Hidefumi Imura – författare

Economic development and environmental issues in China are attracting more and more attention internationally as the country’s large population and vast demands for food, energy, water, minerals, and other resources play an increasingly important role in deciding the fate of the world. There is great interest in learning more about environmental issues in China, but it is not easy to obtain accurate, relevant information because the issues are diverse and are complex phenomena resulting from the interconnections among natural resource constraints and political, social, and institutional systems. This book originally was published in Japanese with the aim of providing Japanese readers with a holistic picture of what was taking place in China with respect to its air, water, energy, and land. The author then prepared an English edition of the same material to use as a book of readings for the Global Environmental Leaders Program at Nagoya University, where he taught many students from Asia and Europe. The book covers the most important environmental issues in China—climatic change, water, air, energy, and resources—together with ongoing policy responses, based on the author’s active involvement in a number of study projects and international cooperation projects in that country. This volume will help readers to understand the causes and results of environmental problems in China and will encourage them to think more deeply about the environmental implications of the country’s rapid economic growth.

The environmental field is deep and wide. In the flood of information, how can people understand the underlying causes of what they hear about the environment from newspapers and television? This book was originally published in Japanese, with the aim of providing basic information about the ideas and methods to see and understand the interconnection between nature and human activities from a systematic point of view. The author subsequently prepared an English version of the same material for use as a textbook for the Global Environmental Leaders Program at Nagoya University, where he taught many students from Asia and Europe. The book covers diverse environmental issues such as climatic change, biodiversity preservation, energy conservation, and resource recycling. Readers can learn common methods of analysis and thinking to identify the core essence of economic and ecological interdependence, to look at problems from an overarching perspective, and to consider countermeasures to be taken.