Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements Receives Additional Funding from Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to Expand Research in Key Areas

As global negotiators prepare to discuss the next international climate agreement in Copenhagen and beyond, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Climate Change Initiative has awarded the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements $600,000 over one year to significantly expand its research and policy outreach.

Under the ongoing leadership of Harvard Project Director Robert N. Stavins and Harvard Project Manager Robert C. Stowe, the project plans to expand its worldwide roster of research collaborators to include researchers in additional countries, as well as business executives, former government officials, and others. The Project's current research teams come from Australia, China, Europe, India, Japan, and the United States.

While maintaining its research focus on options for policy architecture for global climate change, the project will also address some of the key sticking points facing international climate negotiators, including technology transfer, financing mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, reform of the Clean Development Mechanism, building on common interests between the United States and key developing countries, and the implications of domestic climate policy in the United States and other key nations for the international process. Responding to requests from several climate negotiators, the project will look at mix-and-match agreements (for example, an agreement in which one country's carbon tax is integrated with linked regional cap-and-trade systems).

The Harvard Project will also structure regular consultation with climate negotiators in order to better identify issues of immediate concern in the negotiations and apply its research in providing substantive, research-based advice. To facilitate this, the Project will engage, when necessary, its network of collaborating researchers from around the world.

Global leaders are gearing up for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 15th Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen in December, at which a new international climate agreement is expected to be negotiated. The months before and after this pivotal conference are expected to be especially important in guiding international climate change policy for years to come.

"This is a crucial year for international climate change policy—and therefore a crucial period during which the Harvard Project should remain intensively and extensively engaged in the process," Stavins said. "It is vital that the next international climate agreement be scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic—and that any deal be ratified by the United States, China, India, and other key nations."

The Harvard Project is part of Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the School's Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government.

The new grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Climate Change Initiative builds on a $750,000, two-year grant from the foundation that was in effect from 2007 through mid-2009.

"The collaboration between the Foundation and the Harvard Project is an example of best performance of its type," Stowe said. "We are proud of what we have accomplished together, and are encouraged to tackle the greater challenges ahead to build on the Foundation's initial investment."

About the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements:

The goal of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements is to help advance scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic public policy options for addressing global climate change. Drawing upon leading thinkers in Australia, China, Europe, India, Japan and the United States, the project conducts research and outreach on climate policy architecture and key design elements of the post-2012 international climate policy regime. The Harvard Project also provides insight and advice regarding countries' domestic climate policies, especially as these policies relate to the prospects for meaningful international action.

About the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Climate Change Initiative:

The mission of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) is to improve the quality of people's lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and the prevention of child maltreatment, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Duke's properties.

The goal of the Climate Change Initiative is to help build a clean-energy economy.  In pursuit of this goal, the initiative supports analytical work that informs the government policies that are needed to foster technological innovation in the energy sector and accelerate the emergence of new clean-energy technologies.  This includes work related to the mechanisms and institutions that support clean-energy technology development and deployment around the globe, including finance mechanisms.