Sustainable Development Program is now Sustainability Science Program :: Center for International Development at Harvard University (CID) (aka Science, Environment and Development Group)

Project completed as of September 2005

This research program has been renamed the Sustainability Science Program

Current CID Research | Research Archive

Sustainable Development Program

Sustainable development - development that meets human needs while conserving the earth's life support systems - has emerged as one of the grand challenges facing society in the 21st century.

Research, teaching and decision support work on sustainable development are being pursued throughout the university. The Sustainable Development Program seeks to provide a common meeting ground - physical and virtual - for students, researchers and faculty involved in that work; to facilitate synergistic interactions among existing activities; and to initiate new interdisciplinary efforts stimulated by those interactions. The Sustainable Development Program is housed at the Kennedy School of Government within Harvard's Center for International Development.

The program is concerned with factors shaping goals, prospects and policies for a transition toward sustainability. What are the interdependencies among social goals for advancing human rights, economic development and environmental protection? How do global trends and transitions now underway most affect the challenges and opportunities for promoting sustainability over the next generations? How should existing systems of indicators and observations be supplemented to most usefully document progress toward goals of sustainability? How can the dynamic, interactive relationship between nature and society be better captured in concepts and models addressing sustainability questions? What revisions to existing systems of institutions and incentives - economic, regulatory, and scientific - are most needed to steer human activity down more sustainable pathways? How can science, technology and knowledge in general be more effectively harnessed in support of sustainable development?

In addressing such questions, the program will make special efforts to build bridges between the local, place-based character of many sustainability challenges and the increasingly global context within which solutions to those challenges must be shaped. It will also devotes substantial attention to the role of "partnerships" among governments, civil society, the private sector, and academia in shaping solutions for a sustainability transition. Finally, it seeks to foster interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability issues that would be difficult to pursue within a single department or school. The program is building its initial activities on work that is underway around the university in three broad areas related to sustainability: environment and natural resources; science and technology; and institutions and governance. Descriptions of some of these foundations can be found through the following links: