CHAMBITION

Over the last decades, China has become an important global actor. CHAMBITION looks at China’s domestic politics and role in international environmental politics this last decade and asks: 

How can we assess and explain China’s roles in international environmental cooperation on climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution/chemicals?

We divide this question into two research topics:

1. How may we pinpoint and describe China’s role in global environmental governance (GEG) in terms of various types of leadership roles?
2. What are the major domestic and international drivers accounting for China’s evolving role and ambitions in GEG? 

To address these questions, we examine changes in China’s role over time and compare across these issue areas. We believe that global environmental cooperation could be a suitable arena for exercising leadership as the environment is generally seen as a ‘low-politics’ arena, compared to the ‘high-politics’ associated with foreign policy, security, and trade.

International environmental politics are also linked to key national interests in controlling scarce energy and natural resources and thus to foreign policy ambitions, sometimes with crucial repercussions for poor countries, global security, and world order. While environmental politics is advancing on international agendas the geopolitical situation is becoming increasingly tense, not least between China and the West.

A study of China’s role and behaviour in GEG, with a focus on international environmental negotiations on climate change, biodiversity, and chemicals /pollution, offers avenues for insights in China’s emerging global role. Moreover, it may be a useful prism for understanding the country’s key role in other world order issues. 

The project is a cooperation between Fridtjof Nansen’s Institute, Tsinghua University, Peking University, and NIVA.