"This yearbook from the publishing wing of CASS features voices of experts and witnesses from the People's Republic of China describing and commenting upon the environment and protection measures in the PRC in 2005. This work can also serve as a primary source for analysis of the political climate for NGOs and public intellectual and policy discourse China"--Provided by publisher.
"This yearbook from the publishing wing of CASS features voices of experts and witnesses from the People's Republic of China describing and commenting upon the environment and protection measures in the PRC in 2005. This work can also serve as a primary source for analysis of the political climate for NGOs and public intellectual and policy discourse China"--Provided by publisher.
This volume of The China Environment Yearbook is the second in a series of annual records written, commissioned, produced, and edited by Friends of Nature, China’s premier environmental citizens’ group. It is the signature annual research publication of China’s non-governmental environmental sector.
This 2007 yearbook examines recent developments in the Chinese demographic transition and its implications, especially for the labor market. After many years of low population growth, China has reached the beginning stage of the Lewis Turning Point - the shift from a labor surplus economy to one of labor shortages - in the typical dualist model of rural and urban labor supply. This has brought pressures for increasing wages for the unskilled labor and has important implications for national development strategy and related policies. This yearbook is a collection of important articles by demographers and economists from CASS and other top research and policy institutes in China. Several of the articles in this volume are based on major labor and population surveys carried out in recent years.
Over the past three decades, China’s economic structure, direction and international presence have undergone a dramatic transformation. This rapid rise and China’s enormous success in economic terms has created new challenges, and this book examines how the Chinese economy can continue to flourish, whilst at the same time protecting the environment and giving people more equal access to the benefits of the country’s economic development. Examining the key issues surrounding China's continued sustainable development, in economic, political, social and more traditional environmental terms, this book assesses the costs of China's rapid development to date and in turn asks whether this can be maintained. The contributors show that the idea of sustainable development must take into account more than just the physical environment, and that there are additional problems relating to the sustainability of China’s economic growth that are much more complicated. Divided into two broad sections, the book looks first at the broader issues of sustainability in China, before turning to the more classic idea of sustainability, that of the environment. In doing so, the contributors show that sustainability is a far more complex phenomenon than is often assumed, and that economic and social sustainability are inherently linked to linked to environmental sustainability. Dealing with what are arguably the greatest challenges facing China today, this book will be will be of great interests to students and scholars of Chinese studies, Chinese economics and Chinese politics, as well as those interested in development studies and sustainable development more broadly.
In recent years China has been remarkable in achieving extraordinary economic transformation, yet without fundamental political change. To many observers this would seem to imply a weakness in Chinese civil society. However, though the idea of democracy as multitudes of citizens taking to the streets may be attractive, it is simultaneously misleading as it disregards the nature of political change taking place in China today: a gradual shift towards a polity adapted to a pluralist society. At the same time, one may wonder what the limited political space implies for the development of a social movement in China. This book explores this question by focusing on one of the most active areas of Chinese civil society: the environment. China’s Embedded Activism argues that China’s semi-authoritarian limitations on the freedom of association and speech, coupled with increased social spaces for civic action has created a milieu in which activism occurs in an embedded fashion. The semi-authoritarian atmosphere is restrictive of, but paradoxically, also conducive to nationwide, collective action with less risk of social instability and repression at the hand of the governing elite. Rich in case studies about environmental civic organizations in China, and written by a team of international experts on social movements, NGOs, democratization, and civil society, this book addresses a wide readership of students, scholars and professionals interested in development, geography and environment, political change, and contemporary Chinese society.
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 ?growth-first? 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.
The authors are to be congratulated for a book that provides a comprehensive and vigorous analysis of many pressing environmental issues which China faces now and will face in the future. The book will be of interest to a broad audience, and is a must-read for and should be on the book shelf of anyone concerned about and attempting to understand environmental issues related to agriculture, water, industry, energy production and use, investment and development in China. Zhongxiang Zhang, The China Journal Over the past two decades, China has become an economic powerhouse. However, as the world s largest producer of CO2 emissions, the scale and seriousness of China s environmental problems are clearly evident. This pioneering book provides an economic analysis of the significant environmental and energy problems facing China in the 21st century. Chinese Economic Development and the Environment measures productivity, taking into account energy resources and environmental attributes that are central to sustaining economies. Applying an integrated model of energy production, transformation and consumption processes, the authors investigate the underlying driving forces behind trends in CO2 emissions in relation to the total primary energy supply. Exploring the history and development of China s economic, energy and environmental policy, this book will strongly appeal to postgraduate students in economics and environmental studies. It will also be beneficial for practitioners and policy-makers interested in understanding how successful market and environmental policies can contribute to efficiency by encouraging, rather than inhibiting, technological innovation.
An unprecedented study of environmentalism, environmental movements, and efforts at "greening" across the globe, written by culturally embedded scholars with both academic expertise and first-hand experience with grassroots advocacy. Protection of our planet, its people, and its natural resources has been a topic of numerous debates in many nations for the past 50 years. Each hemisphere, continent, and country has environmental challenges unique to the region, giving birth to green movements all over the world. Until now, very few resources have compiled the political, scientific, economic, philosophical, and religious viewpoints of these programs in one place. This two-volume work provides a comprehensive collection of the ideas and actions that inform environmentalism, at local, national, and regional levels across the globe. Environmental Movements around the World: Shades of Green in Politics and Culture includes viewpoints from experts in the fields of political science, history, international relations, environmental studies, and sociology that enable readers to compare and contrast different cultures' attitudes and solutions towards environmental issues. Providing both a broad view of international efforts to protect the earth while also spotlighting very specific examples of environmentally motivated strategies, the set explores the political strategies and cultural perspectives behind conservation and environmental activism in countries worldwide.
