From the Ground Up: the Value of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements is Coming into Clear Focus

A little over seven years ago,while settling in for a long-haul flight to Bali to attend global climate talks, Robert Stavins, the Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government and director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, watched others boarding the airplane and recognized numerous members of various national delegations heading to the same conference. Many of them were carrying crumpled copies of Architectures for Agreement: Addressing Global Climate Change in the Post-Kyoto World, a book Stavins had co-edited with his Kennedy School colleague Joseph Aldy. "You could see little yellow reference notes marking the pages of these books," Stavins says with a smile. "That was the best thing that could possibly happen for us in the project, and I’ll never forget it!"

To Stavins, the sight spoke volumes about the essential purpose of the project, as both a research and an outreach effort, to help the negotiating teams from countries around the world identify and advance the key design elements of a scientifically sound, economically sensible, and politically pragmatic future climate regime. With climate talks reaching a pivotal point this year in the run-up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in Paris in December, the project's importance is more apparent than ever....

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