Science, Technology, and Public Policy

Kelly Sims Gallagher asserts that politicians' pledges of dramatic long-term reductions should not let them off the hook for their failure to achieve more modest progress in the short term.

Fran Ulmer advocates for better U.S. federal Arctic coordination at home and abroad by detailing three steps that are a good first start.

Joel Clement writes that the nomination of Rep. Deb Haaland as Interior Secretary is a sea change for indigenous people  because it demonstrates the power of investing in indigenous leadership and institutions.

Arctic Innovator Rumaitha Al Busaidi argues for an Arctic Plastic Partnership that could highlight the business advantage to solving the region's marine plastic crisis.

Increased investment into the Arctic over the coming decades is inevitable. To respond to this, the Arctic's present international governance structures can be improved to help steer the region through these impending changes.

Joel Clement describes how the Arctic is transforming into a warmer, wetter, and less predictable climate state, what the consequences are for the Arctic's indigenous inhabitants, and what measures can be taken to build resilience.

Joel Clement describes the long, tough road for scientists during the Trump administration—particularly those at the Department of the Interior. 

Every day that the EPA quietly ticks off another item, the social and financial consequences are being shifted from polluters to at-risk communities.

The authors describe the growing ecological and economic threats of plastic pollution to the Arctic. Iceland's Arctic Council chairmanship, the Harvard Kennedy School's Arctic Initiative, and the Wilson Center are co-hosting  a workshop in October 2019 to enable policymakers and experts to begin developing a framework for addressing Arctic plastic pollution. 

After many years of productive service, industrial plants reach the end of their useful life and must be dismantled. This complex and costly process, know as decommissioning (commissioning refers to the beginning of a plant useful life), is a confluence of economic, environmental, physical, and regulatory challenges.