Person: Harley, Alicia
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Harley
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Alicia
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Harley, Alicia
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Publication The Struggle for Sustainable Development in Appalachia’s Mineral Rich Mountains(Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, 2022-05) Harley, Alicia; Wexner, HannahThis teaching case examines this paradox of poverty amidst plenty. To do this, the case explores the co-evolving history of nature and society in the Central Appalachian region from the Native American period through to the present day. Over the past 200 years, coal mining and other extractive industries have been dominant drivers of nature-society interactions in Central Appalachia. Concomitantly unequal distributions of power between different groups of actors have played a significant role in the dynamics of this history. The people of Appalachian, despite their popular depiction in the media and popular culture, have not been passive recipients of exploitation and greed from outside interests. Rather the history of Appalachia is a history of inequality and maldistributions of power, but also a history of resistance and struggle. The case is thus particularly useful for examining the character of power and struggles for empowerment within nature-society systems as well as the capacities necessary to pursue sustainability even in the face of enormous social and environmental challenges.Publication Making Technological Innovation Work for Sustainable Development(2015) Diaz Anadon, Laura; Chan, Gabriel; Harley, Alicia; Matus, Kira; Murthy, Sharmila; Clark, WilliamSustainable development requires harnessing technological innovation to improve human well-being in current and future generations. However, poor, marginalized, and unborn populations too often lack the economic or political power to shape innovation processes to meet their needs. Issues arise at all stages of innovation, from invention of a technology through its selection, production, adaptation, adoption, and retirement. Three insights should inform efforts to intervene in innovation systems for sustainable development. First, innovation is not a linear process but rather a complex adaptive system involving many actors and institutions operating simultaneously from local to global levels; interventions must take this complexity into account. Second, there has been significant experimentation in mobilizing technology for sustainable development in the health, energy, and agriculture sectors, among others, but learning from past experience requires structured cross-sectoral comparisons and recognition of the socio-technical nature of innovation. Third, the current constellation of rules, norms, and incentives shaping innovation is not always aligned towards sustainable development. Past experience demonstrates that it is possible to reform these institutions, and the imperative of harnessing innovation for sustainable development makes it necessary to do so. Many actors have the power to re-orient innovation systems towards sustainable development through research, advocacy, training, convening, policymaking, and financing. We offer three proposals to begin: mobilizing global financing to invest in inventing suitable and affordable technologies to meet sustainable development objectives; developing measures to engage marginalized populations systematically through all stages of the innovation process; and establishing channels for regularized learning across domains of practice.Publication Innovation and Access to Technologies for Sustainable Development: A Global Systems Perspective(2014) Harley, Alicia; Murthy, Sharmila; Diaz Anadon, Laura; Chan, Gabriel Angelo; Matus, Kira; Moon, Suerie; Timmer, Vanessa Joanna; Clark, WilliamThis workshop report is a summary of themes discussed by five panels during a daylong workshop on “Innovation and Access to Technologies for Sustainable Development: A Global Perspective” at Harvard University on April 24,2014. The workshop brought together a diverse group of scholars to explore how the technological innovation needed for sustainable development can be promoted in ways that assure equitable access in current and future generations. Three key themes that emerged from the workshop include:(1) The central role of power, politics and agency in analyzing technological innovation and sustainable development -an important aspect of this includes the articulation of the roles of actors and organizations within frameworks and models of innovation systems.(2) The importance of focusing both on supply-push and demand-pull mechanisms in innovation scholarship and innovation policy.(3) The need to focus on more innovation scholarship around the goals of sustainable development.Publication Innovation for Vulnerable Farmers: Drought and Water Scarcity Adaptation Technologies.(2015) Harley, Alicia; Holbrook, Noel; Clark, WilliamThis report is a summary of themes discussed during a two-day workshop on “Innovation for Vulnerable Farmers: Drought and Water Scarcity Adaptation Technologies.” The workshop was held at Harvard University on September 11–12, 2014. It brought together a diverse group of scholars to explore how actors in the agriculture innovation system can better promote the needs of small and marginal farmers.Publication Innovation and Access to Technologies for Sustainable Development: Diagnosing Weaknesses and Identifying Interventions in the Transnational Arena(Harvard Kennedy School, 2014-05) Diaz Anadon, Laura; Matus, Kira; Moon, Suerie; Chan, Gabriel; Harley, Alicia; Murthy, Sharmila; Timmer, Vanessa; Abdel Latif, Ahmed; Araujo, Kathleen; Booker, Kayje; Choi, Hyundo; Dubrawski, Kristian; Friedlander, Lonia; Ingersoll, Christina; Kempster, Erin; Pereira, Laura; Stephens, Jennifer; Vinsel, Lee; Clark, WilliamSustainable development – improving human well-being across present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs – is a central challenge for the 21st century. Technological innovation can play an important role in moving society toward sustainable development. However, poor, marginalized, and future populations often do not fully benefit from innovation due to their lack of market or political power to influence innovation processes. As a result, current innovation systems fail to contribute as much as they might to meeting sustainable development goals. This paper focuses on how actors and institutions operating in the transnational arena can mitigate such shortfalls. To identify the most important transnational functions required to meet sustainable development needs our analysis undertook three main steps. First, we developed a framework to diagnose blockages in the global innovation system for particular technologies. This framework was built on existing theory and new empirical analysis. On the theory side, we drew from the literatures of systems dynamics; technology and sectoral innovation systems, science and technology studies, the economics of innovation, and global governance. On the empirical front, we conducted eighteen detailed case studies of technology innovation in multiple sectors relevant to sustainable development: water, energy, health, food, and manufactured goods. We use the framework to analyze our case studies in the common language of (1) technology stocks, (2) non-linear flows between stocks substantiated by specific mechanisms, and (3) characteristics of actors and socio-technical conditions (STCs) which mediate the flows between stocks. We identify blockages in the innovation system for each of the cases, diagnosing where in the innovation system flows were hindered and which specific sets of STCs and actor characteristics were associated with these blockages. Figure E.1 displays the components of our framework and how they relate.Publication Sustainability Science: Toward a Synthesis(2020-04) Clark, William; Harley, AliciaThis review was published open access here: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-012420-043621 This review synthesizes diverse approaches that researchers have brought to bear on the challenge of sustainable development. We construct an integrated framework highlighting the union set of elements and relationships that those approaches have shown to be useful in explaining nature-society interactions in multiple contexts. Compelling evidence has accumulated that those interactions should be viewed as a globally interconnected, complex adaptive system in which heterogeneity, nonlinearity, and innovation play formative roles. The long-term evolution of that system cannot be predicted but can be understood and partially guided through dynamic interventions. Research has identified six capacities necessary to support such interventions in guiding development pathways toward sustainability. These are capacities to: i) measure sustainable development; ii) promote equity; iii) adapt to shocks and surprises; iv) transform the system into more sustainable development pathways; v) link knowledge with action; vi) devise governance arrangements that allow people to work together in exercising the other capacities.Publication Sustainability Science: A guide for researchers(PubPub, 2020-09-10) Harley, Alicia; Clark, WilliamThis project is a dynamic Research Guide to the principal findings of sustainability science. The goal of the project is to provide a synthesis of research in the field that highlights its principle insights and their practical implications for the pursuit of sustainable development. We have shaped the project in a way that we hope will prove useful for graduate seminars in sustainability science, for established scholars seeking to locate their work within this sprawling field, or to catch up on important findings in parts that are not their own. We hope that it will help to catalyze new collaborations across distant parts of this rapidly expanding and evolving community of researchers working on the problem of sustainable development. The project is grounded in material we assembled as background for a brief review of sustainability science we recently published in Annual Review of Environment and Resources. (See entry on ‘Genealogy’ at the bottom of this page). We seek now to move substantially beyond that review, expanding and revising existing sections, adding new ones, and updating its principal findings in the light of rapidly expanding research in the field. Our basic strategy for doing so is to build on our initial material through as an experiment in collaboration and community publishing. Key features of the experiment are that it is open access (so everyone can benefit from it), modular (so users can select what they need and ignore the rest), dynamic (so it can be updated), and collaborative (so that it can benefit from the wide range of approaches and perspectives of the community). In particular, we invite members of the sustainability science community to collaborate with us through open review and annotation of portions of the evolving Research Guide that interest them, through invited commentaries, or through suggestions regarding new sections that should be added to make the Guide more useful. The structure of the site hosting this experiment allows all readers to see all collaborative contributions and who is responsible for them, to engage with them (e.g., by commenting on others’ comments), and to benefit from them (e.g., by having graduate students discuss the posted comments and criticisms of the main text). We believe this experiment—if supported by the community—could serve several valuable functions. First, it could help to bridge the various island empires of sustainability science through engagement of multiple research programs and perspectives and inclusion of their insights in a dynamically evolving community product. Second, it could serve as a teaching tool that not only synthesizes progress in sustainability science but also highlights for discussion unanswered questions and ongoing debates. Finally, it could help to develop a more equitable community of sustainability science researchers, with its products open to access by all rather than restricted to those able to navigate paywalls and other barriers to the free and open exchange of ideas.Publication Sustainability Science: Towards a Synthesis(2019-12) Clark, William; Harley, AliciaWe review recent scholarship relevant to the pursuit of sustainable development. We find a compelling argument that the interactions of nature and society in the Anthropocene constitute a globally interconnected, complex adaptive system in which heterogeneity, nonlinear relationships, and innovation play formative roles. The dynamics of this system cannot be fully predicted but can be partially guided through appropriate interventions. We synthesize the diverse research approaches that have been applied to sustainable development challenges and construct an integrative framework that highlights elements and relationships they have found to be important for understanding the Anthropocene System. From this integrative perspective we identify six capacities that research suggests are necessary to foster sustainable development. The capacities are: i) the capacity to measure sustainable development; ii) the capacity to promote equity; iii) the capacity to adapt to shocks and surprises; iv) the capacity to transform the system onto more sustainable development pathways; v) the capacity to link knowledge with action; and vi) the capacity to devise governance arrangements that support collective action to nurture shared resources, promote equity, and confront uncertainty in pursuit of sustainability.