Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
the
Guardian,
interviewed hundreds of nomads, philosophers, businessmen,
conservationists, scientists, lawyers, and farmers across the vast expanse of
China's regions and ecosystems in his exhaustively chronicled topic
When a
Billion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save Mankind—or Destroy It.
In it, he docu-
ments the tidal wave of grassroots protests against chemical plants, waste
incinerators, and other pollution sources, which he suggests show consider-
able concern for environmental health. In recent years, high-profi le envi-
ronmental protests in a number of diff erent cities have succeeded in protest-
ing and blocking incinerators, copper smelting, and coal-fi red plants.
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It is
crucially in this political context of government fears of discontent that
state-level, top-down adoption of environmental rhetoric and policy must
also be understood.
eco-development without downsides
h e disjunct between the dream of eco-development and the complicated
reality exemplifi es the ecological desire for eco-development without
downsides. h is green (capitalist/sustainable) dream in China has a fraught
recent history. h e “ecological civilization” discourse and increasing capital
investments dovetail with the land grab of real estate developers, who get
cheaper lands and enjoy favorable policies if their development plans fall
under the rubric of “ecological civilization.” For example, SIIC is involved in
six other “eco-city” plans in locales far away from Shanghai.
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h e country's highest-profi le eco-village, at Huangbaiyu, which began
in 2001 in northeastern China, was designed by the well-known American
“green” architect William McDonough,
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in conjunction with an organiza-
tion run by Deng Nan, the daughter of Deng Xiao Ping, the former leader of
China. With a proliferation of fi rst glowing and then damning publicity, the
project failed in large part (according to its former resident anthropologist
Shannon May) because of the lack of understanding of the local rural
Chinese contexts into which the imaginings of global sustainability were
