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The Sage Handbook of China and the Environment
Edited by:
- Christopher Coggins - Bard College, USA
- Yifei Li - NYU Shanghai, China
Series:
SAGE Handbooks of Modern China
SAGE Handbooks of Modern China
March 2026 | 658 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
Chris Coggins and Yifiei Li
Introduction: China’s Ecological Transformation: A Relational Approach
Chris Coggins and Yifiei Li
A Brief Geographic Sketch of China at the Dawn of the Third Millennium: Mountains, Rivers, Basins, Plains, and Plateaus
Part I. Past as Prelude—The Long Journey Toward Understanding China's Long-term Ecological Transformation
Chris Coggins and Yifiei Li
Part I Introduction
Brian Lander
Chapter 1. How Humans Have Transformed China’s Biosphere
Ian M. Miller
Chapter 2. Forests in Imperial China
Ruth Mostern
Chapter 3. Deep Waters: Environmental Histories of China’s Rivers and Hydrological Resources
Jörg Henning Hüsemann
Chapter 4. Farming with the Elements: Agronomy and Ecological Wisdom in Early China
Han Zhaoqing
Chapter 5. Nature Through the Cartographer’s Eye: Depictions of Natural Elements in Ancient Chinese Maps
Chris Coggins
Chapter 6: Fengshui, Ecology, and the Fate of China’s Subtropical Broadleaf Evergreen Forest Biome
Dan Smyer Yü
Chapter 7. Shifting Isohyet, Human Migrations and Inter-Asian Geographies of China: Climate Refugees and Empire Builders in the 1200s
Stevan Harrell
Chapter 8. Development, Environment, and Ecosystem Resilience: Water and Food in the People’s Republic of China
Part II. Biodiversity and Wild Landscapes—Conservation and the Social Construction of Nature in Contemporary China
Chris Coggins and Yifiei Li
Part II Introduction
David Pietz
Chapter 9. Animal Science, Rights, and Conservation in Republican China, 1911-1949
Deborah Cao
Chapter 10. Wildlife in the Crossfire: The Legal and Ethical Challenges of Conservation in China
Jesse Rodenbiker
Chapter 11. Global China and the Wildlife Trade: Impacts on Biodiversity, Marine Ecosystems, and Racialized Public Health Risks
Tracy Burnett
Chapter 12: The Resilience and Complexity of Tibetan Pastoralism: Language, Livestock, and Ritual
Timothy McLellan
Chapter 13: Bureaucracy, Vulnerability, and Environmental Research
Heidi Ma, Sarah Papworth, Sam Turvey
Chapter 14. One Size Does Not Fit All: Variable Community Interactions With Protected Areas in China, and Implications for Conservation Management
Lisa Mogensen, Zhigang Mei, Sam Turvey
CHAPTER 15: Evidence-based conservation management in China: understanding decision-making for a Critically Endangered Chinese cetacean
Part III. Pressing Environmental Concerns in Urbanizing China Introduction
Chris Coggins and Yifiei Li
Part III Introduction
Genia Kostka, Kyoung Shin
Chapter 16. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in China’s Environmental Governance
Ying Xu, Federico Caprotti
Chapter 17. Digital Mediation of Environmental Governance Through Gamification of Sustainability Priorities: the Case of Ant Forest in China
Haomin Gong
Chapter 18. China’s Changing Ecocinema
Cheng Li
Chapter 19. Teaching Digital Landscapes: Incorporating Virtual Reality to Chinese Environmental Learning
Lobsang Sonam, Tsering Drolma, Chris Coggins, Nitas Syed
Chapter 20. Place-Based Earth and Environmental Education: Lessons from Southern China and the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands
Liu Wenling, Zhu Yulin, Jiang Shujing, Jia Yunhao
Chapter 21. Air Pollution Concerns: Spatial and temporal variability and drivers
Hu Tao, Song Peng
Chapter 22. Co-Controlling Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases: Greening Transportation in China
Part IV. Global China, the Biosphere, and Planetary Sustainability
Chris Coggins and Yifiei Li
Part IV Introduction
Yifei Li, Judith Shapiro
Chapter 23. Reactive Authoritarianism: Understanding the Caprices of Chinese Environmental Governance
Sophia Kalantzakos
Chapter 24: Sino-US Hyper-competition in the climate crisis era: The case of Critical Minerals
Eyck Freymann, Raymond H. Cai
Chapter 25. Security, Climate Change, and the Politics of Vulnerability in China
Chunhong Sheng, Hanyue Hua
Chapter 26. China’s Climate Change Governance: Authoritarianism or Alternative to Save the World?
Ziwei Fan, Chun Kai Leung, David A. Palmer
Chapter 27. Chinese ESG and Green Finance in the Belt and Road Initiative
Caroline Merrifield
Chapter 28. Eating the Quick and the Dead: On Feeding China’s Cities
Annah Lake Zhu
Chapter 29. Socioecological Engineering in the Chinese Century