Current Projects

  • Drawing on Chinese-language sources as well as project-level data, this study aims to present the most comprehensive English-language analysis to date of China’s contribution to climate finance. China’s role in climate finance is a topic of increasing relevance in light of the COP-29 climate conference, where parties set a New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance. This study produces the following headline findings:

    1.      The Chinese government committed approximately 3.4 billion USD to climate finance from 2012 to 2017, but very little of this has been spent to date. Government-provided climate finance totaled only some 160 million USD as of 2021.

    2.      Though subject to significant uncertainty, financing from Chinese official sources for climate mitigation and adaptation totaled on the order of 18.6 billion USD from 2004 to 2021, or approximately 1.6 billion USD annually from 2010-2021.

    3.      The vast majority of Chinese-provided climate finance is commercial rather than grant-based and is provided by policy banks, led by the China Development Bank and Export-Import Bank of China; and state-owned banks.

    4.      The Chinese government has provided at least 100 million USD to multilateral climate project finance in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank and African Development Bank, principally for solar energy projects.

    5.      Most Chinese climate finance is devoted to climate mitigation, specifically power sector projects. Of these, nuclear energy and hydropower account for the largest share of financing volume.

    6.      Adaptation projects account for an insignificant share of total Chinese-provided climate finance by volume, and only about 15% of the total number of climate-financed projects.

    7.      Training and capacity-building is a major programmatic focus of Chinese climate-financed projects, but these account for a de minimis share of total financing volume.

    8.      Chinese climate-financed projects and initiatives are regionally focused on Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Island regions.

    9.      Chinese climate finance initiatives were originally rooted in multilateral climate initiatives, but since 2017 have been increasingly linked to the Belt and Road Initiative and China-led initiatives; and increasingly reflect geopolitical tensions and developments.

  • The existing literature on climate security is primarily concerned with how climate change affects international security. It does not however account for how changes in the international security environment affect action on climate change. Yet there are at least two recent examples of geopolitical developments that produced concrete implications for international climate policy and politics. One of these is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; the other is the emergence of Sino-American strategic competition. This article describes these cases and what they reveal about the relationship between geopolitics and climate action. Five vectors are identified that relate geopolitical developments to climate action, principally through policies intended to bolster energy security or enhance the market position of domestic clean technology producers relative to that of geopolitical rivals. The results indicate the need to rethink climate security to better account for the impact of geopolitical shocks; and that geopolitical rivalry and competition can have positive as well as negative implications for climate action.

    Keywords: Climate change; geopolitics; security; China; Russia

  • With Allison Lassiter

    Scholars have long asked whether federalism, as a distinctive form of government, promotes or hinders responses to environmental challenges in general and climate change in particular. In this article, we examine the two known institutionalized efforts in the United States to adapt to a major climate change impact, coastal salinization, which has not to our knowledge been the subject of any previous political science scholarship. We interview key informants to better understand what motivates institutional responses to salinization; what factors constrain adaptation; and what approaches to adaptation are considered. Our findings support existing climate federalism literature regarding policy innovation and experimentation. However, we also find 1) that pragmatic incentives including the threat of lawsuits and a desire to gain funding from state and federal governments motivate institutionalized adaptation; 2) that horizontal coordination problems present a bigger constraint on adaptation than do vertical coordination problems; and 3) that adaptation responses rely heavily on data and modeling, but that these are often contested. Moreover, we conclude that perhaps the most significant factor in shaping effective climate adaptation in federal systems is the ability of sub-national units to self-organize in response to adaptation challenges.

  • Of all the world’s large economies, China has put forward perhaps the most ambitious policies to address a multi-faceted water crisis common to many other countries and regions: the need to provide adequate supplies of water to a growing diversity of users, including the environment; the need to protect water quality as pollution sources grow; and the need to manage water supplies under increasingly unpredictable cycles of flooding and shortage. This book explores how China has sought to manage its water resources amid rapid economic growth and enormous pressure. It describes China’s success, failures, lingering challenges, and the lessons that other countries can draw from one of the greatest efforts ever undertaken to manage the world’s most precious resource. 

Selected Peer-Reviewed Research

  • With Craig Martin

    Forthcoming in the Harvard International Law Journal

    The acceleration of climate change impacts may increase the likelihood that one or more states, or conceivably even private actors, may attempt to unilaterally implement climate intervention techniques in the near future. Given the potentially far-reaching and disruptive effects of some of these techniques, there appears to be a growing risk that adoption of these techniques may lead to some form of inter-state conflict. This project explores these risks and linkages as well as how to improve the currently underdeveloped international law and governance framework around geoengineering to reduce the risk of armed conflict.

  • WIREs Climate Change 14(3): January 2023, e821. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.821

    Climate change is often thought of as an issue that only cooperation can address. But growing tensions between the world's two largest emitters, the United States and China, demand that scholars contribute to a new understanding of how climate change, geopolitics, and international relations intersect. A better understanding of how competition might affect climate action by individual states, and more rigorous assessment of whether it might be helpful rather than harmful, is needed.

  • Journal of Environmental Management 298(71): November 2021, 113421

    DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.113421

    Creating institutions to manage shared waterways at the basin scale, instead of as a patchwork of fragmented political jurisdictions, has long held attraction for water managers and political scientists. Basin-scale planning, management, and governance, the scholarly consensus runs, can promote cooperative management of shared water resources, facilitate management on an ecological rather than political basis, and better engage a diverse set of stakeholders. Yet in practice, River Basin Management (RBM) has proven difficult to institute and often produced disappointing results, being either too weak to be effective or too technocratic. The case of the Delaware River basin in the United States is a noteworthy exception. RBM in the Delaware basin has taken the form of a capable but inclusive inter-jurisdictional commission that has almost eliminated previously widespread conflict between riparian states; generally improved water quality and ecosystem protection; and empowered civil society. Yet this effectiveness stemmed from a messy political process marked by tension and competition between central, state, and local levels of government. Harnessing this tension to forge a durable, adaptable institutional framework proved to be key to the relative success of RBM in the Delaware basin, providing lessons to inform the management of shared watersheds elsewhere.

  • Water Policy 22(5), August 2020, 850-866.

    Co-authored with Winston Yu

    DOI: 10.2166/wp.2020.067

    Much of the literature on China's successful adaptation to the policy challenges posed by economic development credits two principle approaches, gradualism and local experimentation. However, the extent to which these approaches aid policy adaptation to environmental policy challenges is less well-explored. This article examines how these approaches have shaped policy adaptation in water resources management by presenting data on ambitious water policy reforms that are, to our knowledge, new to the English-language scholarly literature. While gradualism and local experimentation have aided in the adoption of economic mechanisms like water pricing reform and water rights trading to regulate water use, institutional reforms have been undermined by an over-reliance on central control and direction. This phenomenon, which we call hierarchy, constrains China's ability to address diffuse, inter-jurisdictional and multi-sectoral water management challenges like nonpoint source pollution, and may inhibit its ability to address similarly complex sustainable development challenges into the future.

  • The China Quarterly 237: December 2018, 153-173.

    DOI: 10.1017/S0305741018001704

    More so than for other countries, the management of China's water resources is an important aspect of its policy and politics, yet existing scholarly attempts to understand this importance are scattered among a wide range of sub-literatures that lack a unifying theoretical framework. This article attempts to identify common themes and features of the relationship between water, politics and governance in contemporary China by examining how this relationship has unfolded in historical perspective. It identifies three basic objectives that have shaped the politics and governance of China's water resources over time: legitimacy, economic development and environmental sustainability. These objectives map, though imperfectly, onto different periods in the history of the People's Republic of China, thereby highlighting how they have evolved. Together, these objectives explain policies towards, and the politics of, water resources in contemporary China. This understanding shows that water both shapes and reflects Chinese politics, and highlights the need for a theoretically coherent sub-literature on Chinese water policy and politics.

  • Global Environmental Politics 16(3): March 2016, 101-109

    Co-Authored with Dale Squires

    DOI: 10.1162/GLEP_a_00347

    The deep sea, defined as those parts of the ocean below 200 meters, is increasingly the site of intensive resource exploitation for fish, minerals, and other uses, yet little thought has been given to effective governance by either scholars or policy-makers. This article provides an overview of existing deep-sea governance arrangements, as well as a description of the barriers to developing a more effective institutional framework, with particular focus on the unique status of the deep sea as part of the common heritage of mankind, the logistical challenges inherent in monitoring resource exploitation in the deep sea, and the lack of available scientific data. We call for greater engagement by political scientists and environmental studies scholars in addressing these challenges and protecting one of Earth’s last true frontiers.

  • Environmental Politics 23(6): September 2014, 947-964

    DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2014.943544

    China presents a paradox for scholars of environmental politics. Environmental politics and policymaking in China now includes elements critical to environmental protection in the West, including non-governmental participation and stringent environmental legislation. Yet the country’s authoritarian system constrains popular participation, and environmental outcomes are generally poor. China’s South–North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP) embodies this puzzle: despite the pluralisation and development of environmental politics and policymaking, the SNWTP is a technocratic mega-project that imposes high social, economic, and environmental costs. What explains this puzzle, and what are the implications for understanding environmental politics in other authoritarian developing countries? I evaluate two current theories – Ecological Modernisation and Authoritarian Environmentalism – against the SNWTP case, and argue that it illustrates the ability of governments to co-opt environmental politics to pursue other strategic objectives, in turn necessitating greater attention to the mix of persuasive and coercive strategies in environmental politics.

  • The China Quarterly 218(6): September 2014, 760-780

    DOI: 10.1017/S0305741014000721

    Inter-jurisdictional water resource issues constitute a growing political and economic challenge in China. This article examines three such cases of hydropolitics, namely large dam construction, water resource allocation, and downstream water pollution, through the lens of central–local relations. It argues that the hydropolitics in China are characterized by the pursuit of localized preferences within the constraints imposed by a centralized political system. In each case, the primary actors are sub-national administrative units, who adopt various competitive strategies to pursue their own localized interests at the expense of neighbouring jurisdictions. This article argues that although vertical control mechanisms in the Chinese system effectively limit central–local preference divergence, they do little to contain horizontal conflicts between sub-national administrative units. The paucity of formal inter-jurisdictional dispute resolution mechanisms is a major barrier to meeting water resource challenges, and inter-jurisdictional collective action problems are likely to pose growing difficulties for the Chinese political system.