About Us

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

"Sustainability science" is an emerging field of problem-driven, interdisciplinary scholarship that seeks to facilitate interventions that foster shared prosperity and reduced 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.

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.

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 three-year initiative focused on a current policy challenge of sustainable development. Current and recent initiatives are:

Governance Innovations for Sustainable Development (2011-2013, led by Prof. Rohini Pande)

  • examining how policy innovations in low-income settings can allow effective environmental regulation that can best support growth and poverty reduction;
  • providing causal evidence on how a new emissions trading system, developed in partnership with India's Ministry of Environment and Forests, lowers abatement costs and improves compliance.

Sustainability of the Amazonian Hydrologic Cycle with the Expansion of Agriculture and Changing Climate (2011-2013, led by Prof. Paul Moorcroft)

  • Exploring how changes in forest cover driven by settlement, land clearing, biofuels and food production are affecting the intensity of the regional hydrologic cycle of the Amazon
  • Combining the effects of deforestation and associated agricultural expansion with climate change scenarios to capture the response and thresholds of the Amazonian system to answer how much deforestation is too much?

Innovation for Sustainable Development (2010-2013, led by Prof. William Clark)

  • Focusing on institutional experimentation in the energy, health and agricultural sectors to develop new technologies needed to support sustainability
  • Special attention to assuring widespread, equitable, global access to those technologies.

Sustainable Utilization of Land-Water Systems (2009-2012, 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 Development (2008-2011, 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 (2007-2010, 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 to 20 doctoral, post-doctoral, and mid-career fellows to study, conduct research and interact 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. Already published is a web-based reader of key articles in sustainability science. Work in progress includes an integrated text book on sustainability science and a sustainability science curriculum that will be freely available 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 to date include: Food Security and Climate Change led by Profs. William Clark and Missy Holbrook (2010); Water and Human Well-Being led by Prof. Michael Kremer (2009); and Biofuels led by Prof. Henry Lee (2008).

Efforts to evaluate the provision of safe drinking water technologies in the developing world are having a major policy impact. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has provided a grant to the Innovations for Poverty Action for the scale up of the dispenser project to at least 1 million people and integrate dispensers into long-term programs and budgets, thus creating a replicable example for other potential implementing organizations. Multiple ministries within the Kenyan government have funded installation of dispensers, including local governments, the Ministry of Education and Water Services Boards. NGOs have been piloting the approach in Bangladesh, Swaziland, and Haiti.

The report, Toward a Science of Sustainability, emerged from a workshop co-led by Bill Clark and sponsored by the National Science Foundation that constitutes the first US-based effort in a decade to create a systematic, community-based evaluation of the state of the field of sustainability science and to identify research priorities.

Leadership: The Sustainability Science Program is lead by Michael Kremer, William Clark, and Nancy Dickson with a Steering Group of faculty members from across the university: William Clark, Nancy Dickson, Merilee Grindle, Missy Holbrook, Calestous Juma, Michael Kremer, Venkatesh Narayanamurti, 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 Italy's Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea. Additional project-specific funding comes from a variety of federal agencies, private foundations, and Harvard sources.

For more information, visit the web site at http://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/programs/sustsci or contact nancy_dickson@harvard.edu.

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