Book launch - Conducting and Financing Low-carbon Transitions in China

In light of the planned industrial action by UCU members during the week, this event has been cancelled

China achieved one of the fastest decarbonisations in the 2010s among the G20 countries. Yet this was un-anticipated and remains under-appreciated and under-explained today.  How is the performance made possible in terms of the art of governing? What lessons can other nation states learn from China’s experience? At this event, Le-Yin Zhang, author of Conducting and Financing Low-carbon Transition in China, will share her insights into this performance and the questions that it sparks. She will argue that the rise of a carbon governmental state in China is not only the key to understanding this performance; moreover, it is a precursor of a wider phenomenon in the pursuit of decarbonisation.

Some light refreshments and nibbles will be provided.

Speakers’ bios

Le-Yin Zhang is Professor of Urban Economic Development at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London (UCL). She is the author of Managing the City Economy (Routledge, 2015) and a co-editor of Finance for City Leaders Handbook (UN-Habitat, 2016). She served as a co-lead for Habitat III Policy Unit 7 on Urban Economic Development Strategies. She has published numerous articles on China’s urban economic development, central-local fiscal relationship, low-carbon transitions, and green finance. She has also worked as a consultant for various organisations including the UNFCCC, UN DESA and DEFRA (UK) on the mainstreaming of climate change into national development strategies in developing countries.

Vanesa Castán Broto is Professor of Climate Urbanism at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield. She is Principal Investigator in the projects LOACT (Low carbon action in ordinary cities, funded by the European Research Council) and CESET (Community Energy and Sustainability Transitions in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Mozambique, funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund). In 2021 she received the AXA Award for Climate Science. She serves as a lead author for the IPCC, Working Group II on Adaptation and Impacts. She is the author of several books and numerous articles. Her latest co-edited books are Inclusive Urban Development in the Global South and Climate Urbanism.’

Alexandra Panman is a lecturer in Urban Economics and Public Policy and co-Programme Lead of the MSc Urban Economic Development at the Bartlett DPU (UCL). Her research explores the role that property rights and market institutions play in shaping living conditions in urban areas, drawing on both quantitative and qualitative methods.  Her current work focuses on common property regimes in rapidly urbanising settings across the world.  Her research and teaching is further informed by experience as a development practitioner, working in Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Haiti, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania.  Alexandra has a DPhil from the University of Oxford, an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University.’