Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs - Natural resource management

A Seat at the Arctic Table

Juliette Kayyem — Thu, 16 May 2013 07:44:25 -0500

"...[T]he Arctic Council agreed to let nations that, at last look at the map, are not located anywhere near the Arctic, join as observers. It may seem a diplomatic nicety, but it is the recognition that the Arctic Council nations no longer have a monopoly on the region. China, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, and Singapore are on a hunt for more energy and have their eyes on the waning polar ice caps."

Genesis of Recupera Chile

Doug Ahlers — Tue, 14 May 2013 10:23:52 -0500

May 14, 2013

Following Hurricane Katrina, the Belfer Center's Broadmoor Project was developed by then Belfer Center Senior Fellow Doug Ahlers to work with the Broadmoor neighborhood to rebuild the devastated community. Highly successful, Broadmoor is now a model of recovery, almost 90 percent rebuilt, with a new charter school, library, and community center. (See Broadmoor Project.)

With Ahlers vision and leadership, the Broadmoor Project has also helped other disaster-struck communities. Here, Ahlers describes how the Broadmoor model is currently assisting in the recovery of three Chilean communities nearly destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami of 2010. The genesis of the Recupera Chile initiative is described below.

Calming the West's Water Wars

Scott Moore — Fri, 03 May 2013 09:50:27 -0500

"The president and Congress, despite the political and organizational barriers, can nonetheless take steps to help end America's water wars. First, Congress should restore funding for the U.S. Water Resources Council and the regional River Basin Commissions. Before they were de-funded during the Reagan administration, these bodies served as focal points for water policy and as useful platforms for dialogue between states and the federal government. By fostering sustained, structured communication among Washington and the states themselves, they can help prevent disputes from arising in the first place."

Obama’s Dilemma: The Keystone XL Pipeline Decision

Zahra Hirji — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:17:21 -0500

April 30, 2013

David Keith, Michael Levi, and Elana Schor discussed how the media influence public debate on the Keystone XL decision during a special seminar sponsored by the Environment and Natural Resources Program.

Economics of Climate Change and Environmental Policy: Selected Papers of Robert N. Stavins, 2000–2011

Robert N. Stavins — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:25:39 -0500

Professor Robert Stavins, Harvard Project Director, recently published the second volume of his collected papers with Edward Elgar Publishing. The 26 essays in the volume cover a wide range of topics, including: environmental policy analysis; economic analysis of environmental policy instruments; economics and technical change; natural resource economics — land and water; and domestic and international climate change policy. The first volume of Professor Stavins' papers was published in 2000 — also by Edward Elgar — covering the period 1988–1999.

The Next Frontier in United States Unconventional Shale Gas and Tight Oil Extraction: Strategic Reduction of Environmental Impact

Meagan Mauter, Vanessa R. Palmer, Yiqiao Tang and A. Patrick Behrer — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:04:30 -0500

The unconventional fossil fuel extraction industry—in the U.S., primarily shale gas and tight oil—is expected to continue expanding dramatically in coming decades as conventionally recoverable reserves wane. At the global scale, a long-term domestic supply of natural gas is expected to yield environmental benefits over alternative sources of fossil energy. At the local level, however, the environmental impacts of shale gas and tight oil development may be significant. The development of technology, management practices, and regulatory policies that mitigate the associated environmental impacts of shale gas development is quickly becoming the next frontier in U.S. unconventional fossil resource extraction.

China's Massive Water Problem

Scott Moore — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:36:03 -0500

"Beijing needs to stop relying on technology to avoid making hard choices about scarce resources. The United States and the rest of the world need to push the Chinese government to make its development more sustainable through political reform, lest China's economy and social stability be endangered."

The World Does Not Revolve Around Benghazi

Juliette Kayyem — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 08:10:27 -0600

"Russia's move this week to take advantage of the melting ice in international waters was predictable. But this groundbreaking event was largely ignored because of the controversy in Washington over who said what, and whether their words might affect their ability to become secretary of state."

Belfer Center Newsletter Winter 2012-2013

Sharon Wilke — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 07:22:36 -0600

The Winter 2012-13 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This edition highlights the Belfer Center’s commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In addition to the background on those 13 days in 1962 when the world was on the brink of nuclear war, the Center focuses on the decision-making that averted a nuclear catastrophe and the lessons from that event for leaders of today. We include winners and winning entries from our “Best Cuban Missile Crisis Lessons” contest, co-sponsored with Foreign Policy magazine.

The Coming Oil Glut

Leonardo Maugeri — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 15:13:37 -0600

November 6, 2012

"The price of oil continues to be set by fear, not by supply and demand," writes Leonard Maugeri. "World-wide oil production is growing quickly. By the end of the year, it will probably surpass 92 million barrels per day, with additional spare capacity of more than 3.5 million barrels. Thanks to the shale oil revolution, U.S. crude production could exceed 6.5 million barrels per day by the end of the year: around one million more barrels than the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicted in January."

"We Shall Not Be Moved" Spotlights New Orleans' Rebuilding Efforts

Tom Wooten — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 14:54:14 -0500

We Shall Not Be Moved, released in August 2012, is an account of how five New Orleans neighborhoods rebuilt in the years following Hurricane Katrina. Focusing on recovery efforts in the hard-hit neighborhoods of Broadmoor, Hollygrove, Lakeview, the Lower Ninth Ward, and Village de l'Est, author Tom Wooten, a research fellow with the Belfer Center's Broadmoor Project, tells the story of this rebirth through the eyes, voices, and experiences of residents who refused to give up in the wake of one of the country’s worst disasters.

North American Oil and Gas Reserves: Prospects and Policy

Jonathan Bailey and Henry Lee — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:46:09 -0500

Expanding estimates of North America’s supply of accessible shale gas, and more recently, shale oil, have been trumpeted in many circles as the most significant energy resource development since the oil boom in Texas in the late 1920s. How large are these resources? What challenges will need to be overcome if their potential is to be realized? How will they impact U.S. energy policy?

To address these questions, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and two of its programs ― the Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Geopolitics of Energy Project ― convened a group of experts from business, government, and academia on May 1, 2012, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The following report summarizes the major issues discussed at this workshop. Since the discussions were off-the-record, no comments are attributed to any individual. Rather, this report attempts to summarize the arguments on all sides of the issues.

A New Case for Promoting Wastewater Reuse in Saudi Arabia: Bringing Energy into the Water Equation

Arani Kajenthira, Afreen Siddiqi and Laura Diaz Anadon — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 19:07:52 -0500

Saudi Arabia is the third-largest per capita water user worldwide and has addressed the disparity between its renewable water resources and domestic demand primarily through desalination and the abstraction of non-renewable groundwater. This study evaluates the potential costs of this approach in the industrial and municipal sectors, exploring economic, energy, and environmental costs (including CO₂ emissions and possible coastal impacts). Although the energy intensity of desalination is a global concern, it is particularly urgent to rethink water supply options in Saudi Arabia because the entirety of its natural gas production is consumed domestically, primarily in petrochemical and desalination plants.

New study by Harvard Kennedy School researcher forecasts sharp increase in world oil production capacity, and risk of price collapse

James F. Smith — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 10:41:25 -0500

A new study by Belfer Center fellow Leonardo Maugeri shows that oil production capacity is surging in the United States and several other countries at such a fast pace that global oil output capacity is likely to grow by nearly 20 percent by 2020. This could prompt a plunge or even a collapse in oil prices. The findings by Maugeri, a former oil industry executive who is now a fellow in the Geopolitics of Energy Project in the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, are based on an original field-by-field analysis of the world’s major oil formations and exploration projects.

Land and Water Impacts of Oil Sands Production in Alberta

Sarah Jordaan — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:54:33 -0500

Expansion of oil sands development results not only in the release of greenhouse gas emissions, but also impacts land and water resources. Though less discussed internationally due to to their inherently local nature, land and water impacts can be severe. Research in key areas is needed to manage oil sands operations effectively; including improved monitoring of ground and surface water quality.

Intensive Workshops Examine Energy Technologies, Future of Oil and Gas Reserves

Traci Farrell — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:15:33 -0500

A group of American and European academics working on understanding the future prospects of energy technologies and the role of governments shaping these prospects gathered at Harvard Kennedy School in April. Hosted by Laura Diaz Anadon, director of the Energy Technology Innovation Policy.... the group discussed the need to incorporate uncertainty around technical change, the challenges of utilizing expert elicitations to inform policy decisions using models, and future collaborative work combining different expert elicitations and different energy-economic models.

Roy Family Supports Student Engagement in Environmental Efforts

Traci Farrell — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:13:37 -0500

The Roy Family Summer Environmental Internship supports returning Kennedy School students interested in specific internships for public, private, or non-profit organizations abroad or in the United States. These paid scholarships allow students to participate in innovative summer projects that would ordinarily not offer a salary. There are four award recipients for 2012, and each received a $6,500 stipend to work with organizations that are not able to hire an intern.

Film Series Promotes Environmental Activism

Traci Farrell — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:12:08 -0500

Organized by Environment and Natural Resources Assistant Director Amanda Sardonis and senior fellow Cristine Russell, ENRP kicked off its 2012 Environmental Film Series with screenings of three widely heralded documentaries: “The Last Mountain,” directed by Bill Haney focuses on citizens fighting to prevent large coal companies from practicing mountain top removal in their town.... “A Fierce Green Fire: The Battle for a Living Planet,” directed by Mark Kitchell, highlights the major environmental movements from the last 50 years, while "The Grand Energy Transition: Natural Gas - The Bridge To Our Sustainable Future," directed by Belfer Center International Council Member Robert A. Hefner III argues that natural gas is the future of U.S. energy.

New Policy Idea: Buy Coal! A Case for Supply-Side Environmental Policy

Bryan Galcik — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:53:49 -0500

Bard Harstad, Associate Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, recently released a study, "Buy Coal! A Case for Supply-Side Environmental Policy," which will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Political Economy.

Ocean Planning and Massachusetts

Juliette Kayyem — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:38:02 -0600

"People like the oceans; over 50 percent of Americans live near one. The oil industry believes it has much to gain from unregulated ocean space, but Big Oil isn't as sympathetic as Little Fishermen. So those bait-fishers have become the perfect bait to undermine the ocean policy."

Socio-Economic Sustainability of Biofuel Production in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from a Jatropha Outgrower Model in Rural Tanzania

Elisa Portale — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:37:14 -0600

This new discussion paper investigates whether an outgrower scheme for a Jatropha production project in Tanzania is capable of developing “socio-economic sustainable outcomes for farmers.” The answer relies on the inclusion of an analysis of the farmers’ material benefits and subjective perceptions about the overall welfare contribution of the outgrower scheme. This research is the first to propose a practical way to operationalize such an analysis and to apply it to a concrete investment project.

Profile: Calestous Juma

Calestous Juma — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 20:18:12 -0600

"The Rio+20 process is an important reminder of the urgency to guide global production and consumption patterns with sustainability principles. Sadly, there is really no genuine global institution that is championing sustainable development. The vision that inspired Rio has been supplanted by two extreme positions. The first is a group that believes economic growth will have trickle-down benefits for the environment. The environmental camp has successfully replaced the spirit of Rio with a one-sided agenda that leaves little room for recognising the central role that human wellbeing plays in natural resource management."

New Book from Former Harvard Environmental Economics Program Pre-Doctoral Fellow Gernot Wagner on Effective Environmental Economic Policy

Robert C. Stowe — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 15:54:44 -0600

The core message of But Will the Planet Notice?—presented with both rigor and wit—is that the actions of individuals can do very little to solve major environment problems, including climate change, species preservation, and water scarcity. What's required is economic policy that motivates large portions of the population—and major industrial sectors—to reduce pollution and use resources more efficiently.

A New Case for Wastewater Reuse in Saudi Arabia: Bringing Energy into the Water Equation

Arani Kajenthira, Laura Diaz Anadon and Afreen Siddiqi — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:27:13 -0500

Industrial and urban water reuse should be considered along with desalination as options for water supply in Saudi Arabia. Although the Saudi Ministry for Water and Electricity (MoWE) has estimated that an investment of $53 billion will be required for water desalination projects over the next 15 years [1], the evolving necessity to conserve fossil resources and mitigate GHG emissions requires Saudi policy makers to weigh in much more heavily the energy and environmental costs of desalination. Increasing water tariffs for groundwater and desalinated water to more adequately represent the costs of water supply could encourage conservation, but also reuse, which may be more appropriate for many inland and high-altitude cities.

The Water–Energy Nexus in Middle East and North Africa

Afreen Siddiqi and Laura Diaz Anadon — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:37:03 -0500

Extracting, delivering, and disposing water requires energy, and similarly, many processes for extracting and refining various fuel sources and producing electricity use water. This so-called 'water–energy nexus', is important to understand due to increasing energy demands and decreasing freshwater supplies in many areas. This paper performs a country-level quantitative assessment of this nexus in the MENA region.

Graziano's Five Major Challenges

Lawrence Haddad and Calestous Juma — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:41:25 -0500

"Addressing this triple challenge (more food, less hunger, less environmental degradation) will require more than just funding. For the FAO to continue to serve as the world's leading authority on food and agriculture policy, it will need to reinvent itself, becoming a thought leader in ending the hunger of ideas on how to end hunger. For example, what is the role of advance market purchasing in hunger reduction? What should be done about foreign direct investment in agriculture and large-scale land acquisitions? How should food price spikes be managed? What are the benefits and risks of emerging food and agricultural technologies? The FAO needs to be leading the debates in these and other areas."

Conclusions and the Way Ahead

Calestous Juma — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:39:32 -0500

A new economic vision for Africa's agricultural transformation— articulated at the highest level of government through Africa's Regional Economic Communities (RECs)—should be guided by new conceptual frameworks that define the continent as a learning society. This shift will entail placing policy emphasis on emerging opportunities such as renewing infrastructure, building human capabilities, stimulating agribusiness development, and increasing participation in the global economy. It also requires an appreciation of emerging challenges such as climate change and how they might influence current and future economic strategies.

Belfer Center Newsletter Summer 2011

Sharon Wilke — Mon, 16 May 2011 09:22:42 -0500

The Summer 2011 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features analysis and advice by Belfer Center scholars regarding the historic upheavals in the Middle East and the disastrous consequences of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The Center’s new Geopolitics of Energy project is also highlighted, along with efforts by the Project on Managing the Atom to strengthen nuclear export rules.

Harvard Kennedy School Honors a Very Cool Idea

Sharon Wilke — Mon, 09 May 2011 12:56:57 -0500

On May 4, Greenpeace Solutions Director Amy Larkin joined high-level officials of Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, McDonald’s, Unilever, and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) at Harvard Kennedy School to receive the School’s prestigious Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership for their collaboration, called Refrigerants, Naturally!

Expert Examines Impact of EU's Diversification Strategy on GCC at Dubai School of Government Lecture

Justin Dargin — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:32:23 -0500

March 23, 2011

Dubai-UAE - The European Union is trying to diversify its sources of energy imports and reduce reliance on Russian natural gas. Accordingly, it has started to reach out to Gulf countries for a secure source of this natural resource. In order to assess whether broadening the strategic relationship between the EU and the GCC is to the benefit of both sides, Europe's energy security challenges first need to be examined, according to Justin Dargin, Research Fellow at The Dubai Initiative and Fulbright Scholar of the Middle East.