Scott Moore is a researcher and policymaker focused on emerging environmental and technological challenges. Dr. Moore is currently director of the Penn Global China Program in the Office of the Provost at the University of Pennsylvania, where he works with faculty across the university to design and conduct research on emerging challenges facing China and the world, including climate change, artificial intelligence, and gene editing. Dr. Moore’s own research focuses on environmental politics and policy, especially water resources. Dr. Moore was previously a Young Professional and Water Resources Management Specialist with the World Bank Group’s Water Global Practice, where he co-authored two flagship reports, High and Dry: Climate Change, Water, and the Economy and Uncharted Waters: The New Economics of Water Scarcity and Variability, and co-led the Bank’s China Water Governance Study.
Previously, Dr. Moore served as Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Officer for China at the U.S. Department of State through a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship. In that capacity, he was responsible for developing and coordinating all aspects of U.S.-China environmental cooperation, and worked extensively on the Paris Agreement on climate change as well as ocean conservation and civil space cooperation. Before joining State, he was Giorgio Ruffolo Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, where his work focused on water politics and policy in China.
Dr. Moore's research and commentary has appeared in a variety of leading scholarly journals and media outlets, including Nature, Foreign Affairs, The China Quarterly, and The New York Times. His first book, Subnational Hydropolitics: Conflict, Cooperation, and Institution-Building in Shared River Basins (Oxford University Press, 2018), examines how climate change and other pressures affect the likelihood of conflict over water within countries. Dr. Moore holds master’s and doctoral degrees from Oxford University and an undergraduate degree from Princeton. He is a Truman, Fulbright, and Rhodes scholar.