Asia & the Pacific

Joseph Nye considers lessons from his own work on preventing the spread of nuclear technology in the 1970s.

The Harvard Project participates in a major Harvard initiative aimed at reducing emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Participating researchers represent a range of academic disciplines and Harvard schools.

Among the many issues surrounding China’s ongoing military modernization, perhaps none has been more dramatic than its nuclear weapons program. For decades, the Chinese government was content to maintain a comparatively small nuclear force. As recently as 2020, China’s arsenal was little changed from previous decades and amounted to some 220 weapons, around five to six percent of either the U.S. or Russian stockpiles of deployed and reserve warheads.

“This is not a decision or set of steps that are happening in haste by any means, and this is a practice that is common and consistent around the world and with the nuclear energy industry,” said Marina Lorenzini of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

According to data posted online by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, water with much higher levels of tritium has been discharged by nuclear facilities in countries including China, South Korea, Canada and France in line with local regulations.

Lorenzini said that the IAEA’s active engagement in the Fukushima process “makes me feel a lot more comfortable and confident with the events we see playing out today.”

The IAEA said this week that it would maintain an onsite presence at the Fukushima plant, where it opened an office last month, and publish real-time and near real-time monitoring data.

“I think we have good reason to believe that this will be a well-monitored and well-maintained operation,” Lorenzini said.

The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University launched today a major research and outreach initiative to reduce global methane emissions. The initiative seeks meaningful and sustained progress in global methane-emissions reductions through research and effective engagement with government policymakers — and with key stakeholders in business, nongovernmental organizations, and international institutions.

The Harvard Initiative to Reduce Global Methane Emissions released its first publication in May 2023: a research brief titled “Updating Estimates of Methane Emissions: The Case of China.” The Initiative is one of five interdisciplinary research clusters funded by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University. The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements collaborates in the implementation of the Initiative.

Daniel Schrag and Henry Lee discuss the policies China could enact in the near-term to ease its transition to a low-carbon economy, the subject of their book Foundations for a Low-Carbon Energy System in China (Cambridge University Press, 2021). 

The economist and HKS professor is passionate about solving what may be humanity's most important and perplexing problem: How to untangle fossil fuels from the global economy.

Following the COP27 climate conference in Egypt, Robert Stavins said in an interview with the Harvard Gazette that the talks were both frustrating and hopeful: frustrating because they did little to accelerate the slow pace of action to reduce carbon emissions, and hopeful because of a reawakened dialogue between the world’s biggest emitters—the U.S. and China—and movement to address climate-related damage to the world’s most vulnerable nations.

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.