Over the last few weeks, 17 Harvard faculty have joined the Mittal Institute Climate Platform as new affiliates, greatly increasing the platform’s reach and expertise. Now, these affiliates are sharing some of their top climate reads. Stay informed on the climate crisis, its global impacts, and some meaningful actions you can take. Enjoy the list!
In the fall semester of 2024, the Mittal Institute started hosting Climate Dialogues, a series of closed-door events centering South Asia in the climate change conversation. The talks feature Harvard faculty speakers from across the University in an informal environment that includes a dinner. They enable faculty, as well as affiliates of the Mittal Institute Climate Platform, to engage in interdisciplinary dialogues and forge connections and research collaborations.
In a column in the Business Today Magazine, Prof. Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School and faculty director of the Mittal Institute, highlights the challenges of extreme heat and how awareness, information, and experimentation are needed to address the problem.
Dr. Fatima Zahra, a Mittal Institute Associate, spearheads research at the intersection of human development, labor markets, and artificial intelligence with a focus on the future of learning and work. Several of her projects look at Bangladesh, where she is originally from, including her studies on how climate change impacts child development and what employment barriers Rohingya fathers face in refugee camps. The Mittal Institute spoke with her about her motivation and approach to study climate change in Bangladesh and how socioeconomic and political factors are essential to understanding its impacts.
In 1970, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) was hit by a cyclone that killed 300,000 to 500,000 people. Prof. Mushfiq Mobarak, Yale University, and Prof. Sultan Mehmood, New Economic School of Moscow, provide empirical evidence that the cyclone’s devastation and the Pakistani government’s “callous response” to it were instrumental in galvanizing support for an independence movement. The two authors share their work in this Q+A ahead of a November 15 Joint Seminar on South Asian Politics.
In an essay for the 1800 Histories project based at the Harvard Center for History and Economics, which explores the local conditions at key sites that play a disproportionate role in methane emissions, WIEGO founder and Mittal Institute Steering Committee member Martha Chen writes about the impact waste pickers have on methane emissions in Delhi, India.
The Mittal Institute is pleased to offer a new fellowship for post-doctoral scholars researching the impacts of climate change on South Asia. The Mittal Family Climate Fellowship aims to support innovative research projects that explore how climate change has influenced the region’s past, is shaping its present, and will affect its future. The application window for Academic Year 2025/2026 is open and will close on December 10, 2024.
From September 23-24, 2024, the HUM SAB EK (We Are One) exhibition was showcased at the Clinton Global Initiative 2024 Annual Meeting in New York City. This marks the onset of the next phase, Jatra—a traveling exhibition that catalyzes a series of dialogues, first in the U.S. and then in other regions.
The Mittal Institute is excited to announce a new funding opportunity for faculty research on climate change in South Asia in the academic year 2024-2025. Harvard faculty members from any Harvard School are invited to propose impactful climate research projects or interdisciplinary collaboration through workshops that address the critical challenges of climate change in the region.
The Mittal Institute’s CommunityHATS project, funded by Harvard’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, was conceptualized as a way to address a major gap in the data related to heat impacts. Often macro-level data on temperature fails to capture the impacts on the most vulnerable, including informal workers who labor in exterior spaces without protection from extreme temperatures. This summer, two members of the CommunityHATS team traveled to Ahmedabad City in Gujarat, India, to work with the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in deploying sensors to collect temperature data from poor working women and their environments. Their work occurred concurrently with one of the most extreme heatwaves India has ever faced.
In an op-ed in The Indian Express, members of the Mittal Institute’s climate team + partners working on climate change adaptation in South Asia write on heatwaves and the need for a detailed understanding of how different communities are impacted by and react to the heat.