Featured series 
Tag: Environments & Sustainability
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Nation & World
Biologists remember landmark theory
Forty years ago, Edward O. Wilson and Robert H. MacArthur described how size and isolation determine how many species an island can support. Last week, biologists gathered to mark the theory’s anniversary, calling it a “pivotal point” in ecology’s relatively short history.
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Nation & World
Crimson with a touch of green
When Drew Faust is inaugurated as Harvard’s 28th president this week, there will be more than a touch of green to go with the crimson.
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Nation & World
Harvard Forest announces Bullard Fellows
Harvard Forest recently announced the 2007-08 Charles Bullard Fellows in Forest Research. The purpose of this fellowship program, established in 1962, is to support advanced research and study by persons who show promise of making important contributions, either as scholars or administrators, to forestry defined in its broadest sense as the human use and study…
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Nation & World
Harvard brings the Earth to high school
Steam vents in Yellowstone National Park are part of the area’s unique environment, seen in a case study exploring Yellowstone and the reintroduction of wolves into the park. This case study is part of a new environmental science course for high school science teachers.
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Nation & World
City board gives approval to Allston Science Complex plans
Harvard University has received the approval from the Board of Directors of the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), the city’s planning and economic development agency, for plans for the Harvard Allston Science Complex, the first new academic building of the University’s planned extended campus in Allston. Following completion of the zoning approval, construction can begin. Formal…
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Nation & World
Digging for solutions to energy crisis
In the 1970s, Iceland was one of the poorest countries in Europe. Today it is one of the richest, with a per capita GDP higher than that of Denmark, from which it won full independence in 1944.
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Nation & World
Harvard to limit greenhouse gas emissions in new Allston construction
Harvard University this week reiterated its long-standing commitment to improving the environment, voluntarily agreeing to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new buildings constructed on its Allston campus in ways that…
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Nation & World
School of Design names Loeb fellowship class for 2007-08
The following midcareer practitioners, whose work is dedicated to the improvement of the built and natural environment, will be in residence as Loeb Fellows at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) for the upcoming academic year.
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Nation & World
First class of Ruffolo Fellows introduced at Kennedy School ceremony
A ceremony was held Sept. 21 at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) announcing the establishment of the Giorgio Ruffolo Fellowships in Sustainability Science and introducing the first Ruffolo Fellows to the Harvard community.
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Nation & World
Jason Luke
You might not know Jason Luke ’94, but you know his work. He’s associate director for custodial and support services at Harvard’s Facilities Maintenance Operations. That makes him the Commencement superintendent who every June transforms the campus into a well-oiled machine for merriment (and solemnity).
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Nation & World
‘Life classes’ teach local, global ways to go green
In the offices of the Harvard Green Campus Initiative (HGCI), there is everything you would expect from that arm of University Operations Services: no-glue carpeting, energy-efficient lighting, high-tech windows, and sensors that adjust ventilation by measuring CO2. But in plain sight, next to one of the recycled cubicles, there is also a toilet. The bowl…
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Nation & World
Michelle Gray
Michelle Gray, who has had careers as a cooking teacher and social worker, is a customer service manager at Harvard’s Dunster-Mather combined kitchen operation. One day not long ago, she used a handheld clicker to count the number of people she talked to. The answer: almost 300.
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Nation & World
Meghan Duggan
Meghan Duggan knows her way around sustainability. The marine engineer with a master’s degree in facilities management can talk easily about kilowatt hours, solar panels, cogeneration, renewable wood, and high-efficiency lights.
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Nation & World
Center for Environment announces new fellows
From Sri Lankan tree frogs and Australian algae to the grasslands of East Africa, the research topics of the latest group of Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) Environmental Fellows represent their diverse backgrounds. The five fellows — from five different countries — will begin their work this September, joining the five fellows from…
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Nation & World
Ingenious use of indigenous tree reaps award
The jatropha tree is a humble — some might even say homely — plant, with large, maple-like leaves and clusters of inedible fruit that, when mature, look too brown and shriveled to be of much use to anyone. But to thousands of rural eastern and southern Africans, the jatropha is a beautiful thing. It represents…
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Nation & World
It takes a community commitment to turn a university green
Harvard College Environmental Action Committee’s Earth Day 2007 events and entertainment
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Nation & World
Green milestones
1991: University Committee on the Environment established to encourage and coordinate University-wide environment-related activities and scholarship.
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Nation & World
Conservation progress the fruit of many Harvard hands
Seven years into the new millennium, Harvard has taken steps to lessen its impact on the environment. These are already bearing fruit, putting the University at the forefront of the national move to create environmentally friendly practices, buildings, and institutions.
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Nation & World
New tourism threatens desert ecosystems worldwide
The Department of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) hosted a conference April 4-5 titled “Desert Tourism: Delineating the Fragile Edges of Development.” Panel discussions with leading architects, planners, and developers explored the relationship between tourism, social development, and the architecture and landscapes of arid regions around the world.
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Nation & World
Wal-Mart says ‘waste not’
Andrew Ruben’s business card is tiny: 2 11/16 inches by 1 5/16 inches, or about half the normal size. It’s also made of 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper.
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Nation & World
Harvard’s recycling is recognized
Harvard’s recycling efforts have netted it an award from the American Forest and Paper Association, which is hoping others follow the University’s example and increase recycling rates around the country, according to an association official.
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Nation & World
HSPH dean receives highest honor from Cyprus
Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) Dean Barry R. Bloom has been awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Makarios III, which is the highest honor awarded in the Republic of Cyprus to individuals who have made a substantial contribution to the welfare of the Cypriot people.
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Nation & World
Jane Goodall: A life in the field
As a girl in England, Jane Goodall had a toy chimpanzee named Jubilee — a harbinger of the primatologist she was to become and of the jubilant audiences that greet her at every turn in adulthood. Beginning in 1960, her groundbreaking studies of chimpanzees in the African wild led to a series of revelations that…
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Nation & World
French PM: Cooperation is the key
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said the world now stands at a major crossroads, but that acting together the United States and Europe could lead the way in solving economic imbalances, ethnic and religious tensions, and the threat to the planet’s natural resources.
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Nation & World
Holdren delivers keynote at AAAS conference
Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government John Holdren recently delivered the keynote address at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) last month in San Francisco. The director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy program at the Belfer Center and…
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Nation & World
Center for Health spoof takes on serious subject
The Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School recently launched “The (Bio)DaVersity Code” — a short, Flash-animated spoof of “The Da Vinci Code” that illustrates the importance of biodiversity to the planet’s health. Free Range Graphics, creators of the award-winning “The Meatrix,” produced the short.
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Nation & World
At Radcliffe, microbiologist explains ‘biocomplexity’
The scientist who revolutionized the study of cholera paid a visit to Harvard this week. On March 6, microbiologist and oceanographer Rita R. Colwell, a Johns Hopkins University public health researcher, delivered the last in a series of science talks in the 2006-2007 Dean’s Lecture series at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
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Nation & World
Jackson raps abundance of ‘experts’
In 1973, Shirley Ann Jackson became the first black woman to receive a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Decades – and 38 honorary degrees – later, Jackson is the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York. Her resume includes time as a university researcher (in theoretical elementary particle physics);…
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Nation & World
Wilson urges alliance to save species
Edward O. Wilson sees a future in which science and religion join forces to save the natural world. Without such an alliance, said the legendary Harvard biologist and author, an alternative future is in store for the human race: one of accelerating environmental cataclysm fueled by overpopulation, deforestation, declining fisheries, and climate change.
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Nation & World
Orangutan research yields conservation dividends
The population of the orangutan, one of humankind’s closest animal relatives, has declined with human expansion. The orangutan population declined by 97 percent in the 20th century and over 90 percent of their rainforest habitat has been destroyed. The factors contributing to that decline – illegal logging, conversion of forestland to agriculture, and hunting to…