Interpreting China’s Environmental Politics at Home and Abroad

The Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Berlin Contemporary China Network (BCCN) and Dialogue.Earth invite you to a discussion with leading experts on China’s environmental politics at home and abroad. Bringing together academics and practitioners, two panels discuss the role of the state both in China‘s domestic environmental policies as well as its extending reach in the Global South. Against the backdrop of tremendous geopolitical uncertainty, the event seeks to interrogate China’s potential future role in global governance by discussing the linkages and divergences between its domestic practices and international behaviour. 

Among other questions, the first panel will ask how performativity and coercion shape China‘s domestic environmental policies. How does the state employ symbolic actions to assert control? What is the role of historical memory in shaping policy responses, and the capricious tendencies of bureaucrats in enforcing or neglecting environmental regulations? What do these dynamics mean for China’s environment, its people, and the future of political accountability? 

A second panel will then look beyond the domestic realm in order to discuss China’s behaviour in, and with, the global south. In how far are China’s actions abroad an extension of domestic logics? How are the needs and concerns of people in the Global South regarding green(-tech) transitions, extractivism, (climate) diplomacy, and trade relations taken into consideration by Chinese actors? How might U.S. withdrawal from global governance issues change both China’s actually implemented foreign policies as well as public perceptions of China as as an actor in these fields?

Panel I - Domestic Environmental Politics in the PRC
 

• Prof. Iza Ding, Associate Professor of Political Science. Northwestern University
• Prof. Yifei Li, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at NYU Shanghai and Global Network Assistant Professor at NYU. 
• Commentator: Sam Geall PhD , CEO Dialogue.Earth & Associate Fellow at Chatham House

Moderator: Paul Kohlenberg, Heinrich Böll Foundation
 

Panel II - China as an Actor in the Global South: How do Environmental Politics Factor in?

• Tom Baxter, Dialogue Earth
• Parsifal D’Sola,  CEO of the Andrés Bello Foundation
• Commentator: Marina Rudyak PhD, Heidelberg University

Moderator: Merle Groneweg, Humboldt University

Kontakt:
Rafael Klabisch
T 030-285 34-357 
E Klabisch@boell.de 

» Participation on site
at the the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Conference Center, Schumannstr. 8, 10117 Berlin

Please register in advance. Unfortunately, the number of seats for this event are limited.

A recording of the discussion will be made available on the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s youtube-channel afterwards.