Reports & Papers

17 Items

Discussion Paper - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Carbon Sequestration in the U.S. National Parks: A Value Beyond Visitation

| February 2015

This discussion paper examines the potential role U.S. National Parks play in curbing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions through carbon sequestration—the process of moderating global climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in long-term mineral, organic, and oceanic reservoirs.

Report - Brookings Institution

Foresight Africa: Top Priorities for the Continent in 2014

| January 2014

As Africa's position in the world continues to grow and evolve in 2014, the Brookings Africa Growth Initiative continues its tradition of asking its experts and colleagues to identify what they consider to be the key issues for Africa in the coming year.

An oil pump jack in Santa Maria, California, a three-story humming contraption struck residents as a mere curiosity until someone uttered the petroleum industry's dirty word: fracking.

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Discussion Paper

North American Oil and Gas Reserves: Prospects and Policy

| July 2012

Expanding estimates of North America’s supply of accessible shale gas, and more recently, shale oil, have been trumpeted in many circles as the most significant energy resource development since the oil boom in Texas in the late 1920s. How large are these resources? What challenges will need to be overcome if their potential is to be realized? How will they impact U.S. energy policy?

To address these questions, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and two of its programs ― the Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Geopolitics of Energy Project ― convened a group of experts from business, government, and academia on May 1, 2012, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The following report summarizes the major issues discussed at this workshop. Since the discussions were off-the-record, no comments are attributed to any individual. Rather, this report attempts to summarize the arguments on all sides of the issues.

Discussion Paper - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, Belfer Center

The Problem of the Commons: Still Unsettled After 100 Years

| September 2010

Harvard Project Director Robert N. Stavins reviews economics research on open-access resources over the last century; the development of market-based policies to respond to commons problems; and the application of policy-relevant scholarship in economics to the "ultimate commons problem"—global climate change.