A Greener Institution
Harvard Kennedy School is committed to sustainability throughout its operations and policies. Our Campus Planning and Operations (CPO) team strives to provide timely and efficient professional guidance and high-quality campus services for the entire HKS community, and the HKS Sustainability Leadership Council provides strategic guidance on sustainability priorities and new programs to senior leadership at HKS.
Learn about some of the facilities-related efforts and policy initiatives (internal HKS site) that work toward reducing our greenhouse gas emissions footprint and how you can get involved.
Tracking Progress
The Kennedy School’s commitment to sustainability began with an active grassroots effort in 2008 and is now institutionalized with a School-specific Sustainability Plan that was adapted from Harvard University’s Sustainability Plan.
The goal of the HKS Plan is to positively contribute to the University-wide sustainability goals, as well as provide leadership and support to other campuses, internally at Harvard and externally among our higher education peers.
A key component of this effort is to broaden the definition of sustainability from its focus on “greening” the HKS campus to a more inclusive focus on inter-generational well-being. Current research in sustainable development is focused primarily at the global and national level. As a leader in the global community, HKS has the opportunity to join a small group of major corporations and institutions in furthering this research at the scale of local communities.
The HKS Sustainability Plan is the first step in an iterative process. Integration of research, teaching, governance, and culture at HKS is critical to the long-term success of the proposed strategies. Harvard is developing the next Sustainability Plan in 2020 and 2021, and HKS will use that Plan as a model to identify and adapt specific sustainability priorities for our campus.
Download the 2016-2020 HKS Sustainability Plan here.
Sustainability across Harvard
Visit the Office for Sustainability's website to learn more about Harvard University-wide initiatives like Living Labs, community engagement, green buildings, and available student grants.
The Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) encourages research and education about the environment and its many interactions with human society. The Center draws its strength from faculty members and students across the University who make up a remarkable intellectual community of scholars, researchers, and teachers of diverse fields. The most pressing problems facing our natural environment are complex, often requiring collaborative investigation by scholars versed in different disciplines. By connecting scholars and practitioners from different disciplines, the Center for the Environment seeks to raise the quality of environmental research at Harvard and beyond.
The Center seeks to provide the next generation of Harvard-educated researchers, policymakers and corporate leaders with a comprehensive interdisciplinary environmental education, while fostering linkages and partnerships amongst different parts of the University as well as between the University and the outside world. Through a variety of grants and fellowships, the Center supports research related to the environment at every level, from undergraduates through senior faculty members. By sponsoring symposia, public lectures, and informal student convocations, the Center connects people with an interest in the environment.