China's Just Transition

n this one-hour session, Duke Kunshan University faculty member Coraline Goron will present ongoing research on China’s path toward a just transition—an effort to address the impacts of climate policies on employment and the welfare of affected workers, communities and countries. 
 
Goron will share insights about China's domestic just transition practices in the coal sector, highlighting the importance of connecting previously disjointed fields of social and policy research. Goron will also discuss China's international influence on the elaboration of global just transition norms under the UNFCCC, showing connections and gaps with the domestic context. The talk will also touch upon the methodological challenges of analyzing and contextualizing China's treaty making practices.

Sandeep Pai, senior lead for international energy transitions and executive in residence at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability and the James E. Rogers Energy Access Project, will serve as discussant.

Speaker Bio:

Coraline Goron is an assistant professor of environmental policy at Duke Kunshan University, with a secondary appointment as assistant professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University. She holds a double doctoral degree in politics from the University of Warwick and the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), a master’s degree in European politics from ULB and an LLM in International and European law as well as a degree in Chinese law from the China-EU School of Law in Beijing. In 2018-19, she was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Oxford University China Center. Her Ph.D. dissertation—“Climate Revolution or Long March, The Politics of Low-Carbon Transformation in China”—was awarded the Marthe Engelborghs-Bertels Prize for Sinology in 2018.

Goron’s research covers China’s politics of environmental, climate change and energy governance. She is currently focusing on China’s just transition, and on China’s normative contribution to the global climate and biodiversity regimes. Her research has appeared in Global Environmental Politics; Environmental Politics; Science, Technology and Human Values; Environmental Planning and Management; and China Perspective.

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Host or Publisher Nicholas Inst. for Energy, Env't & Sustainability