The CAS research project Airborne: Pollution, Climate Change, and New Visions of Sustainability in China has invited Dr. Susanne Stein to give the open seminar "From Desertification Alarm to ‘Health Killer’: Shifting Interpretations of Dust Storms in Contemporary China".

Abstract

A wide range of historical documents provides evidence that dust storms have been a well-known meteorological phenomenon in northern China for centuries. Why did they suddenly evolve into one of the most widely and controversially debated environmental issues among Chinese scientists, officials and the public during the early 2000s?

My talk explores the reasons for the post-millennial surge of concern about these hazardous weather events and traces how the dominant interpretations of dust storms in China have shifted within the context of intensifying international debates on land degradation and climate change on a global scale.

About Dr. Stein

Dr. Susanne Stein is a researcher at the Institute for Eastern European History and Area Studies, University of Tübingen, and a center associate at the University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh. Her current research, which has been funded by the German Science

Foundation (DFG) and by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, focuses on the history of dryland reclamation in northern China from the 1950s to the present.

Open event

This event is open to all interested.

Please email k.k.isaksen@cas.oslo.no if you want to attend.