change

For most of this century, the Arctic has been a place of peaceful cooperation in science and environmental protection, an approach built on a foundation of multiple agreements reached in the twentieth century. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the geopolitical reverberations of the war have disrupted or outright halted most collaboration between Western and Russian scientists and conservationists.

This article explores some of the environmental consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine that are being felt far beyond the battlefields. In the high latitudes of the Arctic, thirty years of collaboration between Russia and the West in the fields of biological research and monitoring – as well as environmental protection – contributed to understanding and conserving transboundary species and ecosystems. For the last two years, however, most international science programs have excluded Russian participation, hampering global efforts to track climate change and protect biodiversity.

Ashlie Burkart, MD, spoke to a Harvard Kennedy School audience about the potential of regenerative agriculture policies for generating socioeconomic, climate, environmental, health, and welfare benefits.

Innovative "ocean clusters” may help save the fishing industry, clean toxins and plastics from the oceans, save burn victims, improve your energy drink, and much more – by using seafood waste, writes Greg Harris.

As a Predoctoral Research Fellow at the Belfer Center’s Environment and Natural Resources Program and Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, Lydia Zemke has spent the last two years studying climate finance in developing countries. As she rounds out her time at the Belfer Center, Zemke she reflects on her research interests, her experience conducting fieldwork in Kenya and Costa Rica, and her advice for other early-career researchers. 

An April seminar co-organized by the Belfer Center’s Arctic Initiative and the Arctic Mayors’ Forum, “Building Climate Resilience in the Urban Arctic,” brought together mayors and climate officials from the municipalities across the Arctic to discuss how climate change was impacting their cities and how their cities were responding to those impacts. The speakers also drew out lessons that other climate-vulnerable cities elsewhere in the world could learn from the Arctic experience.

Unlike industrial and other forms of pollution, the long-standing, pervasive problem of municipal solid waste in Arctic cities receives comparatively little attention. As rapid warming in the region compromises existing waste disposal methods such as landfills, Arctic cities will need to develop comprehensive solid waste management strategies for the health of residents and the environment.

This paper examines the understudied role of international engagement, and of specific international actors, in greening China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative.

The geopolitical implications of solar displacing oil as the world’s major source of energy are enormous. Why has the Middle East been a central arena in the “great game” for the past century? Because countries there have been the major suppliers of the oil and gas that powered 20th-century economies. If, over the next decade, photovoltaic cells that capture energy from the sun were to replace a substantial part of the demand for oil and gas, who will the biggest losers be? And even more consequentially: who will be the biggest winner?

Legal scholar Andrey Todorov, Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Arctic Initiative, reflects on the recent agreement reached by United Nations delegates to protect biodiversity in international waters and its implications for the Arctic.