The Institute for Chinese Studies presents:
Jennifer Turner
Director, China Environment Forum
Woodrow Wilson Center
Title: Can China be the World's Green Leader?
Flyer: Jennifer Turner Flyer
Abstract: China is at an environmental tipping point. Economic growth in China has been at a breakneck speed for 40 years, lifting millions of Chinese out of poverty and urbanizing the country faster than any other in the world. But this growth has come at a cost. Smoggy skies, black rivers, and contaminated soil that threaten economic and human health in China. To slow down the crippling air pollution from coal-fired power plants, the Chinese leadership kicked off a green energy revolution in the early 2000s. In 2014, following two years of major smog problems, the Chinese government declared a war on pollution. That same year, presidents Xi and Obama signed the historic US-China Climate Change Agreement, which paved the path for the global Paris Climate Agreement. At this talk, Dr. Jennifer Turner, Director of the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum, will share stories on the encouraging trends and fault lines in China’s efforts to control pollution.
Bio: Jennifer Turner has been the director of the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center for nearly two decades where she creates meetings, exchanges and publications focusing on a variety of energy and environmental challenges facing China, particularly on water, energy and green civil society issues. She leads the Wilson Center’s Global Choke Point Initiative, which together with Circle of Blue, has produced multimedia reports, films, and convening on water-energy-food confrontations in China, India, Mexico, South Africa, and the United States. Other major initiatives include: Cooperative Competitors: Building U.S.-China Clean Energy Partnerships, From Farm to Chopsticks: Food Safety Challenges in China, and Storytelling is Serious Business Workshops For Chinese Environmental Professionals. Jennifer also serves as editor of the Wilson Center’s journal, the China Environment Series and most recently coauthored China’s Water-Energy-Food Roadmap. She received a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Comparative Politics in 1997 from Indiana University, Bloomington. Her dissertation examined local government innovation in implementing water policies in China.
Free and Open to the Public
This event is supported by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.
