Environment & Climate Change

CNNi talks to a former U.S. state department official and Harvard professor Nicholas Burns about the impact of the US leaving the Paris accord.

President Donald Trump announced yesterday (June 1, 2017) that the United States will withdraw from the landmark international climate change agreement reached by 195 countries in Paris in December 2015. The president stated that the agreement threatens U.S. economic interests and American sovereignty. The announcement was denounced by Belfer Center faculty members Nicholas Burns, John P. Holdren, Meghan O'Sullivan, Cristine Russell, and Robert Stavins, and by the Kennedy School's David Gergen.

Foreign policy experts said the move could damage the United States’ credibility and weaken Mr. Trump’s efforts to negotiate issues far beyond climate change, like trade and terrorism.

“From a foreign policy perspective, it’s a colossal mistake — an abdication of American leadership,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a retired career diplomat and an under secretary of state for President George W. Bush.

“The success of our foreign policy — in trade, military, any other kind of negotiation — depends on our credibility,” Mr. Burns said. “I can’t think of anything more destructive to our credibility than this.”

In a conversation with Professor Nicholas Burns, Ban Ki-Moon, who served as UN Secretary-General from 2007 to December 2016, touches upon his transition from the diplomatic to the academic world, UN efforts to confront climate change under his leadership, and reconciling political realities with the achievement of long-term, global aims.

On 24 and 25 November 2016 experts from politics and academia, including FDP Executive director Cathryn Clüver, discussed the impact of Brexit on several policy areas in a series of workshops at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. All events took place under Chatham House rules.

Dr. Ian Bremmer, expert in political risk and founder of the Eurasia Group, gave a seminar sponsored by the the Future of Diplomacy Project on Thursday, November 9 at the Harvard Kennedy School, titled “Managing Risk in an Unstable World."

The Right Honourable Douglas Alexander offered his views on European security in a discussion moderated by FDP Executive Director Cathryn Cluver.

Senior Fellow of the Future of Diplomacy Project, David Ignatius examines the Navy’s energy diet that began seven years ago with an edict from newly appointed Secretary Ray Mabus, who issued five goals for radically changing how the Navy bought and consumed fuel.

As part of the India and South Asia Program’s annual speaker series, Ambassador MaleehaLodhi, the Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to the United Nations discussed her country’s regional agenda.