Jesper Svensson

Political Science

Main Research Areas

• Political economy of water markets
• Biodiversity governance
• Comparative public policy

Current Research

Jesper Svensson is, since March 2023, the Mistra Biopath Post-doc at Lund University. His research seeks to shed light on the conditions under which market-based strategies promote or hinder biodiversity conservation.

Before relocating to Lund, Jesper obtained his PhD from Oxford University's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment in 2022. His dissertation theorized the condition under which water markets are configured in China in terms of property rights, governance arrangements, and infrastructure over space and time.  Drawing from semi-structured interviews, historical archives, and qualitative and quantitative measures on water rights trading, he relied on a combination of case-study and comparative analysis.

Ongoing research projects: Mistra Biopath

Ongoing research environments: Environmental Politics Research Group

Selected Publications

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Garrick, D., Balasubramanya, S., Beresford, M., Wutich, A., Gilson, G., Jorgensen, I., Brozović, N., Cox, M., Dai, X., Erfurth, S., Rimšaitė, R., Svensson, J., Talbot Jones, J., Unnikrishnan, H., Wight, C., Villamayor-Tomas, S. and Vazquez Mendoza, Karla. (2023).  A systems perspective on water markets:  barriers, bright Spots and building blocks for the next generation. Environ. Res. Lett. 18 031001

Svensson, J., Wang, Y., Garrick, D. and Dai, X. (2021). How does hybrid environmental governancework? Examining water rights trading in China (2000–2019). Journal of Environmental Management, 288, 112333.

Svensson, J., Garrick, D. E. and Jia, S. (2019). Water markets as coupled infrastructure systems:comparing the development of water rights and water markets in Heihe, Shiyang and Yellow rivers. Water International, 44 (8), 845–53.

Brehm, S. and Svensson, J. (2019). Environmental Governance with Chinese Characteristics - Are Environmental Model Cities a Good Example for other Municipalities?Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, 4, 111-134.

Chen, S., Wang, Y. and Svensson, J. (2019). How to promote effective irrigation pricing reform in northern China? Insights from Taocheng district. International Journal of Water Resources Development, Volume 35, Issue 4, 697-715.

Garrick, D. E., De Stefano, L., Yu, W., Jorgensen, I., O’Donnell, E., Turley, L., Aguilar-Barajas, I., Dai, X., de Souza Leao, R., Punjabi, B., Schreiner, B., Svensson, J. and Wight, C. (2019).

Rural water for thirsty cities: a systematic review of water reallocation from rural to urban regions.Environ. Res. Lett. 14 043003.

Guo, H., Chen, X., Liu, J., Zhang, H. and Svensson, J. (2019). Joint analysis of water rights trading and water-saving management contracts in China. International Journal of Water Resources Development, Volume 36, Issue 4, 716-737.

Brehm, S. and Svensson, J. (2017). A fragmented environmental state? Analyzing spatial compliance patterns for the case of transparency legislation in China. Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, 1, 471-493.

Xiang, X., Svensson, J. and Jia, S. (2017). Will the Energy Industry Drain the Water Use for Agricultural Irrigation in the Yellow River Basin?International Journal of Water Resources Development, Volume 33, Issue 2, 69-80.

Jia, S., Sun, Y., Svensson, J. and Mukherjee, M. (2016). Comparative analysis of water rights entitlements in India and China. Water Policy, 18 (S1), 50–67.

Sun, Z., Jia, S., Lv, A., Yang, K., Svensson, J. and Gao, Y. (2015). Impacts of climate change on growth period and planting boundaries of winter wheat in China under RCP4.5 scenario. Earth System Dynamics, 6, 2181-2210.

Book Chapters

Brehm, S. and Svensson, J. (2019). Are Model Cities an Effective Instrument for Urban Environmental Governance? In J. Delman, Y. Ren, O. Luova, M. Burell, & O. Almén (Eds.), Greening China's Urban Governance: Tackling Environmental and Sustainability Challenges (pp. 25-49). (ARI - Springer Asia Series; Vol. 7). Springer.

Garrick, D. and Svensson, J. (2018). The Political Economy of Water Markets:  40 years of debates, experiments and lessons learned. In The Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy, edited by Ken Conca and Erika Weinthal. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.