Environment & Climate Change

Alaska is an important region for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), given the
Department’s statutory authority and responsibilities. This reality applies with particular force to the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), with its jurisdiction over fisheries enforcement, drug interdiction, marine safety, oil spill response, search and rescue, and more. This policy brief provides an overview of the challenges facing the USCG in its domains of operation around Alaska—the Arctic Ocean, the North Pacific Ocean, the Bering Sea, the
Chukchi Sea, and the adjacent communities.

As climate change and economic activity in the region accelerate in the Bering Strait region, the United States and Russia have a common interest in mitigating these shared environmental risks. A November workshop hosted by Harvard Kennedy School’s Arctic Initiative, the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) brought together seventeen experts to explore potential actions that the United States and Russia could pursue, jointly or independently, to protect the Bering Strait’s sensitive marine ecosystem and coastal communities. 

Joseph Nye writes that the world is increasingly obsessed with the ongoing power struggle between the United States and China. But the technology-driven shift of power away from states to transnational actors and global forces brings a new and unfamiliar complexity to global affairs.

Arctic Innovator Jenna Stark recommends closing the crisis-related collaboration gap in the polar region. Greater communication between emergency response specialists is needed both for the Arctic to weather the current coronavirus crisis and also to prepare for and mitigate future disasters, such as assuring food security for remote communities in the event of a wildlife disease outbreak.

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

Kaveri Iychettira and Afreen Siddiqi explain why computational modelling is a useful tool, especially when stakes are high and resources are constrained, and detail why developing countries should build capacity for it. 

While traditional trade agreements tend to neglect environmental regulatory cooperation, an Arctic Free Trade Area, including all eight Arctic Council member countries (Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark — including Greenland and the Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States), could set a new and revolutionary precedent.