China and the Environment
China and the Environment

Author: Sam Geall

Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.

Published: 2013-04-11

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1780323433

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Sixteen of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China. A serious water pollution incident occurs once every two-to-three days. China's breakneck growth causes great concern about its global environmental impacts, as others look to China as a source for possible future solutions to climate change. But how are Chinese people really coming to grips with environmental problems? This book provides access to otherwise unknown stories of environmental activism and forms the first real-life account of China and its environmental tensions. 'China and the Environment' provides a unique report on the experiences of participatory politics that have emerged in response to environmental problems, rather than focusing only on macro-level ecological issues and their elite responses. Featuring previously untranslated short interviews, extracts from reports and other translated primary documents, the authors argue that going green in China isn't just about carbon targets and energy policy; China's grassroots green defenders are helping to change the country for the better.

China
China

Author: Robert B. Marks

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 461

ISBN-13: 1442212764

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This deeply informed and beautifully written book provides a comprehensive and comprehensible history of China from prehistory to the present. Focusing on the interaction of humans and their environment, Robert B. Marks traces changes in the physical and cultural world that is home to a quarter of humankind. Through both word and image, this work illuminates the chaos and paradox inherent in China's environmental narrative, demonstrating how historically sustainable practices can, in fact, be profoundly ecologically unsound. The author also reevaluates China's traditional "he.

China Goes Green
China Goes Green

Author: Yifei Li

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 1509543139

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What does it mean for the future of the planet when one of the world’s most durable authoritarian governance systems pursues “ecological civilization”? Despite its staggering pollution and colossal appetite for resources, China exemplifies a model of state-led environmentalism which concentrates decisive political, economic, and epistemic power under centralized leadership. On the face of it, China seems to embody hope for a radical new approach to environmental governance. In this thought-provoking book, Yifei Li and Judith Shapiro probe the concrete mechanisms of China’s coercive environmentalism to show how ‘going green’ helps the state to further other agendas such as citizen surveillance and geopolitical influence. Through top-down initiatives, regulations, and campaigns to mitigate pollution and environmental degradation, the Chinese authorities also promote control over the behavior of individuals and enterprises, pacification of borderlands, and expansion of Chinese power and influence along the Belt and Road and even into the global commons. Given the limited time that remains to mitigate climate change and protect millions of species from extinction, we need to consider whether a green authoritarianism can show us the way. This book explores both its promises and risks.

Politics of China's Environmental Protection
Politics of China's Environmental Protection

Author: Gang Chen

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 9812838708

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As the dazzling economic and social changes in China have imposed substantial impact upon the quality of environmental governance, it is time to review the problems and progress in the politics of China''s environmental protection. This book analyzes the factors in China''s governance and political process that affect and restrain its capacity to handle the mounting environmental problems. It argues that solutions to China''s ecological woes to a larger extent lie in the political and institutional changes rather than in engineering, technological and investment input. The book talks about new policies and reform measures in the green area taken by the government since 2007, arguing that some of them may be quite effective in the long run, as long as they alter institutional factors and the OC growth-firstOCO mindset that obstruct the green effort. The book also includes discussion of China''s climate change policy not only because global warming has come under the limelight of the international community in recent years, but also because it offers a unique dimension to analyze the country''s environmental diplomacy and domestic bureaucratic structure on emissions cutting and related energy issues. China is currently at the crossroads of further political and economic reform, and the intensified public attention to environmental pollution may help the Chinese Communist Party to decisively push forward the long-sluggish political reforms.

China's Dilemma
China's Dilemma

Author: Ligang Song

Publisher: ANU E Press

Published: 2008-07-01

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 1921536039

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China's Dilemma - Economic Growth, the Environment and Climate Change examines the challenges China will have to confront in order to maintain rapid growth while coping with the global financial turbulence, some rising socially destabilising tensions such as income inequality, an over-exploited environment and the long-term pressures of global warming. China's Dilemma discusses key questions that will have an impact on China's growth path and offers some in-depth analyses as to how China could confront these challenges. The authors address the effect of the global credit crunch and financial shocks on China's economic growth; China's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and emissions reduction schemes; the environmental consequences of foreign direct investment in China; the relationship between air pollution and mortality; the effect of climate change on agricultural output; the coal industry's compliance with tougher regulations; and the constraints water shortages may impose on China's economy. It also emphasises the importance of managing the rising demand for energy to moderate oil price increases and placating domestic and international concerns about global warming. In the thirty years since China started on the path of reform, it has emerged as one of the largest and most dynamic economies in the world. This carries with it the responsibility to balance the requirements of key industries that are driving its development with the need to ensure that its growth is both equitable and sustainable. China's Dilemma highlights key lessons learned from the past thirty years of reform in order to pave the way for balanced and sustained growth in the future.

China’s Environmental Crisis
China’s Environmental Crisis

Author: J. Kassiola

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2010-11-08

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0230114369

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This path-breaking collection covers the significance of China's extreme environmental challenges for both Chinese society and the world, how these challenges are impacting domestic Chinese society and its political institutions, and how these institutions are responding in their efforts to address the environmental problems.

China's Environmental Challenges
China's Environmental Challenges

Author: Judith Shapiro

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-18

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0745676197

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China’s huge environmental challenges are significant for us all. They affect not only the health and well-being of China but the very future of the planet. In this trailblazing book, noted China specialist and environmentalist Judith Shapiro investigates China’s struggle to achieve sustainable development against a backdrop of acute rural poverty and soaring middle class consumption. Using five core analytical concepts to explore the complexities of this struggle - the implications of globalization, the challenges of governance; contested national identity, the evolution of civil society and problems of environmental justice and equity - Shapiro poses a number of pressing questions: Do the Chinese people have the right to the higher living standards enjoyed in the developed world? Are China's environmental problems so severe that they may shake the government's stability, legitimacy and control? To what extent are China’s environmental problems due to patterns of Western consumption? And in a world of increasing limits on resources and pollution "sinks," is it even possible to build an equitable system in which people enjoy equal access to resources without taking them from successive generations, from the poor, or from other species? China and the planet are at a pivotal moment; the path towards a more sustainable development model is still open. But - as Shapiro persuasively argues - making this choice will require humility, creativity, and a rejection of business as usual. The window of opportunity will not be open much longer. Chapter 1 - 'The Big Picture' - is available online.

Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China
Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China

Author: E. N. Anderson

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2014-11-04

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0812246381

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Chinese food is one of the most recognizable and widely consumed cuisines in the world. Almost no town on earth is without a Chinese restaurant of some kind, and Chinese canned, frozen, and preserved foods are available in shops from Nairobi to Quito. But the particulars of Chinese cuisine vary widely from place to place as its major ingredients and techniques have been adapted to local agriculture and taste profiles. To trace the roots of Chinese foodways, one must look back to traditional food systems before the early days of globalization. Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China traces the development of the food systems that coincided with China's emergence as an empire. Before extensive trade and cultural exchange with Europe was established, Chinese farmers and agriculturalists developed systems that used resources in sustainable and efficient ways, permitting intensive and productive techniques to survive over millennia. Fields, gardens, semiwild lands, managed forests, and specialized agricultural landscapes all became part of an integrated network that produced maximum nutrients with minimal input—though not without some environmental cost. E. N. Anderson examines premodern China's vast, active network of trade and contact, such as the routes from Central Asia to Eurasia and the slow introduction of Western foods and medicines under the Mongol Empire. Bringing together a number of new findings from archaeology, history, and field studies of environmental management, Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China provides an updated picture of language relationships, cultural innovations, and intercultural exchanges.

China's Environment and China's Environment Journalists
China's Environment and China's Environment Journalists

Author: Hugo de Burgh

Publisher: Intellect (UK)

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781841507415

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The first English-language study of this burgeoning field, this book investigates Chinese environmental journalists and concludes that most respond enthusiastically to government promptings to report on the environment and climate change.

The River Runs Black
The River Runs Black

Author: Elizabeth C. Economy

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-01-15

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0801459443

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China's spectacular economic growth over the past two decades has dramatically depleted the country's natural resources and produced skyrocketing rates of pollution. Environmental degradation in China has also contributed to significant public health problems, mass migration, economic loss, and social unrest. In The River Runs Black, Elizabeth C. Economy examines China's growing environmental crisis and its implications for the country's future development. Drawing on historical research, case studies, and interviews with officials, scholars, and activists in China, the author traces the economic and political roots of China's environmental challenge and the evolution of the leadership's response. She argues that China's current approach to environmental protection mirrors the one embraced for economic development: devolving authority to local officials, opening the door to private actors, and inviting participation from the international community, while retaining only weak central control. The result has been a patchwork of environmental protection in which a few wealthy regions with strong leaders and international ties improve their local environments, while most of the country continues to deteriorate, sometimes suffering irrevocable damage. Economy compares China's response with the experience of other societies and sketches out several possible futures for the country. This second edition is updated with information about events during the past five years, covering China's tumultuous transformation of its economy and its landscape as it deals with the political implications of this behavior as viewed by an international community ever more concerned about climate change and dwindling energy resources.