Virtual Seminar: Resource Nexus Governance Challenges in China: Origins, Progress and Outlook, 13 July 2020

About the Event

Synopsis reproduced from original listing in IWP (Registration link):

China struggles to manage many types of resources in an environmentally sustainable way, for example, water, minerals, energy and agricultural land. The challenges of governing the extraction and use of these resources are exacerbated by the interactions between the supply chains associated with each resource – in other words, the resource nexus. In this seminar, I apply institutional concepts to examine two specific challenges relating to the resource nexus in China: the water-energy nexus, looking at water use for energy and energy use for water, and the role of synthetic nitrogenous fertilizer in the wider resource nexus.
A number of the constraints to improving the governance of the resource nexus in China have their origins in the country’s wider institutional environment. These include poor coordination between government agencies, weak incentives for local governments to comply with central government policies, the role of pricing and subsidies, the nature of property rights, and a preference for self-sufficiency and supply-side solutions. These longstanding characteristics of the institutional environment are reflected in the organisational fields of energy, water and N-fertilizer where they have instilled cognitive routines and normative values that are proving difficult to change, notably among farmers and local governments.

Speaker:

DR PHILIP ANDREWS-SPEED, Senior Principal Fellow at the Energy Studies Institute, National University of Singapore.

Dr Philip Andrews-Speed is a Senior Principal Fellow at the Energy Studies Institute, National University of Singapore. He has nearly 40 years in the field of energy and resources, starting his career as a mineral and oil exploration geologist before moving into the field of energy and resource governance. Until 2010 he was Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Dundee and Director of the Centre of Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy.

His main research interest is the political economy of energy and resource governance, at national, regional and global scales. China has been a principal geographic focus of his research for 25 years, but recently he has been more deeply engaged with energy challenges in Southeast Asia. His latest book China as a Global Clean Energy Champion: Lifting the Veil appeared early in 2019.