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2. No Exceptions: The Decision to Open All Military Positions to Women
- Author:
- Ash Carter
- Publication Date:
- 12-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- As Secretary of Defense, I devoted a large amount of my time to visiting our troops at bases around the world. These were my favorite trips because they gave me the opportunity to spend time with the most important, dynamic, and inspiring part of the United States Armed Forces: our people In June 2016, I visited Fort Knox on one of these trips, where I met with Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadets and observed their training. These were college students training to be commissioned officers. Meeting with them, I felt an overwhelming sense of pride. Any American who had the chance to look these young women and men in the eye would be proud to observe how dedicated, disciplined, talented, and principled they are. And to know what they are doing for all Americans—to protect us and make a better world for our children—makes you even prouder.
- Topic:
- International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
3. Governance of Highly Decentralized Nonstate Actors: the Case of Solar Geoengineering
- Author:
- Jesse Reynolds and Gernot Wagner
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- New technologies, such as social media and do-it-yourself biotechnology, alter the capacities and incentives of both state and nonstate actors. This can include enabling direct decentralized interventions, in turn altering actors’ power relations. The provision of global public goods, widely regarded as states’ domain, so far has eluded such powerful technological disruptions. We here introduce the idea of highly decentralized solar geoengineering, plausibly done in form of small high-altitude balloons. While solar geoengineering has the potential to greatly reduce climate change, it has generally been conceived as centralized and state deployed. Potential highly decentralized deployment moves the activity from the already contested arena of state action to that of environmentally motivated nongovernmental organizations and individuals, which could disrupt international relations and pose novel challenges for technology and environmental policy. We explore its feasibility, political implications, and governance.
- Topic:
- Climate Change and International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
4. Governing Cooperative Approaches under the Paris Agreement
- Author:
- Michael A Mehling
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Parties to the Paris Agreement can engage in voluntary cooperation and use internationally transferred mitigation outcomes towards their national climate pledges. Doing so promises to lower the cost of achieving agreed climate objectives, which can, in turn, allow Parties to increase their mitigation efforts with given resources. Lower costs do not automatically translate into greater climate ambition, however. Transfers that involve questionable mitigation outcomes can effectively increase overall emissions, affirming the need for a sound regulatory framework. As Parties negotiate guidance on the implementation of cooperative approaches under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, they are therefore considering governance options to secure environmental integrity and address the question of overall climate ambition. Drawing on an analytical framework that incorporates economic theory and deliberative jurisprudence, practical case studies, and treaty interpretation, this Working Paper maps central positions of actors in the negotiations and evaluates relevant options included in the latest textual proposal.
- Topic:
- Climate Change and International Organization
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
5. Linking Heterogeneous Climate Policies (Consistent with the Paris Agreement)
- Author:
- Michael A Mehling, Gilbert E. Metcalf, and Robert Stavins
- Publication Date:
- 10-2017
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The Paris Agreement has achieved one of two key necessary conditions for ultimate success—a broad base of participation among the countries of the world. But another key necessary condition has yet to be achieved—adequate collective ambition of the individual nationally determined contributions. How can climate negotiators provide a structure that will include incentives to increase ambition over time? An important part of the answer can be international linkage of regional, national, and sub-national policies—that is, formal recognition of emission reductions undertaken in another jurisdiction for the purpose of meeting a Party’s own mitigation objectives. A central challenge is how to facilitate such linkage in the context of the very great heterogeneity that characterizes climate policies along five dimensions: type of policy instrument; level of government jurisdiction; status of that jurisdiction under the Paris Agreement; nature of the policy instrument’s target; and the nature, along several dimensions, of each Party’s Nationally Determined Contribution. We consider such heterogeneity among policies, and identify which linkages of various combinations of characteristics are feasible; of these, which are most promising; and what accounting mechanisms would make the operation of respective linkages consistent with the Paris Agreement.
- Topic:
- Climate Change and International Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus