Alicia Harley

Alicia Harley is a Senior Research Fellow in the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard Kennedy School, where she leads the Capacity Building for Sustainable Development (C4SD) research initiative. Her work asks what it actually takes to build and maintain the strategic capacities needed to pursue sustainability. One thread of that work, and the one most relevant to HEEP, focuses on the capacity to measure progress toward sustainability. That means grappling with how to build the capacity to track whether development pathways are depleting the anthropogenic and natural capital that future generations will need, and to design measurement systems useful enough to compete with GDP as a compass for societal progress. Her empirical research looks at equity in agricultural innovation systems in South Asia. Read more about her work here.