In January, Harvard Kennedy School students Jonny Yau (MPP 2024) and Stirling Haig (MPP 2024) traveled to Tromsø, Norway, for a week-long intensive workshop hosted by the Arctic Academy for Social and Environmental Leadership (ARCADE). As part of the workshop, Yau and Haig joined Arctic Initiative team members at the 2023 Arctic Frontiers Conference, an annual meeting of scientists, policymakers, and business leaders focused on sustainable development in the Arctic.

In January, two dozen Indigenous youth from across the circumpolar North visited Cambridge for the International Workshop on Indigenous Youth Leadership for the Changing Arctic. They joined Harvard Kennedy School students for the second half of IGA-67M: “Policy and Social Innovation for the Changing Arctic” for an intensive course in developing their own policy and social innovations to address issues in a region warming four times faster than the rest of the world. 

In October, members of the Belfer Center’s Arctic Initiative joined more than 2,000 Arctic policymakers, scholars, business leaders, and residents in Reykjavík, Iceland, for the Arctic Circle Assembly—the world’s largest annual gathering on Arctic issues. The Arctic Initiative delegation of students presented innovative ideas for Arctic resilience. 

Arctic Initiative Senior Fellow Jennifer Spence facilitated the first Arctic Policy Hackathon in Reykjavik, Iceland - a joint initiative of the Gordon Foundation, the Canadian International Arctic Centre, and the Arctic Mayors’ Forum. The final policy recommendations shift the power to Arctic communities to dictate their own well-being through food sovereignty and should be a priority in Arctic policy discussions.

Jennifer Spence, Executive Secretary of the Arctic Council's Sustainable Development Working Group, will join Harvard Kennedy School's Arctic Initiative as a resident Senior Fellow this coming academic year. Spence will substantially enhance the Initiative's capacity to address the future of Arctic governance—an increasingly critical issue in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In November 2021, the Arctic Initiative hosted Arctic Climate Week, a public showcase of the crucial work being done by Belfer Center faculty and fellows on the rapidly warming Arctic and pathways to a resilient future for the region.

Arctic residents, students, policymakers, academics, and business leaders convened in Reykjavík, Iceland, for the 2021 Arctic Circle Assembly from Thursday, October 14 to Saturday, October 17. The Arctic Initiative organized two sessions at this year’s Assembly: 1) Arctic Innovation Lab: 10 Ideas for a Better Arctic, and 2) Policy and Action on Plastic in the Arctic: Innovations to Tackle Plastic Pollution with The Wilson Center’s Polar Institute. 

The second Arctic Resilience Forum was hosted entirely online — and successfully so. The Arctic Council interviewed the two main organizers: Jennifer Spence, the Executive Secretary of the Council's Sustainable Development Working Group, and Joel Clement, Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. They spoke about the challenge to move the forum into the virtual realm, the unexpected benefits, and the ambitious next steps for resilience in the Arctic.