05.07.2017 - 08:35

Research Forum Lecture by Sarah Eaton

Ecosystem Governance in China: Incentives Structures and Adaptive State Capacity  |  Wed, July 5th, 2017, 16–18 h  |
Room LE 736, Forsthausweg, Campus Duisburg

Abstract:

This talk explores an especially thorny problem in China’s environmental governance, namely the poor state of ecosystem management. Partly due to stubborn barriers to cooperation between local governments, ecosystems that traverse administrative jurisdictions are routinely over-exploited and heavily polluted. In recent years, the state has established various trans-jurisdictional governance mechanisms and the talk focuses on one particularly significant development, the emergence of Ecological Function Conservation Areas (EFCAs). The fate of EFCA experimentation hinges on the central government’s willingness and capacity to sufficiently incentivize local governments to comply with measures to improve trans-jurisdictional management of ecosystems.

Biography:

Sarah Eaton is Professor of Chinese Economics and Society, Center for Modern East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen. Prior to arriving at Göttingen, she was an Associate Professor of Chinese Political Economy (2013–2014) at the University of Oxford’s School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo (2012–2013) and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford (2011–2012). She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto (2011). Her research interests and teaching expertise centre on Chinese political economy, inclusive of its regional and global dimensions.

Her current research is concerned with various aspects of state capitalism in reform era China. She has also researched Chinese localities' efforts to forge new growth models in connection with the central government's recent "green" economic plans.