Marina Kaneti
National University of Singapore
Biography
Marina Kaneti is Assistant Professor & PAE Coordinator, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Marina Kaneti specializes in global politics and political theory. Her research is situated at the intersection of politics, history, and visual studies; and aims at bridging political theorization with empirical, ethnographic, and historical research. She is currently finalizing a book manuscript on the impact of migration on state institutions and foreign policies. Her new research project examines the connections between the Belt Road initiative and the ancient Silk Road in order to explicate questions of global order, sovereignty, and legitimacy. The project has been partially funded by a Ford Foundation grant and a Center for Scholarly and Research Excellence fellowship. Marina Kaneti combines her active academic research with a wealth of practical experience. In the early 2000s, she worked as a Project Manager at the United Nations. Since, she has also worked as a strategy consultant and advisor to numerous sustainable development organizations, providing consulting services a wide range of issues such as the use of data for development, immigration, human trafficking, corporate social responsibility, multi-stakeholder partnerships, the Sustainable Development Goals, etc. Marina completed her PhD at the New School for Social Research and her BA and MS degrees at Columbia University, both in New York, USA.
「 A Paradigm Shift?: China and the Responsibility for Environmental Protection 」
Protection of the environment is often phrased as a rights issue, such as the right to clean water, clean air, or the rights of future generations. While rights claims have been at the forefront of both environmental litigation and movements worldwide, they have yet to permanently affect economic and social policies. As some scholars have argued, a key challenge to rights claims is that they discount the role of duties and the language of responsibility. In other words, charges against governments and corporations does not absolve citizens of their collective duties and responsibilities for environmental protection.
This paper explores the emergence of a discourse on duties and responsibilities towards the environment in China. Focusing on select cases both within China and implemented by Chinese companies abroad, some of the questions explored include: Does the traditional social orientation towards duties and responsibilities inform policy choices and social behavior concerning the environment today? How can an orientation towards responsibilities inform new understandings, principles, and actions – both domestically and globally? Does a prism of responsibility and duties inform China’s bid for global environmental leadership?
