News & Announcements

HPCA and Director Robert Stavins played an active role at COP 28 in Dubai, which concluded on December 12 with an historic agreement calling for “transitioning away” from fossil fuels. Aside from moderating an official HPCA Side Event on reducing global methane emissions, Stavins also participated in several other panel discussions and forums on issues relating to the climate change negotiations as well as meetings with participants and journalists. Read more on HPCA’s activities in Dubai on our COP 28 Tumblr page.

The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements (HPCA) assembled a panel of leading academics and government officials to discuss strategies for achieving significant methane emissions reductions at relatively low costs at an official COP 28 Side Event last Wednesday (Dec. 6). The event, titled “Reducing Global Methane Emissions: Imperatives, Opportunities, and Challenges,” was moderated by HPCA Director Robert Stavins.

Efforts around and impacts of global methane-emissions abatement will be the focus at an official side event on December 6 co-sponsored by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements at the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP-28) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Dubai. Harvard Project Director Robert Stavins will also participate in a number of other events at COP-28.

The upcoming 2023 G20 summit scheduled in New Delhi will convene leaders representing the world's major economies will convene to deliberate and strategize about imminent environmental and economic challenges. The overarching theme of "One Earth" will serve as a clarion call for unity and collective responsibility, underscoring the urgency of collaborative endeavors. Participating nations will engage in open dialogues, deliberating the adoption of cleaner energy sources, advancing circular economic models, and fortifying support mechanisms for marginalized communities grappling with environmental transformations.

A number Belfer Center experts are available to discuss the G20, its policy discussions, and any commitments announced.

Lauren Zabierek, former Executive Director of the Cyber Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, has been appointed Senior Policy Advisor with the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). 

The U.S. Department of State announced Tuesday, October 18 that Eric Rosenbach, Belfer Center Co-Director and former Pentagon Chief of Staff and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security, has been named to the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board (ISAB).  

Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare, which was published as part of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs in May 2021, has been named the American Political Science Association (APSA) Foreign Policy Section's Best Book for 2021–2022.  The award will be presented in September 2022 at the APSA Annual Meeting in Montreal, Quebec.

The Danish Minister of Climate, Energy, and Utilities expressed his hope that the tragic war in Ukraine will help accelerate the clean energy transformation by weaning Europe off Russian gas during a Virtual Forum (view recording here) last Friday (April 8). The event was hosted by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements (HPCA) and moderated by Robert Stavins, HPCA Director and A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development. 

As Russia's war on Ukraine continues and much of the world distances itself from Putin's violent attack on a democratic country, China's President Xi embraces Putin and his actions—a complete reversal of what former President Richard Nixon engineered with China's Chairman Mao 50 years ago.

In The Great Wager, a five-part documentary-style podcast, Belfer Center Fellow and China correspondent and bureau chief in Beijing for The New York Times from 2012 to 2019, joins with WBUR “Here and Now” host Scott Tong to peel back the curtain on Nixon’s historic trip to China in February 1972. They provide details about what happened—off-the-books meetings, divulged military secrets, spies, subterfuge, and a never-before reported secret visit to the CIA headquarters where the Chinese were shown maps of where spy stations would be located in China. 

With negotiators from around the world hammering out the details of a revised global climate deal at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow, Scotland, much of the work is centered on reaching agreement on a set of rules governing the global carbon market. The so-called “Rulebook” for implementing Article 6 of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement is considered by many to be critically important for enhancing ambition among countries for the plans and pledges contained in their Nationally Determined Contributions. Potential solutions to achieve consensus on the Article 6 Rulebook were the focus of discussion on November 10 at a COP26 side event—“Securing Climate Ambition with Cooperative Approaches: Options under Article 6.”