Weatherhead Research Cluster on Global Climate Policy
This research cluster is designed to help strengthen and scale the work of the Global Climate Policy Project, in collaboration with the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability and MIT.
Addressing climate change requires global collective action, underpinned by international institutions, frameworks, and policies. However, current climate action is moving too slowly—due to unwieldy policy structures and obstacles presented by multipronged core missions, among other reasons.
This research cluster aims to accelerate the pace and scale of climate action by identifying and developing new global policy initiatives that address the challenges at hand. We leverage experts across many fields at Harvard and MIT to generate policy ideas, galvanize action, and engage students and alumni toward a deeper understanding of international climate coordination.
Generating Policy and Institutional Innovations: Our cluster explores an array of global climate policy and institutional designs that would enhance global coordination. We have initially identified the following potential topics where international coordination could help to align political and economic incentives to implement policy and institutional approaches that meaningfully and durably address climate change:
- Climate finance and economic development: Flow and management of investment capital from higher to lower-income countries; technology transfer; South-South cooperation on green development; and potential role for the voluntary carbon market to facilitate investment
- Energy: Recovery and management of strategic materials, including critical minerals; geopolitics of energy supply and demand; and infrastructure transitions
- Adapting to a changing climate: Migration; information provision (e.g., global insurance markets); and implications for global health
- Trade: Border adjustment policies; shipping and aviation; and industrial policy and tariffs
- Carbon removal: Preservation of global carbon sinks; emerging technologies such as direct air capture; role in preventing or ameliorating climate change
- Geoengineering: Governance; stratospheric aerosol injections; marine cloud brightening; and ocean fertilization
- Translating Ideas into Action: We aim to engage policymakers and stakeholders on international climate policy on the proposals developed through our work. We plan to host convenings in Cambridge and in national capitals, as well as events at New York Climate Week, the annual UN climate change negotiations, and similar venues, for constructive dialogue among scholars and stakeholders. Through a targeted strategy, we plan to amplify our policy proposals and briefs through media engagement—interviews, op-eds, social media—in addition to direct outreach to policymakers.
- Engaging Students and Alumni: Alongside policy proposals, our cluster engages students through interdisciplinary courses on global policy challenges, case studies, and other teaching materials for undergraduate and graduate courses—alongside crucial research assistantships and independent research programs. Our cluster leverages Harvard and MIT’s vibrant alumni network, many of whom work at international organizations like the World Bank and IMF, or in finance and trade ministries, in soliciting feedback on proposals.
Administration
The Weatherhead Research Cluster on Global Climate Policy is chaired by Professors Dustin Tingley, Joseph Aldy, and Catherine Wolfram. Jessica Barnard is the cluster administrator.
Dustin Tingley
dtingley@gov.harvard.eduResearch interests: International relations; international political economy; and climate change.
Joseph Aldy
Research interests: Climate change policy, energy policy, and regulatory policy.
Catherine Wolfram
Research interests: The economics of energy markets; and the intersection of climate, energy, and trade.
Jessica Barnard
jbarnard@wcfia.harvard.edu
All Weatherhead Research Clusters
Born out of a need to complement the Center’s traditional focus of supporting individual faculty and student research, our Weatherhead Research Clusters revolve around hefty questions for the social sciences and the world. These research clusters represent core faculty interests, and aim to make a significant contribution by pushing the frontier of knowledge in their respective fields.
When business is not part of the solution, it is frequently part of the problem. By better understanding the political economy of business-government relations in the contemporary world, we hope to provide new insights into how business influence can be a positive force for democracy and development. Our work thus focuses on several broad problems: strategies of business influence; firm responses to deglobalization; the politics of deindustrialization; and concentration, regulation, and technology. We aim to address these themes by bringing together a multidisciplinary group of scholars at all career stages to reexamine and revitalize the study of business and politics.
Learn more about the business and government research cluster >
How do we extend cultural membership to the greatest number in society? Gain a better understanding of the social and cultural processes behind recognition gaps? Determine how social scientists and policy makers can better respond to help make societies more inclusive? By bringing together academics from a variety of disciplines and institutions, the cluster fosters a research community that seeks to build up the systemic theory around inequality and recognition gaps and create sustained opportunities for cross-pollination of ideas. Cluster affiliates have studied a wide range of topics—including racism, xenophobia, homophobia, immigration, destigmatization, incorporation, citizenship, indigeneity, and more—across various national and transnational contexts.
Learn more about the comparative inequality and inclusion research cluster >
Addressing climate change requires global collective action, underpinned by international institutions, frameworks, and policies. However, current climate action is moving too slowly—due to unwieldy policy structures and obstacles presented by multipronged core missions, among other reasons. This research cluster aims to accelerate the pace and scale of climate action by identifying and developing new global policy initiatives that address the challenges at hand. We leverage experts across many fields at Harvard and MIT to generate policy ideas, galvanize action, and engage students and alumni toward a deeper understanding of international climate coordination.
Learn more about the global climate policy research cluster >
Global history is one of the leading new approaches in recent years that has helped to transform the study of the past. The contemporary trends summarized under the term “globalization” have lent urgency to research that examines historical processes, networks, identities, and events across the boundaries of the nation-states that traditionally served as the privileged framework for much of the discipline. Historians worldwide have contributed to exciting research on the trends that so many societies have undergone together. In the process, global history has drawn on the expertise of political scientists, sociologists, art historians, economists, anthropologists, and others. This research cluster was designed to build on and focus its faculty leadership in new directions for international study.
The deliberate targeting of LGBTQI+ communities is part of an increasingly coordinated and well-resourced transnational strategy to polarize societies, weaken democratic institutions, and expand illiberal influences. This rising transnational threat is in many respects a reactionary backlash against hard-earned advances won by and for LGBTQI+ people over the last generation. This research cluster examines the interplay of state and nonstate actors as leading drivers of this global backlash against democracy and human rights. We convene leading human rights scholars, policymakers, practitioners, and activists to produce cutting-edge interdisciplinary research, data-informed policy recommendations, and new public engagement and culture change strategies to promote the safety and security—and protect and advance the human rights—of LGBTQI+ people worldwide.
Learn more about the global LGBTQI+ human rights research cluster >
Ethnic and sectarian conflict are on the rise across the world—or at least show few signs of abatement—making it urgent to understand why some communities develop norms and practices of toleration, achieve reconciliation, or resist the politicization of these identities. When intergroup tensions have ratcheted up, is it possible to mitigate the impact? Can a shared civic identity be (re)constructed in the wake of violence waged in the name of nationalism, ethnicity, or religion? This research cluster explores ways to improve intergroup relations in postconflict countries by bringing together a worldwide network of scholars that will draw on evidence from diverse global regions.
Learn more about the identity and conflict research cluster >