Prof. Michael Kremer’s work evaluates approaches to safe water provision: a chlorine dispenser in Kenya 2009-10 Center for International Development faculty, fellows and staff Prof. Nava Ashraf works on incentives in the distribution of public goods: female condom promotion in Zambia Balancing land conservation and local economic development in Thailand, Katharine Sims 2008

About Us

The Sustainability Science Program is the hub of Harvard's research, teaching, and interventions on the challenges of sustainable development.

Harvard's Sustainability Science Program harnesses the University's strengths to promote the design of institutions, policies, and practices that support sustainable development. The Program addresses the challenge of sustainable development by:

  • advancing scientific understanding of human-environment systems;
  • improving linkages between research and policy communities; and
  • building capacity for linking knowledge with action to promote sustainability.

"Sustainability science" is an emerging field of problem-driven, interdisciplinary scholarship that facilitates interventions to increase prosperity and reduce poverty while protecting the environment. The field is defined by the problems it addresses rather than the disciplines it employs. It draws from multiple disciplines of the natural, social, medical, and engineering sciences, from the professions, and from practical field experience in business, government, and civil society. Sustainability science is best understood as neither basic nor applied research. It is basic research that produces generalizable knowledge derived from classical scientific research as well as useful knowledge that is context-specific derived from practice and experience.

Activities: The Program supports major initiatives in policy-relevant research, faculty research, training of students and fellows, teaching, and outreach.

Initiatives in policy-driven research: Each year the Program seeks to develop a major new two-year initiative focused on a current policy challenge of sustainable development. Current and recent initiatives are:

Sustainable Utilization of Land-Water Systems (2009-2011, led by Prof. Missy Holbrook)

  • Focusing on the challenges to hydrological systems that arise from the joint demands of health, agriculture, and energy development.
  • Examining coupled human-environment systems from a perspective of risk, vulnerability, and resilience.

Water and Health (2008-2010, led by Prof. Michael Kremer)

  • Determining which of the many technical interventions designed to improve water quality most benefit the health of communities in developing countries.
  • Evaluating the efficacy of options to increase deployment and adoption of the most effective interventions, with special attention to the role of information, price signals, and property rights.

Biofuels and Globalization (2007-2009, led by Prof. Henry Lee)

  • Addressing actions needed to foster the sustainable development of biofuels in ways that attract investment that benefit local livelihoods and regional economies while simultaneously mitigating the impacts on food prices and the environment.
  • Focusing on infrastructure development, agriculture research and development, certification protocols and standards, and land use governance.

Harvard faculty research: An annual faculty grants competition for Harvard faculty seeds new research and supports projects that contribute to ongoing research relating to the core concerns of sustainability science.
 
Training and capacity development: Each year, the SSP Fellows Program brings to Harvard 15 to20 doctoral, post-doctoral, and mid-career fellows to work for one year. The fellows are selected through an international competition and provided with stipendiary support. In addition to general funds supporting this fellowship, special funding for the Giorgio Ruffolo Fellowships in Sustainability Science supports citizens of Italy or developing countries. The Program also funds Empedocle Maffia Fellowships for two students in the Harvard Kennedy School's masters program for incoming admitted Italian citizens.

Teaching: SSP leads a group of international partners in creating teaching materials on sustainability science. Our intent is to make these broadly available to the international community. Work in progress includes: the first integrated text book on sustainability science; a Web-based reader of key articles in sustainability science; and a sustainability science curriculum, developed in collaboration with our fellows that will be freely available for use and modification by teachers around the world.

Outreach: To promote outreach that makes program results available to the policy community, we have instituted an annual Executive Session on Grand Challenges of Sustainability, co-hosted by the Program and Venice International University. It brings together key scholars and decision makers from around the world for off-the-record discussions and identification of key research and action needs. Sessions held include one on Water and Human Well-Being led by Prof. Michael Kremer (2009) and on Biofuels and Sustainable Development led by Prof. Henry Lee (2008).

Conducted with support from the Harvard Kennedy School Dean's Acting in Time initiative, a workshop on Institutions for Global Public Health in June 2008 explored public-private partnerships for linking knowledge with action with regard to catastrophically deadly diseases of the developing world. The project, led by Prof. William Clark, was developed as a joint undertaking of the HKS, and the deans of the Harvard School of Public Health and Boston University School of Public Health. Using malaria as a case study, the meeting addressed the changing role of institutions in strengthening public health in developing countries. A special feature in the Public Library of Science Medicine is forthcoming (2009).

Efforts to evaluate the provision of safe drinking water technologies in the developing world are led by Prof. Michael Kremer. A randomized evaluation, in which provision of chlorine dispensers is phased in over time is demonstrating the impact of the intervention on child health outcomes, and will shed light on how the technology can be sustainably managed in a variety of settings. Efforts are underway to expand the program in Kenya and throughout the world. Prof. Kremer's experience transforming the results of a randomized evaluation of school-based de-worming into a national program in Kenya shows that strong evidence of health impact is a critical catalyst for public action.

Leadership: The Sustainability Science Program is lead by Michael Kremer, Bill Clark, and Nancy Dickson, with a Steering Group of faculty members from across the university: Bill Clark, Nancy Dickson, Merilee Grindle, Missy Holbrook, Calestous Juma, Rohini Pande, and Dan Schrag. Overall, SSP includes more than 40 faculty affiliates from six Harvard schools who have either have received a grant from the program or hosted a fellow.

Priority Funding Areas: We are looking to provide supplemental support for problem-driven research by students and faculty working at the intersection of environment and development issues, e.g., addressing sustainability challenges relating to advancing sustainable development of agriculture, habitation, energy and materials, health, and water.

Program Sponsorship: The Sustainability Science Program's core support is provided by a generous gift from the Italian Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea. Additional project-specific funding comes from a variety of federal agencies, private foundations, and Harvard sources.

Key indexing terms: sustainability science, sustainable development, coupled human-environment systems, water, health, agriculture, land use, fellowships, executive education, randomized evaluation, linking knowledge with action.

For more information visit the web site at www.cid.harvard.edu/sustsci or contact nancy_dickson@harvard.edu.

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