Environment & Climate Change

In view of the aggravated conflicts in other regions that include Russia as the largest Arctic state, and China as its strategic partner, an understanding of China’s opportunities to affect Arctic affairs is urgently needed. Kobzeva and Todorov use a regime theory approach to outline the Arctic regime complex (ARC) and determine China’s actual potential for making amendments to the ARC.

Oil prices have been persistently high over the past two years , at times breaking above $120 a barrel. According to economic theory, that should be good news for climate change. But the political reality is more complicated. Climate policies are increasingly the casualties of high oil prices.

Michael Toffel, Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management and Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS), discusses the many ways in which business and governments can and are working together to address climate change in the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.” The podcast is produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

The Arctic Initiative is pleased to welcome Ríkey Hauksdóttir as a 2023-2024 Research Fellow.

Since September 2022, the Arctic Initiative - together with collaborators at the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute, the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, and the Norwegian Institute of Foreign Affairs - has hosted a series of workshops with Arctic governance experts and practitioners to explore possible pathways for cooperation through the Arctic Council and the broader network of institutions that support the management of Arctic issues, as well as pathways for eventual engagement with Russia.

In November 2022, members of the Arctic Initiative traveled to the Canadian Science Policy Conference (CSPC) in Ottawa to introduce Permafrost Pathways to the Canadian research and policy communities. Through participation and meetings with key stakeholders, the team used the opportunity to seek guidance on how best to engage with Canadian scientists, decisionmakers, and First Nations, Inuit, and Métis (FNIM) communities as the project moves forward.

Arctic environmentalist and policy expert Margaret Williams has joined the Arctic Initiative as a full-time resident Senior Fellow for the 2023-2024 academic year. Williams will support and expand the Initiative’s portfolio of work on marine governance and sustainable ocean management.

The Belfer Center's Arctic Initiative, in collaboration with the International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry and the Permafrost Pathways Project, co-organized a week-long workshop for Indigenous youth titled, “Exploring Arctic Sustainability: Enhancing Resilience, Addressing Land Degradation, and Permafrost Thaw Through Indigenous Empowerment.” With support from the United Nations Global Environment Facility (GEF), the program brought together nearly 20 Indigenous youth from Alaska, Canada, Mongolia, Norway, and Sweden for a week of climate leadership training and dialogue on how a rapidly changing Arctic is detrimentally impacting Indigenous identities, livelihoods, and ways of life.

Energy economist Severin Borenstein, Professor of the Graduate School at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, discussed the many significant challenges facing the nation’s electricity power sector in the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

Stephen Walt advises that in order to prepare students of public policy schools for a rapidly changing world, faculty should teach historical cases where the prevailing theories led to bad policy choices, and where new ones had to be devised to address a novel set of circumstances.