Our team traveled to the Philippines in March for a week of fieldwork as part of our capstone project on carbon markets. In partnership with the Asian Development Bank, we are examining how international climate finance can be mobilized for carbon projects under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, with a focus on agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU), including rice cultivation, mangroves, and seagrasses. Over five days in Manila and Laguna, we met with government agencies, project developers, investors, startups, and multilateral partners to better understand the opportunities and constraints shaping the country’s emerging carbon market.

The field visit brought our research into direct conversation with on-the-ground realities. Across 21 interviews and three site visits, we found strong interest in the Philippines’ potential for AFOLU carbon projects, but also significant barriers to scaling them. Stakeholders pointed to the fragmented policy framework  for Article 6, unresolved land and carbon rights, limited bankable project pipelines, and continued concerns about carbon credit integrity. We also explored sector-specific challenges in rice, forestry, and biomass management, including emerging technologies such as biochar and biodigesters.

A key takeaway from the trip was that unlocking climate finance for AFOLU projects will require progress on several fronts at once: clearer institutional pathways, stronger support for project development and aggregation, and more credible long-term demand signals from buyers and investors.

To complement our on-the-ground fieldwork, one team member attended CERAWeek in Houston — one of the world's foremost gatherings of energy industry leaders — where engagement with a broad set of energy stakeholders further reinforced the direction of our research. Conversations with executives from major players, some of whom are actively navigating their entry into voluntary carbon markets, highlighted that purchasing decisions are increasingly driven by credibility, policy durability, and the ability to stack economic value across compliance and voluntary mechanisms.

As we move into the final phase of the capstone, we are using these insights to refine practical recommendations for how the Philippines can attract international finance while building a more credible and investable carbon market.

Our five-day fieldwork trip to Kyiv, Ukraine, gave us valuable firsthand insight into how key stakeholders view municipal bonds as a potential tool for municipal-level reconstruction and development. Over the course of the trip, we met with experts, ministry representatives, and municipal actors to better understand existing financing structures and to assess perceptions of municipal bonds as a possible solution for Ukraine’s reconstruction needs. 

We also participated in a roundtable with representatives from the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine, the National Bank of Ukraine, the National Securities and Stock Market Commission, as well as our partners NGO EU-LEAP and MP Oleksiy Movchan.

These meetings helped us better understand both Ukraine’s capacity to develop a municipal bond market and the barriers that currently stand in the way. They also highlighted key stakeholder concerns, institutional constraints, and differing perspectives on the viability of this approach. In parallel, we had the opportunity to present several of the more innovative financing ideas we are continuing to refine.

In the coming weeks, we hope to develop a viable policy solution and produce a final report on approaches to expanding sub-sovereign financing for Ukraine’s reconstruction, informed by our updated analysis.

Our team traveled to London to examine the growing gap between rapid AI deployment and governance in the United Kingdom's communications sector. Engaging directly with stakeholders on the ground provided a valuable opportunity to root their research in real-world perspectives and observe how these challenges are unfolding in practice.

While in London, the team met extensively with government, regulatory, industry, and research institutions. We presented initial findings to their partner, the AI Security Institute (AISI), and consulted with experts from Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative. The trip reinforced the importance of clear guidance and risk frameworks, cross-sector coordination, and adaptive governance as the UK navigates the safe integration of AI into its communications systems.

We engaged a range of stakeholders in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Armavir, Armenia to assess how city leadership can build public trust amid increasing mis- and disinformation.

In Scranton, we met with leadership and staff across City Hall, university faculty, community leaders, and local youth center practitioners. We then travelled to Armavir — Scranton's sister city — where we met with the mayor, a local NGO, and a fact-checking organization to better understand how mis- and disinformation spreads and how local actors are responding.

Across both cities, a consistent theme emerged: trust depends on clear, two-way communication with constituents, especially through in-person engagement. We are now developing solutions to operationalize this insight, refining our approach as we identify and integrate new evidence, and building stakeholder alignment ahead of our report to both cities in June.

Over five days in Tokyo, our team met with officials across Japan's Ministry of Agriculture (MAFF), Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), and the Defense Innovation agency (DISTI/ATLA), as well as private sector and public-private institutions including Mitsubishi Corporation, the Development Bank of Japan, JICT Fund, and Deloitte Tohmatsu.

Our fieldwork revealed a persistent gap in Japan's path from research to deployment. The country invests heavily in frontier R&D through programs like its Moonshot Research and Development Program, but startups struggle to commercialize that research, and the broader ecosystem is not set up to help them. Large corporates and government agencies lack clear procurement pathways for working with startups, meaning that even promising technologies stall before reaching operational use.

Understanding where and why that pipeline breaks down became central to our final recommendations for how a foreign climate tech company can position itself within Japan's institutional landscape.

The team divided fieldwork across multiple locations to engage the wide range of stakeholders shaping U.S. space launch resilience and capacity. One team member met with space policy researchers at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and with U.S. Special Operations Command’s space-related research and development stakeholders in Tampa. Another attended Satellite Show 2026 in Washington, D.C., where he engaged representatives from industry, policy research organizations, government, and other space stakeholders.

A third team member traveled to Australia to meet with officials and commercial space actors about allied partnership opportunities, while another traveled to New York City to speak with representatives from the United Arab Emirates about potential areas for cooperation.

This division of labor allowed the team to examine the policy, operational, commercial, and international dimensions of the U.S. space launch challenge at the same time. Across these engagements, the team explored how coordination gaps, infrastructure constraints, and the interests of allies and private-sector actors affect U.S. launch cadence and resilience.

The fieldwork helped the team refine recommendations focused not only on physical launch infrastructure, but also on the broader network of institutions, partnerships, and policy mechanisms needed to strengthen the United States’ ability to sustain space access in both routine and contested environments.