Harvard University
Climate Solutions
Faculty and students from across the Harvard community are working on ways to address climate change and its effects.
A diversity of disciplines
Litigation is one tool that we use … to bring about climate justice and to have a healthier future.”Kathryn Sikkink, professor of human rights policy at Harvard Kennedy School
Aliyah Collins
Divinity School alum Aliyah Collins launched the Eco-Healing Project to help historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) plant on-campus gardens.
Fernando Reimers
Professor Fernando Reimers explores the intersection of education and climate change as director of Harvard’s Global Education Innovation Initiative.
Sam Lim
The Wyss Institute’s Sam Lim is researching how some organisms survive in extreme conditions, like drought, and if that ability can be transferred to crops.
Green reading
Explore book recommendations from Harvard Lecturer on Government Sparsha Saha’s Climate Change Literature course, expand your view of the problem with Harvard Professor Sarah Dimick’s recommendations for engaging with climate anxiety, or be transported with climate fiction recommended by English Professor James Engell.
For shorter reads, sign up for Harvard’s Climate Optimist Newsletter
Improving today
The Harvard community, from the Innovation Labs to the Salata Institute, is working on climate solutions that can address the issues of today and tomorrow.
Read why it’s so important to focus on climate science over doomerism
Tracking methane
MethaneSAT recently took to space to detect and report on methane, a greenhouse gas that accounts for about a third of the current warming of the atmosphere. Methane has a shorter lifetime in the atmosphere than CO2, so a reduction in emissions would have a quicker impact on the environment.
Read MoreWindows that cool themselves
A “skin” can regulate indoor temperatures using liquid channels.
Greener hospitals
Can we make health care environmentally friendly without compromising care?
Informed populations
Miami is providing actionable steps for high-risk, high-temp neighborhoods.
Resilient infrastructure
New construction needs to plan for flooding, wildfires, and extreme heat.
Eco-friendly air conditioning
A specially coated ceramic can cool air without adding humidity.
Want to explore more climate solutions?
Join climate experts, leaders, and stakeholders as they explore approaches to the most complex and challenging dimensions of the climate crisis.
Helping the world adapt
The Harvard community can be found across the globe working on climate solutions like lowering emissions from Brazil’s cattle industry, creating a more a sustainable future in South Asia, adapting to extreme climate events in Mexico, addressing coastal erosion’s threat to structures in Ghana and exploring the intersection of climate change and health in Bangladesh.
Explore content creators around the globe advocating for climate solutions
Empowering tomorrow
The Harvard community is helping prepare the leaders of tomorrow for the challenges ahead.
Climate change in education
Climate change affects learners everywhere—from wildfire smoke negatively impacting healthy development, to heat harming students’ ability to learn, to flooding forcing schools to close. Educational systems must increasingly grapple with how to best support learners, schools, and communities in a changing climate.
Read More- Teach
What role can educators play in improving the lives of children living amid the impacts of a warming planet?
- Adapt
Harvard faculty are developing curricula for the intersection of environmentalism, equity, and civil rights.
- Advocate
Some physicians are providing key evidence to support a youth-led legal movement for climate justice.
- Unite
A global array of high school students joined Harvard's Youth Summit on Climate, Equity, and Health.
- Lead
A Harvard gathering shows the increasing interest in careers in climate and sustainability.
Looking to the plants
Harvard researchers are exploring the history and future of the plant kingdom, including ways to help plants survive on a warming planet, how warming may affect the carbon that plants capture, how Thoreau’s writing can help us understand the profound loss of natural diversity that climate change is causing, and how digitizing plant collections can foster new discoveries.
On our campus
Harvard is continuously finding ways to increase sustainability and decrease greenhouse gases on our campus and around the world.
Explore all the sustainable work happening on Harvard’s campus
Creating an environmentally friendly campus
New US emission transparency requirements help inform Harvard’s sustainable investments.
Walking through the world of climate change
The Harvard Museum of Natural History’s “Climate Change: Our Global Experiment” exhibit helps visitors separate truth from spin and provide a basis for making informed decisions affecting the future of our planet.
Asking what we can do for the world
Harvard Kennedy School details the strides they’ve made to transition toward clean energy and create a campus that’s cleaner, greener, and more sustainable.
Working on a global problem with a global community
Harvard Extension School’s Michael Mortimer, the new director of the Sustainability and Global Development Practice Programs, is incorporating interdisciplinary collaboration and global perspectives into their sustainability programs.
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