Juliet N Lu
Biographic Data
| ID | 192190 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Juliet N Lu |
| GIVEN NAMES | Juliet N |
| FAMILY NAME | Lu |
| SIGNATURE | LU J N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of British Columbia |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5355-9009 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 101 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Anticipatory governance for responsible investment in energy transition minerals in the Western Congo Basin
Energy transition minerals could transform the Western Congo Basin. • Supporting anticipatory governance can guide responsible investment. • Learning from past and emerging initiatives can help to develop capabilities. • Just and sustainable futures require strengthening institutional capability. Demand for Energy Transition Minerals and Metals (ETMs) for clean energy technologies is driving a new wave of investment in mining. Many African countr…
China Aspires to be an Environmental Leader: How Should the Rest of the World Engage
China has transformed from a laggard to a rising leader of environmental governance. It plays a unique and essential role in promoting environmental cooperation, financing and implementing global green infrastructure, and generating and disseminating environmental technology and scientific knowledge. On each front, global progress cannot be made without China, especially with the US’ retreat from global leadership under the second Trump presidenc…
The politics of paper landscapes: Making Sense of 'Bad' Numbers in the Global Land Rush
The cooperation‐infrastructure nexus: Translating the ‘China Model’ into Laos
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is frequently described as a ‘hard’ infrastructure programme of roads, railways, and ports. But a variety of ‘soft’ development cooperation activities—including trainings, dialogues, research, and development projects—have also been established under the banner of the BRI. We examine how this ‘soft’ cooperation works hand‐in‐hand with ‘hard’ infrastructure in what we call the cooperation‐infrastructure nexus . T…
China’s nature-based solutions in the Global South: Evidence from Asia, Africa, and Latin America
China increasingly engages in environmental diplomacy through South-South cooperation across the developing world. Since 2019, the rise of the discourse of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) within this cooperation has been exponential. Coined just over ten years ago, NbS refers to the underexplored potential of leveraging the natural world to address socio-environmental challenges. The concept finds particular resonance in China, where it demonstrates…
From Booms to Bans
In this paper, we examine the extensive use of bans (temporary prohibitions or moratoriums) on resource exploitation activities by the government of Laos as an authoritarian environmental governance tool. We focus on bans enacted recently in three sectors: on the granting of land concessions in 2012, on the expansion of banana plantations in 2014, and on logging exports in 2016. Bans have long been used in Laos, particularly in the forestry secto…
Peripheral centers: Vertical politics and the geography of Chinese cross-border opium replacement in Southeast Asia’s “New Golden Triangle”
China’s Opium Replacement Policy (ORP) is one of the country’s earliest cross-border development interventions in the upper Mekong region. A massive state subsidy program for “alternative” development in the northern parts of Myanmar and Laos, the ORP helped finance a wave of Chinese agribusiness investments abroad since the mid-2000s, causing significant social and ecological transformation. Yet key details about the program remain opaque. In th…
Beyond the boom-bust cycle: An interdisciplinary framework for analysing crop booms
The expansion of commercial agriculture is one of the primary drivers of livelihood and land-use changes in the world. Globalisation and other factors have intensified this expansion to the point where booms in single cash crops overtake entire regions before going bust, a pattern that is particularly pervasive in resource frontiers. Using case studies across the Mekong Region, a place which serves as a harbinger for crop booms globally, we propo…
Ambiguous spaces, empirical traces: Accounting for ignorance when researching around the illicit
Human geographers investigating socio-environmental change in resource frontiers often encounter illicit activities occurring alongside the licit processes they study. These encounters pose logistical challenges to conducting research and moral and analytical dilemmas for researchers. Illicit activities produce what we refer to as spheres of ambiguity, which obscure certain information, relationships, and phenomena surrounding them. We address th…
Criminalized crops: Environmentally-justified illicit crop interventions and the cyclical marginalization of smallholders
Despite decades of efforts to curb the global supply of illicit drugs and significant shifts in how those efforts are designed and implemented, illicit crop cultivation persists. In this paper, we examine state and international development efforts to eradicate coca in Peru, opium poppies in Laos, and cannabis in California, USA and the ever-changing discourses used to justify and design these interventions. Scholarship in political geography fra…
Strategic Resources and Chinese State Capital: A View from Laos
Grounding Chinese investment: Encounters between Chinese capital and local land politics in Laos
Mainstream portrayals of Chinese overseas land investments tend to treat Chinese capital as monolithic, synonymous with the Chinese state, and extracting resources from other countries unhindered. These portrayals flatten host country landscapes where investment occurs, obscure the embeddedness and diversity of Chinese investors, and ignore the spatially contingent channels through which Chinese capital, actors, and goods flow. In response, this …
Great expectations: Chinese investment in Laos and the myth of empty land
In land grab narratives, foreign investors are portrayed as predatory resource grabbers and host states as weak victims or colluders. But foreign land investments are often forged through fragmented relations of state power which investors struggle to navigate. For example, over the last decade, Chinese companies have been granted contracts to develop vast agribusiness concessions in Laos. These areas, however, rarely come under full Chinese comp…
Tapping into rubber: China's opium replacement program and rubber production in Laos
Despite centuries of state-directed eradication efforts, opium cultivation persists in northern Laos and Myanmar. The most recent of these efforts is China's Opium Replacement Program (ORP). Like other illicit crop substitution programmes, the ORP seeks to provide opium cultivators with licit livelihood alternatives. Unlike other programmes, it does so by supporting Chinese agribusiness investors in the region - predominantly rubber companies - i…
Tapping into rubber: China's opium replacement program and rubber production in Laos
Despite centuries of state-directed eradication efforts, opium cultivation persists in northern Laos and Myanmar. The most recent of these efforts is China's Opium Replacement Program (ORP). Like other illicit crop substitution programmes, the ORP seeks to provide opium cultivators with licit livelihood alternatives. Unlike other programmes, it does so by supporting Chinese agribusiness investors in the region - predominantly rubber companies - i…
Grounding Chinese investment: Encounters between Chinese capital and local land politics in Laos
Mainstream portrayals of Chinese overseas land investments tend to treat Chinese capital as monolithic, synonymous with the Chinese state, and extracting resources from other countries unhindered. These portrayals flatten host country landscapes where investment occurs, obscure the embeddedness and diversity of Chinese investors, and ignore the spatially contingent channels through which Chinese capital, actors, and goods flow. In response, this …
Great expectations: Chinese investment in Laos and the myth of empty land
In land grab narratives, foreign investors are portrayed as predatory resource grabbers and host states as weak victims or colluders. But foreign land investments are often forged through fragmented relations of state power which investors struggle to navigate. For example, over the last decade, Chinese companies have been granted contracts to develop vast agribusiness concessions in Laos. These areas, however, rarely come under full Chinese comp…
China’s nature-based solutions in the Global South: Evidence from Asia, Africa, and Latin America
China increasingly engages in environmental diplomacy through South-South cooperation across the developing world. Since 2019, the rise of the discourse of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) within this cooperation has been exponential. Coined just over ten years ago, NbS refers to the underexplored potential of leveraging the natural world to address socio-environmental challenges. The concept finds particular resonance in China, where it demonstrates…
Beyond the boom-bust cycle: An interdisciplinary framework for analysing crop booms
The expansion of commercial agriculture is one of the primary drivers of livelihood and land-use changes in the world. Globalisation and other factors have intensified this expansion to the point where booms in single cash crops overtake entire regions before going bust, a pattern that is particularly pervasive in resource frontiers. Using case studies across the Mekong Region, a place which serves as a harbinger for crop booms globally, we propo…
Ambiguous spaces, empirical traces: Accounting for ignorance when researching around the illicit
Human geographers investigating socio-environmental change in resource frontiers often encounter illicit activities occurring alongside the licit processes they study. These encounters pose logistical challenges to conducting research and moral and analytical dilemmas for researchers. Illicit activities produce what we refer to as spheres of ambiguity, which obscure certain information, relationships, and phenomena surrounding them. We address th…
Criminalized crops: Environmentally-justified illicit crop interventions and the cyclical marginalization of smallholders
Despite decades of efforts to curb the global supply of illicit drugs and significant shifts in how those efforts are designed and implemented, illicit crop cultivation persists. In this paper, we examine state and international development efforts to eradicate coca in Peru, opium poppies in Laos, and cannabis in California, USA and the ever-changing discourses used to justify and design these interventions. Scholarship in political geography fra…
Peripheral centers: Vertical politics and the geography of Chinese cross-border opium replacement in Southeast Asia’s “New Golden Triangle”
China’s Opium Replacement Policy (ORP) is one of the country’s earliest cross-border development interventions in the upper Mekong region. A massive state subsidy program for “alternative” development in the northern parts of Myanmar and Laos, the ORP helped finance a wave of Chinese agribusiness investments abroad since the mid-2000s, causing significant social and ecological transformation. Yet key details about the program remain opaque. In th…
The politics of paper landscapes: Making Sense of 'Bad' Numbers in the Global Land Rush
China Aspires to be an Environmental Leader: How Should the Rest of the World Engage
China has transformed from a laggard to a rising leader of environmental governance. It plays a unique and essential role in promoting environmental cooperation, financing and implementing global green infrastructure, and generating and disseminating environmental technology and scientific knowledge. On each front, global progress cannot be made without China, especially with the US’ retreat from global leadership under the second Trump presidenc…
Great expectations: Chinese investment in Laos and the myth of empty land
In land grab narratives, foreign investors are portrayed as predatory resource grabbers and host states as weak victims or colluders. But foreign land investments are often forged through fragmented relations of state power which investors struggle to navigate. For example, over the last decade, Chinese companies have been granted contracts to develop vast agribusiness concessions in Laos. These areas, however, rarely come under full Chinese comp…
Tapping into rubber: China's opium replacement program and rubber production in Laos
Despite centuries of state-directed eradication efforts, opium cultivation persists in northern Laos and Myanmar. The most recent of these efforts is China's Opium Replacement Program (ORP). Like other illicit crop substitution programmes, the ORP seeks to provide opium cultivators with licit livelihood alternatives. Unlike other programmes, it does so by supporting Chinese agribusiness investors in the region - predominantly rubber companies - i…
Strategic Resources and Chinese State Capital: A View from Laos
Grounding Chinese investment: Encounters between Chinese capital and local land politics in Laos
Mainstream portrayals of Chinese overseas land investments tend to treat Chinese capital as monolithic, synonymous with the Chinese state, and extracting resources from other countries unhindered. These portrayals flatten host country landscapes where investment occurs, obscure the embeddedness and diversity of Chinese investors, and ignore the spatially contingent channels through which Chinese capital, actors, and goods flow. In response, this …
Ambiguous spaces, empirical traces: Accounting for ignorance when researching around the illicit
Human geographers investigating socio-environmental change in resource frontiers often encounter illicit activities occurring alongside the licit processes they study. These encounters pose logistical challenges to conducting research and moral and analytical dilemmas for researchers. Illicit activities produce what we refer to as spheres of ambiguity, which obscure certain information, relationships, and phenomena surrounding them. We address th…
Criminalized crops: Environmentally-justified illicit crop interventions and the cyclical marginalization of smallholders
Despite decades of efforts to curb the global supply of illicit drugs and significant shifts in how those efforts are designed and implemented, illicit crop cultivation persists. In this paper, we examine state and international development efforts to eradicate coca in Peru, opium poppies in Laos, and cannabis in California, USA and the ever-changing discourses used to justify and design these interventions. Scholarship in political geography fra…
From Booms to Bans
In this paper, we examine the extensive use of bans (temporary prohibitions or moratoriums) on resource exploitation activities by the government of Laos as an authoritarian environmental governance tool. We focus on bans enacted recently in three sectors: on the granting of land concessions in 2012, on the expansion of banana plantations in 2014, and on logging exports in 2016. Bans have long been used in Laos, particularly in the forestry secto…
Peripheral centers: Vertical politics and the geography of Chinese cross-border opium replacement in Southeast Asia’s “New Golden Triangle”
China’s Opium Replacement Policy (ORP) is one of the country’s earliest cross-border development interventions in the upper Mekong region. A massive state subsidy program for “alternative” development in the northern parts of Myanmar and Laos, the ORP helped finance a wave of Chinese agribusiness investments abroad since the mid-2000s, causing significant social and ecological transformation. Yet key details about the program remain opaque. In th…
Beyond the boom-bust cycle: An interdisciplinary framework for analysing crop booms
The expansion of commercial agriculture is one of the primary drivers of livelihood and land-use changes in the world. Globalisation and other factors have intensified this expansion to the point where booms in single cash crops overtake entire regions before going bust, a pattern that is particularly pervasive in resource frontiers. Using case studies across the Mekong Region, a place which serves as a harbinger for crop booms globally, we propo…
The cooperation‐infrastructure nexus: Translating the ‘China Model’ into Laos
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is frequently described as a ‘hard’ infrastructure programme of roads, railways, and ports. But a variety of ‘soft’ development cooperation activities—including trainings, dialogues, research, and development projects—have also been established under the banner of the BRI. We examine how this ‘soft’ cooperation works hand‐in‐hand with ‘hard’ infrastructure in what we call the cooperation‐infrastructure nexus . T…
China’s nature-based solutions in the Global South: Evidence from Asia, Africa, and Latin America
China increasingly engages in environmental diplomacy through South-South cooperation across the developing world. Since 2019, the rise of the discourse of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) within this cooperation has been exponential. Coined just over ten years ago, NbS refers to the underexplored potential of leveraging the natural world to address socio-environmental challenges. The concept finds particular resonance in China, where it demonstrates…
Anticipatory governance for responsible investment in energy transition minerals in the Western Congo Basin
Energy transition minerals could transform the Western Congo Basin. • Supporting anticipatory governance can guide responsible investment. • Learning from past and emerging initiatives can help to develop capabilities. • Just and sustainable futures require strengthening institutional capability. Demand for Energy Transition Minerals and Metals (ETMs) for clean energy technologies is driving a new wave of investment in mining. Many African countr…
China Aspires to be an Environmental Leader: How Should the Rest of the World Engage
China has transformed from a laggard to a rising leader of environmental governance. It plays a unique and essential role in promoting environmental cooperation, financing and implementing global green infrastructure, and generating and disseminating environmental technology and scientific knowledge. On each front, global progress cannot be made without China, especially with the US’ retreat from global leadership under the second Trump presidenc…
The politics of paper landscapes: Making Sense of 'Bad' Numbers in the Global Land Rush
Political science (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Politics (8 works) · Business (7 works) · Geography (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies (7 works) · China (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (4 works)