Harvard Kennedy School's Robert Stavins Named a Coordinating Lead Author for IPCC's New Report

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this month named Robert N. Stavins, director of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements, a coordinating lead author for the next report's chapter on international cooperation and agreements.

Stavins, along with Professor Zou Ji of China's Renmin Univeristy, will lead the chapter's other authors in building consensus on the topic, titled "International Cooperation: Agreements and Instruments." Stavins and Zou will chair the group's meetings and work with other authors and the IPCC on cross-cutting issues. The group will survey the existing academic literature in science, economics, political science, and other disciplines.

The IPCC's fifth assessment report will take almost four years to complete, with plans for publication between 2013 and 2014. This year marks the first year that the group has included a chapter on international cooperation.

"I am delighted to be a coordinating lead author of the IPCC's next assessment report," Stavins said. "It is now more critical than ever to develop international climate cooperation that is scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic. The IPCC has a critical role in helping to do that."

In announcing the selections, the IPCC noted that a total of 831 experts will contribute to the fifth assessment report. The experts are divided into three working groups: one for the physical science basis, one on the impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability related to climate change, and one on mitigation response strategies in an integrated risk and uncertainty framework. Stavins is part of the third group.

A leading environmental economist, Stavins is Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. He is a member of the board of directors at the school's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Stavins has been involved in the IPCC for nearly two decades. He was a lead author for the group's second and third assessment reports and shared in the group's Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.