News & Announcements

On February 2, the Pentagon announced that it had detected a Chinese surveillance balloon hovering over Montana. Subsequently, Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a planned trip to Beijing. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs maintains it is a civilian airship. We asked Belfer Center experts to weigh in on possible national security implications of the incident. 

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). 

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. 

The White House has announced President Biden's nomination of Ambassador Richard Verma as Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources at the U.S. Department of State. Ambassador Verma is a Senior Fellow with Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and an active member of the Harvard Kennedy School community. 

John P. Holdren, Co-Director of the Belfer Center’s Arctic Initiative and former Science Advisor to President Obama, has been appointed to the National Academies’ Polar Research Board (PRB). The PRB, composed of 19 independent senior experts across a wide range of scientific disciplines, exists to promote excellence in polar science and to provide independent scientific guidance to U.S. federal agencies and the nation on science issues in the Arctic, the Antarctic, and cold regions in general. 

The price cap on Russian oil implemented today by the G7 countries plus Australia represents a novel approach to sanctions, according to a policy brief authored by Catherine Wolfram, Simon Johnson, and Łukasz Rachel and released today by Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. 

What is really striking is that the most important development at COP-27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt has taken place thousands of miles away from where the negotiations are taking place. Namely in Bali, Indonesia, where President Biden and President Xi of China met, shook hands, and then engaged on November 14 in a three-hour conversation in which, among other topics, they signaled returning to the cooperative stance that had been so important previously on climate change.

Please note that the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements hosted or co-hosted two official Side Events at COP27 last week.

China and the United States are back on a productive track to adopt more cooperative approaches on global climate change. Those were the sentiments expressed by Harvard Project Director Robert Stavins on Wednesday (November 16) during a side event focusing on the China National Climate Change Assessment Report at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

The myriad challenges incumbent in expanding the world carbon market were the foci of discussion Wednesday (November 16) at a COP-27 side event hosted by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements (HPCA). HPCA Director Robert Stavins moderated the panel, “Frontiers in Carbon Pricing,” on day 8 of the international climate talks in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

Significant technological advances in satellite technology and atmospheric measurements have greatly enhanced the understanding of methane concentrations and emissions. The dynamic ways in which those advancements are allowing researchers to monitor methane emissions down to the source level was the focus of discussion Thursday (November 17) at a COP-27 side event co-hosted by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, the Enel Foundation, and the government of Mexico.