Join us for an exciting new virtual seminar series on “Building Capacity for Sustainable Development” that we are hosting through Harvard’s Sustainability Science Program. We hope you will join us and would appreciate your help in spreading the word by forwarding this email to colleagues who you think might be interested.
We have organized this seminar series at a time when the pursuit of sustainability is increasingly hindered by the impacts of climate change, extinction, war, inequality, and rising authoritarianism. Substantial progress is nonetheless being made both in scholarly understanding of the dynamics of sustainable development and in real-world achievements at scales from local to global. Now more than ever it is important to recognize those achievements and understand how they have come about and can be built on by committed change agents at all levels of society. This seminar series therefore seeks to integrate insights from scholars and practitioners on how to strengthen strategic capacity for addressing the multiple intertwined crises of the Anthropocene. It does so by exploring six key capacities that our recently published review of the sustainability science literature [https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-environ-012420-043621] found to be necessary for the successful pursuit of sustainability:
Capacity to measure progress toward sustainable development (February 12th)
Capacity to adapt development pathways to protect human well-being in the face of shocks (February 26th)
Capacity to transform unsustainable development pathways into sustainable ones (March 12th)
Capacity to advance equity both within and among generations (March 26th)
Capacity to govern, i.e., to build and maintain collaborative relationships in pursuit of sustainable development (April 9th)
Capacity to link knowledge with action for sustainability (April 23).
The virtual seminars will take place bi-weekly on Wednesdays at 17:00-18:15 UTC (12:00 – 13:15pm ET) and will be moderated by Dr. Alicia Harley. Each session will involve discussion among a set of accomplished practitioners on what they have learned about the opportunities for — and obstacles to – building the capacity to get stuff done in the pursuit of sustainability. Background for each seminar will be provided in a white paper summarizing relevant findings from our Capacity Building project. Further details on the seminar series are available at this [https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/programs/sustainability-science-program/c4sd-seminar-series], where you can register to receive the zoom link for each seminar and access both the background papers and video recordings of completed sessions.
Details of the first virtual seminar session in the series, Capacity building to measure progress toward sustainable development, is available here [https://www.hks.harvard.edu/events/capacity-building-measure-progress-toward-sustainable-development] and will feature:
Carrie Exton (acting Senior Counsellor of the Centre for Well-being, Inclusion, Sustainability and Equal Opportunity at the OECD) who leads the OECD’s efforts to measure sustainability;
Eli Fenichel (Yale University and former assistant director for natural resource economics and accounting at the White House) who led the Biden administration’s efforts to incorporate natural capital into US government metrics and decision-making; and
Mary Ruckelshaus (executive director of the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University) who has extensive experience supporting governments around the world in building sustainability measurement and decision-making tools.
The seminar series is an activity of the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, hosted by the School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government and co-sponsored by the School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, together with the University’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability and its Center for International Development. Further information is available from Dr. Harley (email) and on the Sustainability Science Program’s recently redesigned website.
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/programs/sustainability-science-program/c4sd-seminar-series
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