Reports & Papers

38 Items

flooded street Nome Alaska

AP Photo/Peggy Fagerstrom

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

Impacts and Policy Challenges from Rapid Climate Change in Alaska

June 23, 2023

This report summarizes a workshop co-hosted by the Arctic Initiative and the Science and Technology Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), focused on the challenges posed by the impacts of rapid climate change in Alaska.

An unaccompanied minor looks up as he waits to answer questions from a U.S. Border Patrol agent at an intake site after he was smuggled on an inflatable raft across the Rio Grande river in Roma, Texas, Wednesday, March 24, 2021. 

AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills

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

Improving Migrant Child Welfare at the Southwest Border

    Author:
  • Andrew R. Lorenzen-Strait
| February 2023

Policymakers need to act now and place child welfare professionals, not law enforcement actors, at the border to effectively screen and interview migrant children. Information sharing practices need to be improved, with a movement away from paper documents that can easily get lost to an approach that is digital, secure, and accessible by the child, their guardian, their lawyer, and their doctor. Further, the enforcement processing facilities need to undergo an immediate infrastructural transformation with the addition of new design features that are necessary and sensitive to the majority demographic that are held within facilities—children and families.

These actions are doable and require no legislative action. Migrant children deserve decisive action to ensure that their health, safety, and well-being is not jeopardized as they seek refuge in the United States.

Flooding Red River

Flickr CC/Loozrboy

Paper - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Wilson International Center for Scholars

Emergency Management in North America

| February 2022

North America continues to face evolving challenges to comprehensive emergency management. As climate change, technology, global health, and the nature and scale of emergencies change, so does the need for improved coordination among the United States, Mexico, and Canada. This is further complicated by the distinct federal systems that operate in each country, and the different roles that national, regional, and private corporations can and should play across all of these separate jurisdictions.

Electricians install solar panels.

AP/Mary Altaffer

Report Chapter - Brookings Institution

Mexico’s Energy Reforms: A Blow to Realizing the Most Competitive and Dynamic Region in the World

| Feb. 28, 2022

In late 2017, Mexico made headlines as Italian company Enel bid what was then a world-record low price for renewable energy in the country’s third such energy auction. This development was possible due to the historical and sweeping energy reforms passed with broad support in Mexico in 2013. Then-President Enrique Peña Nieto had succeeded where previous Mexican presidents had failed, reversing decades of resource nationalism and overhauling the energy sector through constitutional reforms that gave the private sector a larger role and advantaged renewable energy in Mexico’s economy. The 2017 auction seemed to indicate Mexico’s bright future not only as a conventional oil producer, but also as a clean energy power.

man takes a rapid COVID-19 test

AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File

Report - opcast.org

Summaries of Findings and Recommendations from Six Reports on COVID-19 Response by an Ad Hoc Team of Former Members of President’s Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

    Authors:
  • Christine Cassel
  • Christopher Chyba
  • Susan Graham
  • Eric Lander
  • Richard C. Levin
  • Ed Penhoet
  • Maxine Savitz
  • Harold Varmus
| November 2020

The authors provide a set of summaries of key findings and recommendations for six reports on the U.S. COVID-19 Response.

Social Distancing in Trader Joe's parking lot

Wikimedia CC/Strmsrg

Report - opcast.org

Epidemiological Modeling Needs New, Coherent, Federal Support for the Post-COVID-19 Era

    Authors:
  • Christine Cassel
  • Christopher Chyba
  • Susan Graham
  • Eric Lander
  • Richard C. Levin
  • Ed Penhoet
  • William Press
  • Maxine Savitz
  • Harold Varmus
| Sep. 28, 2020

Epidemiological modeling is an important but under-supported field of science that lacks a clear home among the federal science-funding agencies. Additional basic research and translational work in the field is needed between pandemics, and greater operational capabilities are needed during epidemics. The authors of this report have identified here a series of actions that can strengthen modeling efforts and their operationalization, to make the country better prepared for the next pandemic.

Donald Trump and Anthony Fauci

AP/Alex Brandon

Paper - Centre for International Governance Innovation

US Intelligence, the Coronavirus and the Age of Globalized Challenges

| Aug. 24, 2020

This essay makes three arguments. First, the US government will need to establish a coronavirus commission, similar to the 9/11 commission, to determine why, since April 2020, the United States has suffered more coronavirus fatalities than any other country in the world. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic represents a watershed for what will be a major national security theme this century: biological threats, both from naturally occurring pathogens and from synthesized biology. Third, intelligence about globalized challenges, such as pandemics, needs to be dramatically reconceptualized, stripping away outmoded levels of secrecy.

COVID-19 Testing Site

Wikimedia CC/Prim8acs

Report - opcast.org

Testing for the Pathogen During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Future Ones

    Authors:
  • Christine Cassel
  • Christopher Chyba
  • Susan Graham
  • Eric Lander
  • Richard C. Levin
  • Ed Penhoet
  • William Press
  • Maxine Savitz
  • Harold Varmus
| Aug. 18, 2020

The United States has failed to deploy adequate testing for the presence of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 during the Covid-19 pandemic and has been unable to avoid continued spread of the virus. In this report, the authors explain why such testing is an essential factor in efforts to control the pandemic, why adequate testing has been difficult to achieve, and why the United States has not met the challenge. They conclude by recommending ways to provide more extensive testing in this and future epidemics.

Tractors on Westminster bridge

AP/Matt Dunham

Paper - Institut für Sicherheitspolitik

The Global Order After COVID-19

| 2020

Despite the far-reaching effects of the current pandemic,  the essential nature of world politics will not be transformed. The territorial state will remain the basic building-block of international affairs, nationalism will remain a powerful political force, and the major powers will continue to compete for influence in myriad ways. Global institutions, transnational networks, and assorted non-state actors will still play important roles, of course, but the present crisis will not produce a dramatic and enduring increase in global governance or significantly higher levels of international cooperation. In short, the post-COVID-19 world will be less open, less free, less prosperous, and more competitive than the world many people expected to emerge only a few years ago.

Russia's Energy Foray into Asia: Implications for U.S. Interests

kees torn/Flickr

Paper - National Bureau of Asian Research

Russia's Energy Foray into Asia: Implications for U.S. Interests

| Dec. 12, 2018

This essay examines Russia’s growing role in Asia’s energy markets, assesses the implications for the U.S., and examines the claim that closer Sino-Russian energy ties are adding new incentives for a broader strategic alignment.