“Climate change is full of adaptive challenges requiring us to rethink fundamental parts of ourselves and our societies. We must all ask ourselves the same question: In a world where we can’t have everything, what are we willing to give up, and what are we determined to fight for?” — Professor Chris Robichaud, Climate Leadership Curriculum Lead
The Climate Leadership Program at the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) seeks to inform and inspire individuals, organizations, and communities around the world to answer that call. We support innovative faculty collaborations and practitioner engagements to better understand the climate challenges we face, our role in them, and how we can create change in our local contexts. Working through Harvard’s online learning platforms, we share those insights with the world.
Background
For decades, the science of global warming has been clear: human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, is altering the global climate. Despite promising technological and diplomatic progress, a significant gap remains between our global climate ambition and our collective climate action, threatening individuals, communities, and ecosystems now and for centuries to come. Closing that gap and ensuring a livable future demands climate leadership across sectors, geographies, and scales.
The Center for Public Leadership is the home of HKS’ learning community dedicated to inspiring and enhancing the capacity for principled, effective public leadership in government, politics, civil society, and business – all of which play a role in addressing climate change. CPL launched the Climate Leadership Program to bring its extensive leadership expertise to bear on the complex and urgent challenge of climate change and, for the first time, worked to integrate concepts from adaptive leadership, negotiations, organizing, and moral leadership into a unified framework. Through this work, we seek to build our collective capacity to address climate inaction and improve outcomes for people, communities, and the planet.
Harvard Online Curriculum
In collaboration with the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning, the Climate Leadership Program will launch a Harvard Online curriculum that brings this new integrated leadership pedagogy to life through a suite of interactive modules anchored by real-life climate leadership cases. The curriculum will invite learners to grapple with the complex personal and strategic dynamics at play in climate leadership work and build their skills to engage diverse stakeholders in making lasting change. Please fill out the interest form to stay updated as we prepare to launch the first course in this series later this year.
Our Team
Anthony Foxx
Director, Center for Public Leadership; Emma Bloomberg Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership
Monica Giannone
Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy
Liz Hanson
Program Director, Climate Leadership
Chris Robichaud
Senior Lecturer in Ethics and Public Policy
Pedja Stojicic
Adjunct Lecturer on Health Policy and Management
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Rand Wentworth
Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School