Launched in 2017, the Arctic Initiative seeks to contribute to the interdisciplinary, multidimensional, collaborative analysis and responsive actions that this complex of problems and opportunities requires.
Long before attending Harvard Kennedy School, Bhuvan Ravindran MPP 2026 was inspired to build a world where people and wildlife thrive together.
As a child growing up in New Delhi, India, he rallied support for the Save Our Tigers campaign after learning deforestation and poaching threatened tiger populations. Ravindran went on to study environmental law and spent three years practicing environmental litigation before joining the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water, where he authored state-level climate and energy policies, supported India’s climate negotiations, and worked on sustainable cooling initiatives. This summer, he was a policy intern at the Center for Large Landscape Conservation in Montana, where he analyzed legal and financial tools that strengthen ecological connectivity across bioregions.
Ravindran recently traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland as a research assistant for the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Arctic Initiative, to participate in the 2025 Arctic Circle Assembly. Here are some of his takeaways.
__
You represented HKS during the Arctic Innovation Lab: Young Leaders' Ideas for a Better Arctic session and delivered a two-minute pitch for a solution to an Arctic issue. What was your pitch, and what problem were you trying to address?
My pitch was called: “JunoKeet: A Credit System for Safe Shipping in the Bering Strait.” My idea emerged from the growing tension between economic and ecological priorities in one of the most sensitive marine corridors on Earth. The Bering Strait, a narrow gateway between the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, is a vital global shipping route and a critical migration corridor for bowhead, gray, and beluga whales. As Arctic sea ice declines, vessel traffic has surged—bringing heightened risks of ship strikes, underwater noise, and oil spills that threaten marine mammals and Indigenous subsistence practices.
My pitch proposed a market-based mechanism to incentivize slower, safer, and quieter navigation. Under JunoKeet, vessels that adopt voluntary speed reductions, seasonal route diversions, or noise-mitigation technologies would earn “connectivity credits.” These credits could be purchased by corporations looking to meet TNFD-aligned biodiversity or Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) targets, channeling private capital into conservation outcomes.
The name “JunoKeet” was inspired by Juno, a North Atlantic right whale who lost her first calf to a ship strike—an emblem of what’s at stake when shipping and wildlife intersect. The name “Keet” comes from the Russian word for whale, symbolizing the spirit of U.S.-Russian cooperation that is essential for safeguarding shared Arctic waters and migratory species that know no borders.
Traditional command-and-control regulations alone are insufficient in transboundary and rapidly changing regions like the Arctic. Instead, hybrid governance models—where private actors are rewarded for ecological stewardship—can complement state frameworks such as PAME’s Arctic Shipping Best Practices and IMO’s Polar Code. By integrating biodiversity metrics into maritime finance, my pitch sought to illustrate how financial innovation can reinforce ecological connectivity and community resilience in the Arctic.
“We cannot fight the climate and biodiversity crisis without our oceans—nowhere is this clearer than in the Arctic.”
Bhuvan Ravindran MPP 2026
What are your major takeaways from the Arctic Circle Assembly?
I learned that we cannot fight the climate and biodiversity crisis without our oceans—nowhere is this clearer than in the Arctic. The Arctic Circle Assembly deepened my understanding of how environmental, cultural, and geopolitical systems intersect at the top of the world. Coming from the tropics, I feel more empowered in how I can see a completely different part of the planet.
My foremost takeaway was the indispensable role of Indigenous governance in addressing the dual crises of climate and biodiversity loss. Through discussions linked to the Sustaining Indigenous Networks in the Arctic (SINA) project, I learned the importance of co-governance frameworks that respect Indigenous law and environmental sovereignty. Their ecological intuition, shaped by centuries of observation, is calibrated to the ebbs and flows of the planet across timescales for which we do not even have data—wisdom that often surpasses what satellites or peer-reviewed models can predict. Crucially, this reaffirmed that true environmental stewardship requires not just consultation, but the transfer of land management authority and ownership to Indigenous communities, whose governance systems have long sustained these landscapes.
A second insight centered on the need to design Marine Protected Areas as ecologically connected networks, rather than isolated sites. WWF’s ArcNet initiative—an Arctic-wide spatial framework identifying priority conservation areas—was often referenced as a blueprint for achieving “30 by 30” targets. ArcNet’s connectivity maps underscore that protecting migratory corridors such as the Bering Strait is essential for maintaining ecosystem function under rapid climate change.
Finally, I realized how strategically central the Arctic has become to national and military planning. The region is increasingly being divided into geopolitical zones—Canadian, Russian, NATO Arctic—at odds with the ecological reality that the Arctic operates as one continuous system. Protecting it demands cooperation that transcends borders, not fortifies them.
Hero image: Adobe Stock; Bhuvan Ravindran's portrait by Margaret Williams
About the Arctic Initiative
Read Next Post
View All Blog Posts
