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SUSTAINABILITY AT HARVARD

News & Events

Explore sustainability news at Harvard, as well as upcoming talks, webinars, conferences and other events on campus and beyond.

 

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Upcoming Sustainability Events

March

19

Tuesday
12:00 pm-1:30 pm GMT+0000

The Greener Gender: Women Politicians and Deforestation in Brazil

This paper examines the impact of women’s political representation on deforestation rates in Brazil. Using close election regression discontinuity design, we show that women, when elected to office, are more likely to drive improved environmental outcomes due to factors such as reduced access to corrupt networks that influence the enforcement of environmental laws at the local level. Altogether, our findings demonstrate that women’s political representation significantly reduces deforestation rates in the Brazil.

This event is hybrid, to attend remotely register at the ticket link.

Presented in collaboration with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

March

19

Tuesday
12:00 pm-1:15 pm GMT+0000

The Greener Gender: Women Politicians and Deforestation in Brazil

This paper examines the impact of women’s political representation on deforestation rates in Brazil. Using close election regression discontinuity design, we show that women, when elected to office, are more likely to drive improved environmental outcomes due to factors such as reduced access to corrupt networks that influence the enforcement of environmental laws at the local level. Altogether, our findings demonstrate that women’s political representation significantly reduces deforestation rates in the Brazil.

March

20

Wednesday
5:00 pm-6:00 pm GMT+0000

Community Event

Harvard Speaks on Climate Change: Federal Climate Rules – A Status Report

climate change
Policy
Salata Institute

The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability and the Vice Provost Office for Advances in Learning present Harvard Speaks on Climate Change, a series featuring Harvard faculty working on different dimensions of the climate challenge. In this session, Professor Jody Freeman will discuss the EPA’s greenhouse gas rules for the auto, power, and oil and gas sectors and the SEC’s final rule on climate-related financial risk. Professor Freeman will also explore if these rules were weaker than expected and what lies ahead in the courts. Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability and Director of the Salata Institute, Jim Stock, will host.

March

23

Saturday
2:00 pm-4:00 pm GMT+0000

Open to the Public

Film Screening: The Last Human

climate change
Environment
film

Our most basic understanding of the origins of life was recently turned upside down when Greenlandic scientist Minik Rosing discovered the first traces of life on Earth in a small fjord near Isua, Greenland. His discovery predated all previous evidence by over 300 million years. Life began in Greenland. At the same time, its melting ice masses are disintegrating day-by-day, and scientists around the world agree that it could drown our entire civilization if it continues.

Director Ivalo Frank’s new film is a tribute to a vast, scenic country caught between two extremes: the beginning and the end of life on Earth as we know it. Frank’s film is anchored by an encounter with a group of children from the village of Kangaatsiaq who fall in love, form friendships, and struggle with loss and longing.

A Q&A with filmmaker Ivalo Frank and Sussi Adelholm, Head of School in Kangaatsiaq, Greenland, will follow the screening.

April

03

Wednesday
6:00 pm-8:00 pm GMT+0000

The Environment Forum with Hiʻilei Hobart | What Returns, What Remains: A Story about Hawaiian Landscape and Dis/Possession

In February 2020, a group of Kanaka ‘Ōiwi cultural practitioners arrived in Cambridge, England, to repatriate ancestral remains stolen from Hawaiʻi in the late nineteenth century. This article explores the possession, return, and interpretation of these remains, specifically 14 iwi poʻo (human skulls) originating from the Pali, an important historic battle site in the Koʻolau mountain range of Oʻahu. In telling the story of their possession and dispossession, I draw upon theories of haunting from Indigenous studies and Black studies in order to challenge the way that settler colonial structures work to limit and potentially foreclose Hawaiian relationships to spiritual presence and placemaking. Drawing upon the Native Hawaiian concept of hoʻopahulu, which encompasses both spectrality and the exhaustion of land from over-farming in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language), this article highlights connections between land, spirit, and haunting that provide a more comprehensive framework for understanding spectral placemaking beyond colonial geographies. In doing so, I argue against possessive logics, showing how contemporary Hawaiian cultural geogrpahies fundamentally refuse, upend, and replant relations that exceed the American state.

This event is co-sponsored by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability

For full details, visit: https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/event/environment-forum-hi%E2%80%99ilei-hobart-what-returns-what-remains-story-about-hawaiian

April

04

Thursday
5:00 pm-7:00 pm GMT+0000

Open to the Public

Screening of ‘The Hollow Tree’ with Director Kira Akerman

Harvard Graduate School of Education

Join us for the Boston premiere of “Hollow Tree,” hosted by the Harvard Hutchins Center’s History Design Studio and co-sponsored by HGSE. The 73-minute award winning documentary follows three young women as they travel to different sites along the Mississippi River and imagine Louisiana’s past — its history of slavery, Indigenous dispossession, and colonization — and, by extension, Louisiana’s future. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Director Kira Akerman, Producer Monique Walton and the documentary film’s three protagonists, Mekenzie Fanguy, Annabelle Pavy, and Tanielma DaCosta.

April

09

Tuesday
11:00 am-2:00 pm GMT+0000

Open to the Public

Freecycle | April 2024

freecycle
Harvard Waste and Recycling
recycle
Waste
April

09

Tuesday
12:00 pm-1:00 pm GMT+0000

Open to the Public

HGSE Green Team Meeting

green team
Harvard Graduate School of Education
HGSE

All HGSE students, faculty, and staff interested in making our school healthier and more sustainable are encouraged to join the HGSE Green Team!

April

15

Multi-day Event

Celebrating Birds: A Papier Mâché Workshop

In this workshop, you will use museum specimens to inspire your own avian creation. Over five half days, artist Gail Boyajian will guide you from start to finish as you build and paint a papier mâché bird from scratch, using everyday materials.

We will complement the art-making process with visits to the museum galleries as well as the ornithology research collections.