Science, Technology, and Public Policy

John P. Holdren won the 2018 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize. He delivered the annual Moynihan Lecture on May 17, 2018, at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, D.C.

The promise, prospects, and public policy trade-offs related to the greater use and production of second-generation biofuels were addressed in an executive session convened by the Harvard Kennedy School on November 13 and 14, 2014. The session attracted more than 25 of the world's leading experts from the fields of policy, science, and business for an intensive two day session. The agenda consisted of three sessions focused on (i) the sustainability of cellulosic supply chains, (ii) government policy options to attract investment and (iii) government policy options to ensure that environmental objectives are met.

This brief looks at the so-far inadequate responses of the Chinese government and makes the case that new institutions are needed to allow China to meet this growing challenge.

"But adopting federalism would help to ease one of modern China's most fundamental governance problems: The fact that local officials often implement central policies halfheartedly, if at all. Caught in a system that gives them plenty of responsibilities but no accountability to constituents, China's local officials emphasize short-term economic growth over compliance with directives like antipollution and social welfare targets. The result is that environmental and social policies are often badly implemented. If provincial and local officials had a greater voice in developing policy, they would have a greater stake in the outcome of these policies."

"Although the country has successfully imported model environmental policies, it has yet to develop the complex institutional infrastructure needed to make them work, especially an independent judiciary, a capable bureaucracy, and effective co-operation between central and local governments."