Environment & Climate Change

92 Items

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Event Debrief: Elliot Diringer Takes Stock of the International Climate Effort

| Dec. 21, 2023

Ahead of COP28 in Dubai, Harvard Kennedy School hosted Elliot Diringer, Senior Policy Advisor in the office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, for an Energy Policy Seminar on the evolution of the COP process.

herd of walrus on ice floe

Caitlin Bailey, GFOE, The Hidden Ocean 2016: Chukchi Borderlands via NOAA

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

The UN High Seas Treaty in the Arctic Context

| Mar. 21, 2023

Legal scholar Andrey Todorov, Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Arctic Initiative, reflects on the recent agreement reached by United Nations delegates to protect biodiversity in international waters and its implications for the Arctic. 

Officials at COP 26

Stenbocki Maja/Flickr

Analysis & Opinions - Foresight

COP 26: There is No Mitigation without Cooperation

| November 2021

Article 6 is one of the thorniest issues in climate negotiations and determines how countries trade emissions. In Glasgow, countries finally found an agreement on this thorny issue, whose rules have the potential to support the achievement of the Paris Agreement’s goals at a lower cost and provide larger incentives for private sector investments, writes Marinella Davide.

Delegates and participants line up at the main entrance to the COP26 Climate Change Conference 2021

Wikimedia CC/Dean Calma (IAEA)

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

COP26 Takeaways: Statement from Laura Diaz Anadon

| Nov. 18, 2021

What was accomplished? COP26 created pressure for some countries to produce revised  Nationally Determined Contributions, helped catalyze new pledges to reduce emissions (including from India), led to the approval of the rules to govern international cooperation and carbon markets (the Paris Rulebook) addressing the issue of double counting, and served as the Launchpad for some novel initiatives that could play a useful role. Among the announcements that were made, was one that recognizes the importance of strategic investment and government action to lower the cost of technologies to reach carbon neutrality.

sopka

imaggeo.egu.eu/Alexandra Loginova

Journal Article - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Permafrost Carbon Feedbacks Threaten Global Climate Goals

    Authors:
  • Susan M. Natali
  • Brendan M. Rogers
  • Rachael Treharne
  • Philip Duffy
  • Rafe Pomerance
  • Erin MacDonald
| May 25, 2021

There is an urgent need to incorporate the latest science on carbon emissions from permafrost thaw and northern wildfires into international consideration of how much more aggressively societal emissions must be reduced to address the global climate crisis.

submerged shoreline with exposed rock and fallen or dead trees

Wikimedia CC/Alex DiCiccio

Analysis & Opinions - The Hill

Settled Enough: Climate Science, Skepticism and Prudence

| May 24, 2021

John P. Holdren writes that because of the huge potential importance of the evidence of global climate change for policy and for human well-being on the largest scale, moreover, its details and its conclusions have been scrutinized and re-scrutinized to a staggering degree. It was the conclusions based on this evidence, made even more robust by the continuing growth of climate-related damages in the ensuing years, that motivated 195 countries  to sign the Paris Agreement in December 2015. The science was rightly considered "settled enough."