Joel Sandhu: What's Next for Hong Kong?

10/01/19 • 40 min

As Beijing marked the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China with an enormous military parade, protests have erupted again in Hong Kong where the national day was marked by bursts of violence as riot police deployed to major street corners, locked down the city, and clashed with protesters. Hong Kongers have been fighting to preserve the autonomy and freedoms they are granted by the “one country, two systems” policy – freedoms that do not apply to Chinese citizens on the mainland. Since Hong Kong was handed over to China by the United Kingdom in 1997, Hong Kongers have felt Beijing’s increasing encroachment on their civil liberties. Many of them, especially from the younger generation, now fear that the city will lose its unique character and feel the need to fight back to protect their identity and way of life. In this episode, Katharina Nachbar from the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) talks with Joel Sandhu about his recent visit to Hong Kong and the impressions he took away from speaking to academics, business leaders and locals in a city that has seen over three consecutive months of protests and riots. He also reflects on the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and what it means for Hong Kong. Joel is a project manager at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin, where he heads the Global Governance Futures – Robert Bosch Foundation Multilateral Dialogues (GGF) program and leads GPPi’s work on global order. Katharina manages communications at GPPi.

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Aidy Halimanjaya: Tackling Environmental Threats in Indonesia

Indonesia, an archipelago comprising of approximately 17,000 islands, holds just one percent of the Earth’s land area, but that one percent contains contain 10 percent of the world’s known plant species, 12 percent of mammal species, and 17 percent of all known bird species, making Indonesia biodiversity hotspot. The greatest threats to this biodiversity are habitat degradation and fragmentation, landscape changes, overexploitation, pollution, climate change, alien species, forest and land fires, and the economic and political crises occurring in the country. There’s a lot at stake. Indonesia’s future environmental policy is of critical importance. In this episode, Joel Sandhu from the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) sits down with Aidy Halimanjaya to talk about environmental issues in Indonesia, public opinion and how the President, Joko Widodo, will address these issues. Aidy is a researcher, consultant and affiliate at the Padjadjaran University Center for Sustainable Development Goals Studies in Indonesia. She is currently working as an advisor on climate finance for Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry. She was also a GGF 2030 fellow.

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Allister Fa Chang: Can Media Literacy Save Us?

This episode marks the start of season two of the Global Futures podcast. Over the course of the next few months, we will tackle the future(s) of climate-related conflict, media and information and the politics of inequality with our fellows and other leading experts from around the world. How should we navigate the media landscape in a world where information is available at the touch of a button? In this podcast, Sonya Sugrobova sits down with Allister Fa Chang to learn about media literacy, the importance of critically analyzing what you see online, and how to approach teaching this skill. Allister is a Robert Bosch Stiftung Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin, where he researches on media literacy and disinformation. Previously, Allister was the executive director of Libraries Without Borders, a non-profit organization that has innovated library partnerships in over 25 countries.