ECONOMICS AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS
September 12, 2008
Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements: Winner of Research Paper Competition
Announcement
We are pleased to announce that Larry Karp (University of California, Berkeley) and Jinhua Zhao (Michigan State University) have been chosen as the winners of the open research paper competition of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements. Their paper, "A Proposal for the Design of the Successor to the Kyoto Protocol", was selected based on its innovative and realistic approach to post-2012 global climate policy.
Spring 2008
Free: College Curriculum Package Simulates Oil Crisis
Announcement
By Eric Rosenbach, Executive Director for Research, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Securing America's Future Energy (SAFE), in collaboration with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, has created a free college curriculum box set that includes all of the materials needed to conduct an energy crisis simulation in your classroom. The exercise is based on Oil ShockWave™, SAFE's one-of-a-kind oil crisis simulation, which has featured participants such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Dan Yergin and former director of the CIA R. James Woolsey.
May 2009
Acting in Time on Energy Policy
Book
By Kelly Sims Gallagher, Senior Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group
Energy policy is on everyone's mind these days. The U.S. presidential campaign focused on energy independence and exploration ("Drill, baby, drill!"), climate change, alternative fuels, even nuclear energy. But there is a serious problem endemic to America's energy challenges. Policymakers tend to do just enough to satisfy political demands but not enough to solve the real problems, and they wait too long to act. The resulting policies are overly reactive, enacted once damage is already done, and they are too often incomplete, incoherent, and ineffectual. Given the gravity of current economic, geopolitical, and environmental concerns, this is more unacceptable than ever. This important volume details this problem, making clear the unfortunate results of such short-sighted thinking, and it proposes measures to overcome this counterproductive tendency.
October 2008
China into Africa: Trade, Aid, and Influence
Book
By Robert Rotberg, Director, Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution
“Two myths have been concocted by the West on Africa: that the Western impact on Africa has been benign while China’s record in Africa has only been negative. The truth in both areas is more complex. This volume, China into Africa, brings out the complexity of the China story in Africa and illustrates why more balanced assessments are needed on Africa’s relations with the world”
--Kishore Mahbubani
Dean, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore
March 2008
Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa
Book
By Robert Paarlberg, Former Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project/Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, 2007-2008
Heading upcountry in Africa to visit small farms is absolutely exhilarating given the dramatic beauty of big skies, red soil, and arid vistas, but eventually the two-lane tarmac narrows to rutted dirt, and the journey must continue on foot. The farmers you eventually meet are mostly women, hardworking but visibly poor. They have no improved seeds, no chemical fertilizers, no irrigation, and with their meager crops they earn less than a dollar a day. Many are malnourished.
Nearly two-thirds of Africans are employed in agriculture, yet on a per-capita basis they produce roughly 20 percent less than they did in 1970. Although modern agricultural science was the key to reducing rural poverty in Asia, modern farm science—including biotechnology—has recently been kept out of Africa.
2007
Global Perspectives on Oil and Security
Book
This book was born out of a seminar organized by the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies in January 2006, where members of the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University presented papers on topics related to oil and security.
December 2006
The Gene Revolution: GM Crops and Unequal Development
Book
By Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Former Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Globalization Project/Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, 2005-2006
This is the first book to bridge the gap between the "naysayers" and "cheerleaders", and to provide a penetrating examination of the realities, complexities, benefits and pitfalls of GM adoption in developing countries that are desperately fighting poverty while trying to stay afloat in the hyper-competitive global economy.
September 2006
Seeds of Disaster, Roots of Response: How Private Action Can Reduce Public Vulnerability
Book
By Philip Auerswald, Associate, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, Lewis M. Branscomb, Director Emeritus of the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program; Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and Corporate Management, Todd M. La Porte and Erwann O. Michel-Kerjan
Seeds of Disaster, Roots of Response ... describes effective and sustainable approaches — both business strategies and public policies — to ensure provision of critical services in the event of disaster.
August 31, 2006
No More States? Globalization, National Self-Determination, and Terrorism
Book
By Richard N. Rosecrance, Adjunct Professor; Senior Fellow, International Security Program; Director, Project on U.S.-China Relations and Arthur A. Stein
This provocative and compelling book explores the impact of globalization and terrorism on this trend, arguing convincingly that the era of national self-determination has finally come to an end.
May 2006
China Shifts Gears: Automakers, Oil, Pollution, and Development
Book
By Kelly Sims Gallagher, Senior Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group
In China Shifts Gears, Kelly Sims Gallagher identifies an unprecedented opportunity for China to "shift gears" and avoid the usual problems associated with the automobile industry while spurring economic development.
