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Competing demands for water and energy resources in China are creating a resource scarcity pressure point unparalleled elsewhere in the world. Following 30 years of massive economic growth, water and energy development in China continues to advance full throttle as the nation struggles to develop infrastructure and resource access to fuel its economic growth rate. Facing duel problems of severe water deficits (that is, demand outweighs supply) and increasing demand for power, China’s water and energy futures are highly interconnected, yet rarely examined as interdependent resources.

Join us on June 5th as we explore the relationship between water and energy, examining the water-intensity of energy production and the energy-intensity of water production in China today. Dr. Christine Boyle will describe water-energy interdependence, China’s current situation, opportunities for innovation, and the global implications of this mounting crisis.

Dr. Christine Boyle is currently the CEO of Blue Horizon Insight, a research and analytics firm helping companies navigate China’s business-water resources nexus. She is also a research fellow at the University of North Carolina’s School of Government and the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing.

Dr. Boyle has led numerous academic and environmental consulting projects in China, including being the primary environmental planner for a waterfront development project in Qingdao and participating in two World Bank projects in rural China on irrigation water governance. She is a recognized expert on China’s water policy and has presented widely to students, policymakers, and industry leaders on perils and progress in China’s water management sector.

Sponsored by: Squire Sanders
Special thanks to our host for all Signature Luncheons, WOSU Studios @ COSI.

Past Program/Event

Despite significant efforts in recent years, the interaction between the United States and its southern neighbors is still short of its enormous potential. The U.S. and Latin American countries face common problems that require coordinated solutions. A closer partnership would also result in greater economic opportunities.

On May 2nd, Dr. Ernesto Zedillo will highlight both the shared challenges that can be better addressed and the opportunities that can be seized. He will share his unique insight into the complex and critical relationship, having been a key player in it as the President of Mexico from 1994 to 2000. Since leaving office, Dr. Zedillo continues to be a leading voice on globalization, especially its impact on relations between developed and developing nations.

From 2005 to 2011, Dr. Zedillo was Chairman of the Global Development Network, an organization that works with developing country researchers and policy research institutes to support the generation and sharing of policy-relevant research on development. He was appointed by the President of the World Bank to chair the High Level Commission on Modernization of the World Bank Group Governance. The Commission’s final report, “Repowering the Bank for the 21st Century,” was launched in October 2009. Additionally, Dr. Zedillo co-chaired the Partnership of the Americas Commission with Thomas Pickering to produce the report “Rethinking U.S.-Latin American Relations” and the Commission on Drugs and Democracy with former Presidents Cardoso of Brazil and Gaviria of Colombia, publishing the final report “Drugs and Democracy in Latin America.” He currently serves as the Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization at Yale University, where he earned his M.A. and Ph.D.

Introduction by Mike Morris, Chairman of the Board, American Electric Power

Co-presented by The Ohio State University’s Center for Latin American Studies and Kegler Brown Hill & Ritter.
With support from American Electric Power.
In partnership with the Columbus Metropolitan Club.

Past Program/Event

The January 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti struck a country already suffering from widespread poverty and underdevelopment. What does it mean to rebuild Haiti? How does the recent mantra of constructing a “new Haiti” fit in the republic’s historical context? How are these contemporary sayings and blue prints embedded with ideas of development that are in constant tension with the values and logic systems of the indigenous peoples? Join us as we explore these and other questions regarding Haiti’s post-earthquake reality with Dr. Millery Polyné.

Millery Polyné, PhD is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of American Studies at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. A graduate of Morehouse College and the University of Michigan, Dr. Polyné’s teaching and research interests highlight the history of African American and Afro-Caribbean cultural, political, and economic initiatives in the 19th and 20th centuries; dance, jazz, sports and urban memory. He has published in journals such as Caribbean Studies, Journal of Haitian Studies, Wadabagei and The Black Scholar. He is the author of From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti and Pan Americanism 1870-1964. Currently, he is working on two books, one a study of the interconnections between Caribbean exiles, the politics of human rights activism and organization, and democratic systems within inter-American affairs during the 1960s and 1970s. Dr. Polyné’s interests also focus on film and poetry. He directed “The Hip-Hop Paradigm” and was a cameraman on the film Rhythms from Africa: An Ocean of Melodies, which won the Golden Dhow Best Documentary Video Award at the Zanzibar International Film Festival. His next documentary, Papa Doc, which examines the life, origins and impact of François Duvalier’s dictatorship on Haitian society, is currently in preproduction. A 2003 recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, Dr. Polyné authored Release: Race Love Jazz, his first book of poetry. For more on Dr. Polyné’s accomplishments, VISIT HIS WEBSITE

Dr. Polyné will be available to sign his book, From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti and Pan Americanism 1870-1964, following the lecture. The book may be purchased at the event.