Overview
Provides an interdisciplinary analysis of the environmental struggles in India and China
Discusses the need for India and China to reshape engineering and policy measures to manage Himalayan grasslands, rivers and other landscapes
Highlights the importance of social and political innovations for creating sustainable environments in this region
Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
Table of contents (10 chapters)
-
Front Matter
-
Back Matter
Keywords
- Environmental Sustainability
- Himalayan rivers
- India and China
- policy innovation
- Environmental management in China and India
- Environmental governance
- Institutional, social and technological innovation
- People-forest linkages
- Himalayan grasslands
- Biodiversity conservation
- Grassroots partnerships
- Environmental Geography
- climate change
About this book
The book is written in the backdrop of the environmental impacts of and future requirements from the natural environment for rapid economic growth that has characterized recent economic history of China and India, especially over the past few decades. The environmental impacts of such rapid economic changes have been, more frequently than otherwise, degrading in character. Environmental impacts of economic activities create degraded natural ecosystems by over utilization of nature’s provisioning ecosystem services (from Himalaya to the Ocean), as well, by the use of the natural environment as sink for dumping of unmarketable products or unused inputs of economic activities. Such processes affect wide range of ecosystem processes on which the natural environment including human population depend on.
Critical perspectives cast by various chapters in this book draw attention to the various ways in which space and power interact to produce diverse geographies of sustainability in a globalizing world. They also address the questions such as who decides what kind of a spatial arrangement of political power is needed for sustaining the environment. Who stands to gain (or lose) what, when, where, and why from certain geographical areas being demarcated as ecologically unique, fragile and vulnerable environments? Whose needs and values are being catered to by a given ecosystem service? What is the scope for critical inquiry into the ways in which the environment is imagined, represented and resisted in both geopolitical struggles and everyday life? The book provides insights to both academics from diverse disciplines and policy makers, civil society actors interested in mutual exchange of knowledge between China and India.
Reviews
“The future of global sustainability depends on how China and India develop in the decades ahead. This book represents an important contribution to understanding and promoting environmental sustainability in a millennial context in these two ‘civilizational twins’, with ecosystems that depend on the ‘Himalayan water tower’. I am very pleased to see the publication of this timely and productive book, given the pervading sense of urgency in the era of extensive environment degradation, especially climate change. It provides new insights on environmental sustainability from Himalayan grasslands to the coastal areas, linked by Himalayan rivers, and rural and urban landscapes in China and India. I highly recommend this important publication to researchers, designers, planners, policy makers, students, and others who are working on environmental sustainability in China or India and worldwide.” (Nitin Desai, Former Under-Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, New Delhi, India)
“Over the past decade Professor Dong has successfully broadened his ecological focus on grassland management in China to embrace the complexities of the socialenvironmental nexus and to encourage trans-disciplinary collaborations that are essential to eventually realizing sustainable development worldwide. Here, Dong and colleagues provide a unique and useful interdisciplinary synthesis of the socialenvironmental challenges and their possible solutions across a major geopolitical landscape. I can think of no more complicated, or more important, setting for a consideration of environmental sustainability than the mountains to oceans continuum that spans the rapidly developing countries of China and India. This volume provides a solid foundation for stimulating that important discussion.” (James P. Lassoie, International Professor of Conservation, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA)
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Shikui Dong is a full professor at Beijing Normal University, China and an adjunct professor at Cornell University, USA. A Fellow with the India China Institute at The New School, New York(2010-2012) and a Fellow with Asia Scholarship Foundation (2006-2008; 2009-2010), his research focuses on highland ecosystem restoration, highland resource management and sustainable development, and coupled human-natural systems in environmental protection.
Jayanta Bandyopadhyay is an author and expert on environmental policy. He is a former Professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta and former Visiting Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He is an adviser to the Water Diplomacy Program at the Tufts University, Medford MA USA.
Sanjay Chaturvedi is Professor of Political Science at Panjab University in Chandigarh, India. He was a Fellow of the India-China Institute (2010-2012) at the New School, New York (USA) and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore, from 2010-2012. He is an Associate Fellow of Asia Society, New York and Associate of Indo-Pacific Governance Research Centre at The Adelaide University.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Environmental Sustainability from the Himalayas to the Oceans
Book Subtitle: Struggles and Innovations in China and India
Editors: Shikui Dong, Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, Sanjay Chaturvedi
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44037-8
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental Science, Earth and Environmental Science (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-44035-4Published: 07 February 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-82966-1Published: 13 July 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-44037-8Published: 23 January 2017
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XX, 258
Number of Illustrations: 4 b/w illustrations, 74 illustrations in colour
Topics: Sustainable Development, Environmental Geography, Climate Change, Environmental Management, Environmental Law/Policy/Ecojustice, Geoecology/Natural Processes