China's Transition on Climate Change Communication and Governance

Dr. Binbin Wang has devoted her career to leadership on achieving sustainable development goals, bringing decades of expertise and experience in the synergistic effect between climate change and other SDGs, i.e. poverty alleviation, biodiversity, economic development and social justice, etc. Dr. Wang is currently Executive Secretary of Global Climate Change and Green Development Fund, an initiative from Mr. XIE Zhenhua, China's Special Representative on Climate Change Affairs, to mobilize the social capital and investment to support the global green transformation trend and seating in the core leadership team of Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at Tsinghua University. She is also a Research Fellow of School of International Studies at Peking University. Prior to her current role, she spent eight years with Oxfam, one of the most influential international humanitarian and developmental organizations, and led the team to advocate to policy makers in China to consider the benefits of the vulnerable people through setting up a bridge between climate change and poverty alleviation. Dr. Wang hosted a pilot of the Low-Carbon Adaptation and Poverty Alleviation Plan (LAPA) in a small village in the Shaanxi Province from 2012 to 2015, this pilot was then awarded the 'Pioneer of Change', one of the 21 Best Cases on Low Carbon Sustainable Development in Developing Countries. As the first Ph.D. on climate change communication in China, Dr. Wang co-founded the local think tank based in Beijing a decade ago, the China Center for Climate Change Communication, which hosted national public perception surveys to evaluate the public opinions on climate. The key findings were record on China's Annual National White Paper on Climate Change, which then was used by the UNFCCC. Leveraging public opinions, Dr. Wang successfully advocated the Chinese government to open dialogue with civil society and engage the voice of people in the process of climate legislation. Because of Dr. Wang's remarkable contribution, she, as the first spokesperson on behalf of the civil society in the history of China, was invited to participate the press conference hosted by the China State Council right after COP21 to share her professional opinions on the importance of multi-stakeholder cooperation. With her experiences in the field, Dr. Wang was once invited as the Special Advisor for UN's Office on South-South Cooperation and is currently serving as a member of the Biodiversity Expert Group of China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), a high-level international advisory body hosted by China's State Council, to set up bridge between the CBD COP 15 in Kunming and UNFCCC COP 26 in Glasgow in 2021 to push the process of global governance ahead. In recognition of her remarkable contribution in the field, she was selected to represent female leadership in China for the Homeward Bound, a transformational leadership initiative for women scientists and activists from around the world to explore the Antarctica in 2019.