The Sage Handbook of China and the Environment

Chris Coggins is professor of Geography and Asian Studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock (Open Society University Network).  He is the co-editor and co-author (with Bixia Chen) of Sacred Forests of Asia: Spiritual Ecology and the Politics of Nature Conservation (Routledge/Earthscan, 2022), and the co-author/co-editor (with Emily Yeh) of Mapping Shangrila: Contested Landscapes of the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands (University of Washington, 2014). He is the author of The Tiger and the Pangolin: Nature, Culture, and Conservation in China (University of Hawaii Press, 2003) (runner-up for the 2003 Julian Steward Award for best book in environmental/ecological anthropology and nominated for the Kiriyama Prize in non-fiction.  He has published numerous refereed articles and chapters in geography, environment, and Asia-related books and journals. In 2019, he was selected to serve as one of fourteen scholars in Asian Studies on the ASIANetwork Speakers Bureau. He is currently co-authoring/co-editing Fengshuilin: Village Fengshui Forests and Ecological Transformation in Southern China (with Bixia Chen, Jesse Minor, and Ian M. Miller).Yifei Li is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at NYU Shanghai and Global Network Assistant Professor at NYU. His research concerns various groups of people under China’s brand of state-led environmentalism. He has received research support from the United States National Science Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies, Rachel Carson Center, and many other extramural sources. His recent work appears in Current Sociology, Qualitative Sociology, Sociology of Development, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Environmental Sociology, Journal of Environmental Management, and other scholarly outlets. His scholarly work has been featured on NPR, in The Economist, Foreign Affairs, Le Monde, and other media.

Deeply impressive in its spatio-temporal and thematic scope, while simultaneously cohesive in its relational approach, The Sage Handbook of China and the Environment is a remarkable achievement.  Its interdisciplinary contributions, from the environmental humanities to the environmental sciences, span topics ranging from imperial forests to climate change governance to virtual reality in Chinese environmental education.  As such it will be an indispensable reference for scholars of China’s human-environment relations from ancient times to the present, and a useful guide for anyone who wants to better understand global China in our current era of accelerating planetary change.

• Introduction: China’s Ecological Transformation: A Relational Approach - Chris Coggins and Yifei LiA Brief Geographic Sketch of China at the Dawn of the Third Millennium: Mountains, Rivers, Basins, Plains, and Plateaus - Chris Coggins and Yifei LiPart I. Past as Prelude—The Long Journey Toward Understanding China′s Long-term Ecological TransformationPart I Introduction - Chris Coggins and Yifei LiChapter 1. How Humans Have Transformed China’s Biosphere - Brian LanderChapter 2. Forests in Imperial China - Ian M. MillerChapter 3. Deep Waters: Environmental Histories of China’s Rivers and Hydrological Resources - Ruth MosternChapter 4. Farming with the Elements: Agronomy and Ecological Wisdom in Early China - Jörg Henning HüsemannChapter 5. Nature Through the Cartographer’s Eye: Depictions of Natural Elements in Ancient Chinese Maps - Han ZhaoqingChapter 6: Fengshui, Ecology, and the Fate of China’s Subtropical Broadleaf Evergreen Forest Biome - Chris CogginsChapter 7. Shifting Isohyet, Human Migrations and Inter-Asian Geographies of China: Climate Refugees and Empire Builders in the 1200s - Dan Smyer YüChapter 8. Development, Environment, and Ecosystem Resilience: Water and Food in the People’s Republic of China - Stevan HarrellPart II. Biodiversity and Wild Landscapes—Conservation and the Social Construction of Nature in Contemporary ChinaPart II Introduction - Chris Coggins and Yifei LiChapter 9. Animal Science, Rights, and Conservation in Republican China, 1911-1949 - David PietzChapter 10. Wildlife in the Crossfire: The Legal and Ethical Challenges of Conservation in China - Deborah CaoChapter 11. Global China and the Wildlife Trade: Impacts on Biodiversity, Marine Ecosystems, and Racialized Public Health Risks - Jesse RodenbikerChapter 12: The Resilience and Complexity of Tibetan Pastoralism: Language, Livestock, and Ritual - Tracy BurnettChapter 13: Bureaucracy, Vulnerability, and Environmental Research - Timothy McLellanChapter 14. One Size Does Not Fit All: Variable Community Interactions With Protected Areas in China, and Implications for Conservation Management - Heidi Ma, Sarah Papworth, Sam TurveyCHAPTER 15: Evidence-based conservation management in China: understanding decision-making for a Critically Endangered Chinese cetacean - Lisa Mogensen, Zhigang Mei, Sam TurveyPart III. Pressing Environmental Concerns in Urbanizing China IntroductionPart III Introduction - Chris Coggins and Yifei LiChapter 16. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in China’s Environmental Governance - Genia Kostka, Kyoung ShinChapter 17. Digital Mediation of Environmental Governance Through Gamification of Sustainability Priorities: the Case of Ant Forest in China - Ying Xu, Federico CaprottiChapter 18. China’s Changing Ecocinema - Haomin GongChapter 19. Teaching Digital Landscapes: Incorporating Virtual Reality to Chinese Environmental Learning - Cheng LiChapter 20. Place-Based Earth and Environmental Education: Lessons from Southern China and the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands - Lobsang Sonam, Tsering Drolma, Chris Coggins, Nitas SyedChapter 21. Air Pollution Concerns: Spatial and temporal variability and drivers - Liu Wenling, Zhu Yulin, Jiang Shujing, Jia YunhaoChapter 22. Co-Controlling Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases: Greening Transportation in China - Hu Tao, Song PengPart IV. Global China, the Biosphere, and Planetary SustainabilityPart IV Introduction - Chris Coggins and Yifei LiChapter 23. Reactive Authoritarianism: Understanding the Caprices of Chinese Environmental Governance - Yifei Li, Judith ShapiroChapter 24: Sino-US Hyper-competition in the climate crisis era: The case of Critical Minerals - Sophia KalantzakosChapter 25. Security, Climate Change, and the Politics of Vulnerability in China - Eyck Freymann, Raymond H. CaiChapter 26. China’s Climate Change Governance: Authoritarianism or Alternative to Save the World? - Chunhong Sheng, Hanyue HuaChapter 27. Chinese ESG and Green Finance in the Belt and Road Initiative - Ziwei Fan, Chun Kai Leung, David A. PalmerChapter 28. Eating the Quick and the Dead: On Feeding China’s Cities - Caroline MerrifieldChapter 29. Socioecological Engineering in the Chinese Century - Annah Lake Zhu