Climate Negotiations

In the context of Harvard University’s decision to expand its research and education on climate change, the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Collaboratory at Harvard Kennedy School has decided to build a program for education on and skill-building in the field of climate change negotiations. As a first activity to live up to this aspiration, NCRC has launched a 12-month project to develop free virtual negotiation trainings for United Nations Conference of the Parties negotiators from underrepresented communities and countries with few resources to provide such training.

A key goal of the project is to integrate and bridge canonical research-based negotiation training methods with the specificities of negotiating climate policy in multilateral settings. NCRC is developing a number of proprietary teaching materials for this purpose.
 

Boiling Point: Negotiation, Leadership, and Climate Change

Check back for application information.
Application is open to all current HKS students; other Harvard students are accepted on a case-by-case basis and contingent on the number of applications. All sessions are held at Harvard Kennedy School, unless otherwise specified. 

“Boiling Point” is a highly interactive workshop series designed to build leadership and negotiation skills to drive action on climate change, which will take place in Spring 2023. 

Teaching Team: Prof. Rand Wentworth, Monica Giannone, Anselm Dannecker 

We have invited seasoned international climate change negotiators to join us to share their experiences of: 

• how to advance the Substance of climate change negotiations, 
• how to shape an effective Process for progress, and 
• how to build and maintain Relationships that drive change. 

Most of the workshops will consist of a short input, a personal story from one of our guest speakers, followed by an in-depth discussion of the application of concepts from leadership and negotiation. 

In addition, we will learn how to use MIT’s EN-ROADS simulator. It will introduce participants to the system dynamics and interactions of climate change policies. For example, we will find out why subsidies for renewables might increase energy consumption if not complemented with other measures, why carbon prices tend to create faster adjustments than taxes on fossil fuels and how energy efficiency policies affect sectors such as oil and coal. 

The workshop culminates in a full day Capstone Negotiation Simulation, where participants will assume the role of sector stakeholders and countries to negotiate a global policy mix based on the EN-ROADS simulator. 

Requirements 

There are no formal prerequisites to take the workshop, but experience and familiarity with international climate change are an asset. 

Application Process   

Boiling Point is designed for highly motivated and committed students and selection requires an application process. The application process is now open. For questions regarding Boiling Point or the application process, please contact the Collaboratory at collaboratory@hks.harvard.edu.   

Teaching Team 

Rand Wentworth is the Louis and Gabrielle Bacon Senior Fellow in Environmental Leadership and an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He received the Manuel C. Carballo Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2021 and served on the faculty of the Senior Executive Fellows from 2017-2019. Wentworth also serves as president emeritus of the Land Trust Alliance, a national federation with 1000 land trusts, 13,000 board members and6.3 million members. He served as president from 2002-2016 and is widely recognized for expanding the pace and quality of land conservation in America. 

Monica Giannone is the Director of the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Collaboratory at Harvard Kennedy School, where she is also an Instructor and teaches two negotiation courses for graduate students. The Collaboratory's work seeks to innovate at the intersection of negotiation and public leadership by bringing together academics and scholars with front line negotiators to produce research, trainings and workshops, and increase the capacity of public leaders to better negotiate, overcome difficult situations, and collaborate across difference.  Monica is also an Adjunct Lecturer in the Management Division at Babson College and teaches negotiation in the M.B.A. program. Monica’s current areas of work focus on international climate negotiations, overcoming partisan divide in U.S. legislatures, negotiation in cities and local government, value-based conflict, situations of low-power, and gender and negotiation. 

Anselm Dannecker is a Fellow at the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Collaboratory at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and a Part Time Lecturer at Northeastern University College of Professional Studies. Dannecker focuses on complex multistakeholder negotiations in international finance, climate change, and European politics. Dannecker’s approach to negotiation is grounded in game theory and behavioral sciences. Currently, he is leading a project to explore how findings from other fields can be leveraged for negotiating effectively. As a Coach for the Kennedy School Negotiation Project, Dannecker has worked with individuals in targeted one-on-one settings on understanding default behavioral patterns in negotiation settings and improving individual negotiation performance. Dannecker has trained and consulted clients from various sectors, including European legislators and international climate NGOs. 

FAQ 

Q: How does this seminar compare to IGA-455?  
A: There is some cross over. The workshop is focused on climate negotiations (as opposed to broader environmental negotiations) and the stakeholder interests that constrain international climate negotiations. It is just two days and is not for credit. We use MIT’s En-Roads platform to test how various actions will affect the global temperature at the end of the century.  IGA-455 covers a broader range of environmental issues and focuses on three core leadership skills: Persuasion, Advocacy and Negotiation. The flagship simulation is also run in IGA-455 but we have a mechanism in place to prevent too much overlap.