Articles

Plastic pollution in the Arctic marine system is sparsely quantified, and few enforceable policies are in place to ameliorate the issue. In this paper, Dewey and Mackie estimate the flux of plastic through rivers, sea ice, and ocean, and quantify marine plastic pollution from Arctic shipping and fishing. They also examine how a suite of proposed policy interventions would quantitatively change those concentrations.

Divestment is a prominent strategy championed by activists to induce positive social change. For example, the current fossil fuel divestment movement includes over 1,500 institutions that control $40 trillion in assets. A primary pathway through which divestment is theorized to be effective is by influencing public beliefs and policy preferences, thus pressuring policymakers to take action. However, prior research only tests this argument via qualitative case studies. The authors assess the impact of exposure to information about fossil fuel divestment on public opinion through the use of national survey experiments in three major greenhouse gas emitters: the U.S., India, and South Africa.

This paper explores the unique conditions that made the Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean possible and examines how success was achieved by the interrelationships of science, policy, legal structures, politics, stakeholder collaboration, and diplomacy.

Along with concerns over the possible deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, the Biden administration is now warning that the Russian military may launch a chemical weapons attack in Ukraine. Russia has used chemical weapons during past conflicts, notably in Chechnya and Syria, in violation of international law. Russian officials denied Biden’s accusation during a U.N. Security Council meeting Tuesday.

The authors' findings advance a specific debate on the strength of weapons taboos, while their conceptualization of insincere norm-holders and methodological application have broader implications for how scholars might think about and measure norms in international politics.

Joseph Nye argues that prudence results from the fear of creating unintended consequences in unpredictable systems and can develop into a norm of nonuse or limited use of certain weapons or a norm of limiting targets. Something like this happened with nuclear weapons when the superpowers came close to the brink of nuclear war in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis. The Limited Test Ban Treaty followed a year later.

This study provides a whole-systems simulation on how to halve global CO2 emissions by 2050, compared to 2010, with an emphasis on technologies and costs, in order to avoid a dangerous increase in the global mean surface temperature by end the of this century.

CNN security expert and Cambridge mother of three Juliette Kayyem has plenty to say about Donald Trump, Boston's recovery, and staying safe this summer.

In developing countries, where the coronavirus pandemic is potentially at its most dangerous and costly, the authors call for governments to work with academic institutions to build and sustain computational modelling capacity.

Nicholas Burns, an old friend of Greece and well known in the country having served as US ambassador in Athens between 1997 and 2001, is now professor of practice of diplomacy and international relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and an adviser to Joe Biden’s campaign for the White House. Burns also served as US ambassador to NATO (2001-05) and under secretary of state for political affairs (2005-08). A few days ago he talked to Kathimerini from his home in Boston about Greece’s remarkable performance in tackling the crisis, the challenges Europe and the US are facing, President Donald Trump and how the pandemic is influencing the global balance of power.