Africa

As a Predoctoral Research Fellow at the Belfer Center’s Environment and Natural Resources Program and Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, Lydia Zemke has spent the last two years studying climate finance in developing countries. As she rounds out her time at the Belfer Center, Zemke she reflects on her research interests, her experience conducting fieldwork in Kenya and Costa Rica, and her advice for other early-career researchers. 

ColdHubs, an innovative Nigerian agricultural enterprise that uses solar-powered refrigerated storage units to keep food from spoiling, is slowly but surely expanding to nearby West African countries. But it faces big challenges to scale up and finance its operations, company founder and CEO Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu told a Harvard Kennedy School audience celebrating the 2022 Roy Award winner.

Climate change, especially the variability of rainfall patterns, poses a threat to maize production in Ghana. Some farmers harvest rainwater and store it for maize production to cope with unpredicted rainfall patterns. However, there are only a few studies on the adoption of rainwater harvesting for maize production. This study analyses the factors that influence farmers' decision to harvest rainwater for maize production in Ghana. 

The Environment and Natural Resources Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs announced today that ColdHubs Limited is the winner of the 2022 Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership. The company—born out of a partnership between the Smallholders Foundation, the Institute for Air Handling and Refrigeration (ILK Dresden), and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)—uses solar-powered walk-in cold rooms to reduce post-harvest losses for smallholder farmers across rural Nigeria.

The potent greenhouse gas is abundant in the Arctic. Capturing it for energy could power the region and prevent its release into the atmosphere.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an important cooperative framework that increasingly affects the global economy, trade, and emission patterns. However, most existing studies pay insufficient attention to consumption-based emissions, embodied emissions, and non-CO2 greenhouse gases (GHGs). This study constructs a GHG emissions database to study the trends and variations in production-based, consumption-based, and embodied emissions associated with BRI countries

Fifteen Minutes sat down with Professor Robert N. Stavins, Director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, to talk about cap-and-trade, the Peace Corps, and what individuals can do to combat climate change.