The Sage Handbook of China and the Environment

The Sage Handbook of China and the Environment offers a comprehensive exploration of China′s environment through a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary lens. This volume presents China′s environment as a series of interconnected temporal and spatial processes involving human agency and more-than-human dynamics. Contributions from leading scholars in social science, environmental science, and humanities focus on long-term environmental change, shifts in environmental perception, and the dynamic adaptations that have shaped China as both a nation and a mosaic of distinctive socio-ecological networks.

The handbook delves into the processes of human-environment relations that have shaped contemporary landscapes, ecosystems, and livelihoods within China′s territorial boundaries, as well as global industrial and commercial processes affecting climate change and geopolitics worldwide. Each section of the book includes chapters that summarize key contributions to specific fields of environmental research, assess prevailing paradigms, and chart a course for future work, including calls for activist research that encourages collaborative engagement with the dynamic political, economic, ecological, and cultural processes shaping China′s environment and policy.

Organized into four main sections, the handbook covers the long-term ecological transformation of China, biodiversity conservation and the social construction of nature, pressing environmental concerns in urbanizing China, and China′s role in global sustainability. It provides a nuanced understanding of China′s environmental challenges and achievements, emphasizing the need for multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches to address the complexities of China′s environment.

The Sage Handbook of China and the Environment is an essential resource for scholars, practitioners, and students seeking to understand the intricate processes shaping China′s environment and its global impact.

Part 1: Past as Prelude: The Long Journey Toward Understanding China′s Long-term Ecological Transformation
Part 2: Biodiversity and Wild Landscapes: Conservation and the Social Construction of Nature in Contemporary China
Part 3: Pressing Environmental Concerns in Urbanizing China
Part 4: Global China, the Biosphere, and Planetary Sustainability