The article shows how China's media weaponise scientific uncertainty, as opposed to evidence, to serve geopolitical ends on Fukushima's wastewater discharge. Analysing 14,126 news articles, it maps politicisation mechanics under a non-competitive party system.
This study investigates how Chinese media politicize the Fukushima nuclear wastewater discharge by integrating computational analysis with qualitative interpretation across 14,126 news articles (2021–2023). Focusing on frames, discursive strategies, and actor configurations, the analysis shows that highly politicized frames – emphasizing responsibility attribution, diplomatic confrontation, and international conflict – dominate news coverage. Discursively, reports transform scientific uncertainty into political symbolism, using credibility disputes, procedural doubts, and selective emphasis on long-term risks to legitimize predetermined geopolitical positions. Actor networks further reveal a structural reliance on political elites while marginalizing scientific expertise. These patterns reflect China’s hierarchical media system, whose top-down information flows homogenize narratives and channel scientific ambiguity toward unified ideological reinforcement. The findings demonstrate how politicization operates under a non-competitive party system, showing that scientific uncertainty becomes a strategic resource shaped by structural media constraints.
New article!
Geopolitical currents and contested science: Chinese media framing and politicization of the Fukushima nuclear wastewater discharge by Liqian Wu & Xiaoxiao Cheng.
doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2026.2627171
This comprehensive review of 200 studies confirms corruption, as an overlooked barrier to climate action, raises emissions and destroys carbon sinks, urging research to move beyond country-level indicators.
This article reviews the rapidly growing literature on how corruption affects climate change mitigation, focusing on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the preservation of carbon sinks. Analyzing 200 studies, we argue that corruption hampers mitigation, i.e. increases emissions, and worsens the storage capacity of sinks through deforestation and overfishing. Reducing corruption is vital to successfully combat global warming, because corruption makes climate policies less ambitious in their formulation and less effective when they are implemented due to low rule compliance. The findings of the studies in our sample were established through various types of data, research designs, and methods. We mapped trends in this literature and highlight points of disagreement. Importantly, we suggest that research moves beyond using country-level indicators because of the limitations of such data. We propose several critical avenues for a future research agenda to further understand the linkages between corruption and climate change mitigation.
New review article!
The impact of corruption on climate change mitigation: a review article by Aksel Sundström, Niklas Harring, Sverker C. Jagers & Marina Povitkina.
@mpovitkina.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2026.2621602
New book review!
Acknowledging indigenous knowledge: voices of tropical forest people by Purabi Bose.
Reviewed by Hyungro Yoon.
doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2026.2624252
This study is the first to trace how intra-party regional factions in US environmental politics rose under Reagan, peaked under Obama, and are now vanishing. Using LCV voting data (1971–2022), it shows nationalised climate politics has erased regional divisions.
The intersection of environmental politics, regionalism, and Congressional policymaking is not well-examined by extant scholarship, so it is unclear to what extent regionalism within parties explains Congressional actions, particularly as it pertains to shifting partisan dynamics and focus on nationalized issues, such as climate change. The authors use data from the League of Conservation Voters to track voting behaviors among members of Congress from 1971 to 2022. Findings indicate that regional differences within parties did not emerge until the Reagan administration, but subsequently increased in significance, hitting their peak during the Obama administration. By the Trump administration, regionalism within parties began to dissipate as partisan voting practices converged on environmental issues.
New article!
Party polarization, disappearing regions, and nationalized environmental politics: evidence from US Congress by Luke Fowler & Charlie Hunt.
@charlesrhunt.com
doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2026.2627172
My latest with BSU colleague Luke Fowler in @environmentalpol.bsky.social: we look at the nuances behind disappearing regionalism in environmental policymaking over the past fifty years using great data from @lcv.org: doi.org/10.1080/0964...
New book review!
States of transition: from governing the environment to transforming society by Peter Newell.
Reviewed by Christina Frendo.
doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2026.2623724
In our new @environmentalpol.bsky.social study, me and Katya Rhodes measure 12 climate delay discourses (from Lamb et al. 2020) in U.S. public opinion, showing that some delay beliefs (e.g., whataboutism) strongly suppress support for government climate action. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
New interview!
Fossil Fuels and the Far Right’s Nostalgic Vision by Kjell Vowles.
@kvowles.bsky.social
environmentalpoliticsjournal.net/interviews/f...
Week in review! Subscribe for a short weekly round up.
This week we have published two research articles, one review article, one book review, and a guest post.
open.substack.com/pub/environm...
The article is the first to use 15-country protest surveys to map this overlooked East–West cleavage in the global climate movement. It finds FFF climate protesters in Eastern Europe to be more apolitical & pro-market than their left-leaning Western peers.
Research on the global climate movement underlines the importance of learning and diffusion processes for adopting similar master frames and movement tactics. At the same time, participation research suggests regionally different patterns of mobilisation and protest behaviour. Due to different historical socialisation processes, Western and Eastern European citizens show differences in political activity despite some signs of convergence. This article examines the sociodemographic characteristics and attitudes of climate activists from Eastern and Western Europe. Using protest surveys of Fridays for Future participants in 15 Western and Eastern European countries, we show significant differences between them. Western European climate activists tend to have stronger leftist attitudes, while in Eastern Europe apolitical stances are more common along with higher confidence in market solutions to solve environmental problems. Such differences are likely to affect the cohesion and success of the global climate movement.
New article!
Differences within global movements: insights from FFF climate protests in Western and Eastern Europe by Aron Buzogány, Dániel Mikecz & Piotr Kocyba.
@buzogany.bsky.social @piotrkocyba.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2026.2623726
New article!
From seas to oceans: assessing the Latin American states’ contribution towards a regime complexification by Kevin Parthenay & Rafael Mesquita.
@parthenayk.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1080/0964...
New interview!
Fossil Fuels and the Far Right’s Nostalgic Vision by Kjell Vowles.
@kvowles.bsky.social
environmentalpoliticsjournal.net/interviews/f...
The first cross-national comparison of quasi-NGOs in authoritarian environmental governance (China, Vietnam, Kazakhstan): Shows how autocracies systematically absorb, not just suppress, civil society through quasi-NGOs, which also become contested sites of grassroots resistance.
New article!
Environmental authoritarianism at work and contested: the quasi-NGO sector in China, Vietnam, and Kazakhstan by Fengshi Wu.
doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2026.2627173
Week in review! Subscribe for a short weekly round up.
This week we have published two research articles, one review article, and one book review.
open.substack.com/pub/environm...
This article challenges linear accounts of marine governance, showing Latin American states drove a non-linear shift from 'seas' law to 'ocean' governance. Using 342 UN resolutions & cases, it recovers overlooked middle-power contributions to regime complexification.
New article!
From seas to oceans: assessing the Latin American states’ contribution towards a regime complexification by Kevin Parthenay & Rafael Mesquita.
@parthenayk.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1080/0964...
New Open Access article in @environmentalpol.bsky.social with my fantastic collaborators Tom Kean and Susan Park looking at Myanmar’s environment movement over the last quarter of a century through the prism of assemblages doi.org/10.1080/0964...
Myanmar's 2021 coup uniquely allows tracking how environmental activism assemblages shift across 3 political regimes. Using assemblage theory, the article shows why some activists now embrace violence as the only path to environmental justice.
New article!
Environmental activism and authoritarianism in Myanmar: interrogating assemblages across three political epochs by Adam Simpson, Thomas Kean & Susan Park.
@simpsonaj.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2026.2619310
New book review!
Power lines: the human costs of american energy in transition by Sanya Carley and David Konisky.
Reviewed by Jason R. Motsick.
doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2026.2620247
The article argues that far-right climate obstruction seeks to create fossil fuel ignorance through nostalgia for national-industrial modernity. It reveals how far-right anti-reflexivity opposes not just environmentalism, but feminist and antiracist movements too.
New article!
Far-right fossil fuel ignorance: the nostalgia of national-industrial modernity by Kjell Vowles.
@kvowles.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2026.2620920
Week in review! Subscribe for a short weekly round up.
This week we have published two research articles and one book review.
open.substack.com/pub/environm...
The UN climate regime’s gender agenda is characterised by competing signals about the relevance of gender. Efforts to promote an expansive agenda have been constrained by efforts to narrow the focus to women’s vulnerability in developing countries. We assess the impact of these competing signals by comparing Parties’ performance on participation and policy. We find a persistent North-South divide: developed countries perform better on participation and developing countries on policy. However, we find evidence that gender considerations are expanding. We argue that these performance patterns are reinforced by external political-economic forces. Unlike developed countries, developing countries often receive external support to prepare their Nationally Determined Contributions and face incentives to consider the interests of external institutions whose finance is required for implementation. Given that gender equality has become a criterion for finance, we are more likely to see commitment signaled in NDCs from the Global South than the Global North.
New article!
Who cares about gender? A comparison of parties’ commitment to gender equality in the UN climate regime by Ana Victoria Dominguez Britos & Hayley Stevenson.
doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2026.2616987
This article reveals how non-humans enter environmental politics through embodied, passionate alliances rather than legal frameworks. Using Brussels and Valencia cases, it shows conflict-driven learning creates cross-species solidarity in everyday activism.
