28 Items

Panelists on stage during hydrogen discussion at Rome Med 2022

Rome MED – Mediterranean Dialogue

News - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Is Hydrogen Our Future?

On December 3, 2022, Nicola De Blasio, Senior Fellow with the Belfer Center’s Environment and Natural Resources Program (ENRP), chaired a panel discussion, “Is Hydrogen Our Future?,” at the Rome MED – Mediterranean Dialogue (Rome MED), an annual high-level conference on Mediterranean geopolitics. The panel discussion was part of ENRP’s Future of Hydrogen project’s ongoing engagement with global policymakers, who are increasingly viewing hydrogen as a solution to meeting their decarbonization and energy security goals. 

Antwerp, Belgium Industrial Plant

AP Photo/Virginia Mayo

Analysis & Opinions

The Sunset of an Industrial Plant and the Global Decommissioning Challenge

| Sep. 24, 2019

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.

Nov. 23, 2016, a train returns from transporting ballast used in the construction of the Nairobi-Mombasa railway

AP Photo/Ben Curtis

Discussion Paper - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

African Regional Economic Integration

| Winter 2018

The power of Pan-Africanism as a guiding vision for the continent’s development is widely studied, mostly as an aspirational phenomenon. At worst, Pan-Africanism has often been seen as a poor imitation of American federalism or European integration. Both of these perceptions do not reflect the profound nature of the role that the ideology of Pan-Africanism played in shaping the continent’s economic transformation. 

President Barack Obama gets direction from his science advisor John P. Holdren during an event on the South Lawn of the White House to explore the stars with middle school students.

Reuters

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter

Spotlight on John P. Holdren

| Fall/Winter 2016-2017

As assistant to the president for science and technology, director of the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy, and co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), Holdren has worked closely with Obama to reinvigorate America’s scientific capabilities on a range of policy fronts, from climate change and renewable energy to health care and nanotechnology.

In this photo taken Friday Oct. 10, 2014, a dilapidated rice box, normally used to control the flow of water between two rice fields, sits idle on a field that has been fallowed due to the drought, near Davis, Calif.

AP

News - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Climate Change: Voters Will Be Hot Under the Collar by 2099

| October 26, 2016

By 2099 the nature of democratic politics could change in costly ways for politicians because of climate change, according to Nick Obradovich, research fellow with Harvard Kennedy School’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy program. Leveraging a century’s worth of political science research, he predicts in an article in Springer’s journal Climatic Change that voters’ disgruntlement about the societal effects of climatic extremes and weather-related disasters they experience will translate into more frequent turnover of political parties elected in and out of office, and will keep politicians of especially warmer, poorer countries more on their toes than is currently the case.

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Journal Article - Environmental Science & Policy

African Voters Indicate Lack of Support for Climate Change Policies

| In Press

In this article — across two experimental studies — the authors find evidence that Sub-Saharan African politicians who commit to climate change policies may lose electoral support. Electorally important swing voters with weak party affiliations are least likely to support party statements about climate change. Interviews with standing elected officials from Malawi and South Africa corroborate the experimental findings. The combined results suggest voter preferences may hinder the successful implementation of climate change policy in Sub-Saharan African democracies.

News

New Research on African Regional Integration from the Science, Technology, and Globalization Project

| June 02, 2016

A new manuscript from the STG Project chronicles the adoption of the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) Agreement on June 10, 2015. Prof. Calestous Juma and Dr. Francis Mangeni argue that Africa is pursuing regional trade as part of a broader strategy for long-term economic transformation.