China

The US and China, the two countries who produce and consume the most will largely determine our environmental future. The effects of our choices will probably be felt most and most immediately in Africa.

See also Globalization and Entrepreneurship

Consumption

Sustainability

and Third World Development

Mark Hertsgaard writes extensively on China in his excellent book Earth Odyssey. This article is based on the book.

People

List of Chinese environmentalists

Wang Canfa, director of the Beijing-based Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims.

Wang Yongchen, a journalist with China National Radio, co-founded Green Earth Volunteers, one of China's first environmental NGOs.

Video

Up the Yangtze explores lives transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history, a hotly contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle. Nearing completion, China's massive Three Gorges Dam is altering the landscape and the lives of people living along the fabled Yangtze River. Countless ancient villages and historic locales will be submerged, and 2 million people will lose their homes and livelihoods.

Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall The world's largest shopping mall, in Guangzhou, China, is almost entirely empty. POV PBS

Photographer Edward Burtynsky documents how humans alter the world, and to a lesser degree the people engaged in doing the work [1]. A video, Manufactured Landscapes, (trailer) was made about his trip to China and its factories and the Three Gorges Dam. Excerpt from Manufactured Landscapes.

Design: e2 - China: From Red to Green. The series moves to China, whose soaring population and rapid industrialization have created a boom in urbanization that is unprecedented in human history. In an attempt to tackle this global issue, the episode explores design solutions in both theory and practice, including Steven Holl’s Linked Hybrid Project, which when completed will be the largest residential, geothermal heating/cooling and greywater recycling system in the world. Also featured is architect, designer and winner of three U.S. Presidential Awards William McDonough. Recognized by Time magazine as “Hero of the Planet,” McDonough talks about his innovative plans to make China an entirely sustainable country and how it will demonstrate the ways architecture can be both profitable and environmentally intelligent.

Great Wall Across the Yangtze. To China’s leaders, the Three Gorges Dam is the most significant engineering feat since the construction of the Great Wall, but to its critics worldwide, it is a social and environmental disaster. As the debate rages on, GREAT WALL ACROSS THE YANGTZE tells the complex story of extraordinary sacrifice in the face of modernization.

Books

Where the Dragon Meets the Angry River: Nature and Power in the People's Republic of ChinaR. Edward Grumbine is the author of Ghost Bears (Island Press, 1992). He teaches environmental studies at Prescott College and directed the Sierra Institute, University of California Extension, Santa Cruz, for more than a decade.

China's environment and the challenge of sustainable development Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe, c2005 McH Stacks - HC430.E5 C43 2005 Online

Articles

Air Quality 3/10