Wednesday, March 27, 2024 | 4:00PM-5:30PM | SOS 250 | RSVP

Join us for a panel discussion on China's waste and climate crises. Panelists will discuss the effects of changing policies surrounding China's Environmental NGOs, plastic waste reduction through place-based education, and China's pivotal role in climate action through waste system transformation. The panel will be moderated by Joshua Goldstein, EASC Director and Professor of History and East Asian Languages and Cultures at USC. Prof. Goldstein's book, Remains of the Everyday: A Century of Recycling in Beijing (University of California Press, 2021), was awarded the Joseph Levenson Prize by the Association for Asian Studies in 2023 as the top work on Post-1900 China. 

Panelists

Liwen Chen
How China's Environmental NGO Work Shifts as Policies Change  
Liwen Chen has been engaged in environmental protection in China for nearly two decades.  From 2007-2016 her work focused upon fighting against mixed waste disposal pollution. Since 2017 she has worked in NGOs piloting several projects with local rural governments building waste regime based on separating organic waste and trash. 

Kaming Wu
Reducing Plastic Waste Through Place-based Education in Hong Kong 
Kaming Wu is a cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her articles have appeared in Journal of Asian Studies, Modern China, Urban Ethnography and several others. She is author of multiple books including and Reinventing Chinese Tradition: The Cultural Politics of Late Socialism and Living with Waste: Economies, Communities and Spaces of Waste Collectors in China (co-written with Zhang Jieying). 

Christie Keith
Climate Action Through Waste System Transformation: The Pivotal Role of China
Christie Keith is GAIA’s International Coordinator and U.S. Executive Director. She has over 30 years of experience with social movements and international nonprofit organizations, including seven years in Guatemala. Over the last eight years she has helped to spearhead GAIA’s engagement in the Break Free From Plastic movement, addressing ocean plastic pollution through investment in grassroots organizing, upstream policies, and community-led solutions. Christie has also played a critical part in developing GAIA's collaboration with organized waste workers, and in significantly expanding the network’s efforts in the climate policy arena.