Publications

Our most recent publications, written by members of the team, can be found below.

Latest Academic Publications

Ye, Y. (2025). Assessing climate ambition through policy outputs: a comparative measure of 35 major emitters. npj Climate Action, 4(75).

Abstract

Climate ambition flexibly engages with broad policy frameworks of countries, typically referring to the holistic policy efforts in the climate field. However, understanding of cross-national variation in ambition remains limited, owing to conceptual complexity, limited data, and methodological challenges. I propose a comparative measure of ‘climate policy ambition’ based on the combination of depth and breadth of policy outputs. Drawing on this framework, I introduce a new dataset to explore the climate policy ambitions of 35 major emitters (each contributing at least 0.5% of global emissions) from 1990 to 2020. Empirical findings highlight a global rise in ambition after the Paris Agreement, consistently higher ambition exhibited by European countries, and the divergence of intensity levels across policy fields. However, while climate ambition has markedly increased, levels of actual policy performance have not. The observed imbalance between climate ambition and implementation requires stronger mechanisms to integrate ambition into substantive actions.

Biermann, F., Hickmann, T., Kang, Y.H., Senit, C-A., & Sun, Y. (Eds). (2025). Essential Concepts for Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals: An A-Z Guide. Routledge.

Abstract

This book provides a highly accessible and user-friendly overview of the essential concepts and terms related to the current global endeavour to implement the Sustainable Development Goals.

With the first decade of the 15-year timespan of the 2030 Agenda now past, the SDGs show limited progress and several goals are even regressing. It is imperative that SDG implementation is accelerated until 2030 and beyond to foster transformations and set the world onto a sustainable and resilient path. The book starts with a thematic introduction to contextualize the topic and set the stage for the individual entries. It then follows an A-Z format, with over 100 entries which describe an important concept or term, using practical examples to illustrate how it connects to the overall debate about sustainable development. It offers swift introductions to key concepts and terms that are discussed and explained by scholarly and policy experts from around the world in a concise and user-friendly way.

The guide is comprehensive in scope, practically oriented and focused on political and societal processes to drive change on a larger scale. With cross-references to related terms in the entries, this book will be a highly valuable resource for students and practitioners engaged with the SDGs and sustainable development more broadly.

Abstract

As the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, China would make important contributions to the achievement of the Paris goals if it made economy-wide, strong policy interventions to combat climate change. Despite a growing number of studies on China’s climate governance, the overall landscape of China’s climate policy and its key characteristics remain underexamined.

Li, X., He, S., Gu, Y., & Sun, Y. (2025). Unpacking China’s climate policy mixes shows a disconnect between policy density and intensity in the post-Paris era. npj Climate Action, 4(1), 1–13.

To address this knowledge gap, we developed a dataset of 358 climate-related policies adopted by China’s central government in 2016–2022 and assessed key policy mix characteristics including policy density, balance and intensity. Our findings reveal that higher policy density does not equate to stronger action. Significant variation also exists in alignment with China’s Nationally Determined Contributions, especially in high-emitting sectors. Moreover, despite a relatively balanced mix of regulatory, economic, and informational instruments, this balance does not guarantee intensity. Our study shows challenges in China’s policy coherence and calls for stronger mechanisms to integrate national goals into sectoral policies.

SGAIN Policy Briefs and Reports

We will soon launch our SGAIN policy brief and report series. All publications in this series will be open access and shared on our website.

Non-Academic Publications

Hale, T., & Sun, Y. (2025). What Would It Take for China to be Global Environmental Leader? Global Policy Opinion & Analysis.

In this article, SGAIN Advisory Board member Thomas Hale and PI Yixian Sun call for serious research and dialogue to make China to a global environmental leader.

In this Conversation article, Dr Yixian Sun argues that China is poised to lead global climate governance when the US adopts an anti-climate position under Trump 2.0, and identifies key areas where China must strengthen its climate action both domestically and internationally.

Sun, Y. (2025). The world needs climate change leadership – it’s time for China to step up. The Conversation.

Previous Publications

Wang, Y., Liu, C., & Sun, Y. (2024). No more coal abroad! Unpacking the drivers of China’s green shift in overseas energy finance. Energy Research & Social Science, 111, 103456.

Sun, Y., Lewis, J. I., & Urpelainen, J. (2023). Environmental governance of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Environmental Politics, 32(7), 1109–1116.

Sun, Y., & Yu, B. (2023). Greening China’s Belt and Road Initiative: From Norm Localization to Norm Subsidiarity? Global Environmental Politics, 23(1), 91–116.