Ideological Crosscurrents and the Challenges of Global Environmental Action

Abstract

Global environmental governance hangs in the balance. A second Trump administration slashes environmental funding, eviscerates state regulatory capacity, and withdraws from global climate efforts. The war in Ukraine and rising fears of economic deindustrialization and decline leave Europe’s lofty green ambitions deflated. Meanwhile, China surges ahead with electric vehicle innovation, expands renewable energy, and pushes the boundaries of nuclear research. What does all this mean for global climate action? In this keynote, Iza Ding unpacks three critical tensions: the widening divide between the Global North and South, the seismic shifts in geopolitical and ideological landscapes, and China’s indispensable yet contested role in shaping global environmental governance.

Bio

Iza Ding (Ph.D. Harvard, 2016) is Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. Her research explores the many paradoxes and pushbacks attending economic, political, and cultural modernization, such as creative resistance against institutional rigidities, lingering moral traditions against legal development, enduring historical memories against rapid socioeconomic transformations, and humans' simultaneous degradation and reverence of nature. Ding is the author of The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China (Cornell University Press, 2022). She is currently a Visiting Researcher at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

For online participation, please register here: https://hu-berlin.zoom-x.de/meeting/register/i_EfDNQ3Q7GjpKdU-F2diA