Harley organizes Building Capacity for Sustainability Development seminars

Alicia Harley chairs a virtual seminar series for the Harvard Kennedy School’s Sustainability Science Program exploring building capacity for sustainable development. This year, the series is focusing specifically on global agriculture and food systems. Their first session this year was on the capacity to advance equity in global food systems (recording available here). An upcoming session, taking place on April 9th, will discuss capacity to measure progress toward sustainability in global good systems.  

The series is part of the Capacity Building for Sustainable Development project that Alicia and colleagues have been leading. The initiative asks: “What operational skills are most important to effectively pursue sustainable development goals? How can change agents find and strengthen these skills?”

They have found six capacities that research suggests are needed as sustainability science moves “beyond just explaining how nature and society interact” to “change these interactions to support sustainable development goals.” The capacities are: 

• Capacity to promote equity both within and among generations
• Capacity to measure progress toward sustainable development
• Capacity to adapt development pathways to protect human well-being in the face of shocks
• Capacity to transform unsustainable development pathways onto sustainable ones
• Capacity to govern cooperatively to build and maintain collaborative relationships in pursuit of sustainability
• Capacity to link knowledge with action in pursuit of sustainability

Explore more about the project here, and find recordings and upcoming episodes of the webinar series here.