Doubtlessly, climate change and environmental degradation pose some of the most urgent problems of our time. However, while most nation-states and non-state actors acknowledge that immediate action is required and the consumption of fossil energy and a variety of other natural resources needs to be curbed drastically, success stories remain scarce. Reasons for this are manifold and stretch from national economic goals to geopolitical rivalries, from social structures to cultural preferences/habits.

Our conference will focus on the Pacific region, which over the last decades has turned into a powerhouse of the world economy. The ever increasing hunger of Pacific Rim countries like China, the United States, the Soviet Union/Russia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and Mexico for natural resources to fuel this growth vastly affects mankind´s chances of finding sustainable modes of living on this planet and of mitigating climate change to levels defined as bearable according to the Paris Agreement. The present interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore the historical development of attitudes towards climate change and environmental degradation within various Pacific Rim countries, as well as interactions between their climate, energy, and environmental policies.

This conference is part of the Max Weber Foundation’s collaborative research project “Knowledge Unbound” in the module “Interaction and Knowledge in the Pacific Region: Entanglements and Disentanglements”, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Germany).

Conveners:

Sarah Beringer (German Historical Institute Washington D.C.)

Benjamin Beuerle (German Historical Institute Moscow)

Sonja Ganseforth (German Institute for Japanese Studies)

Yufei Zhou (German Institute for Japanese Studies)

In collaboration with the Max Weber Foundation Research Group at the National University of Singapore and the Max Weber Foundation China Branch Office in Beijing.

German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ), Tokyo https://www.dijtokyo.org/

https://www.dijtokyo.org/event/climate-change-energy-and-sustainability-in-the-pacific-regionknowledge-policies-and-transfers-1970s-present/