This wide-ranging and path-breaking collection of essays on China's environmental crisis takes a new approach, transcending the typical "gloom and doom" media and scholarly report on China's environmental crisis, to address how the Chinese political and social systems were impacted and how they responded, or should respond, to the ecological challenges confronting China. Therefore, this collection provides innovative analyses about the impacts and responses--both domestically and globally--of China's political and social systems encompassing its social values, ameliorative, and preventative policies. It leaves us with such an important question to ponder: What social action will be needed in the near- and long-term future in order to avoid environmental disaster as well as to achieve environmental sustainability and social justice for the long term in China?

China is a multiethnic country with vast territory, a land of diverse ecosystems. With the drive for industrialization in China and the implementation of 'western grand development' strategy in western regions, both governments and people face great challenges in environmental protection and sustainable use of biodiversity resources as a result of growing interaction between human activities and natural environment. To meet the challenges, governments in these regions need to adopt a series of important policy measures, not only to reduce industrial emissions, but also to return farmland to forests and pasture to grasslands and to implement measures of ecological migration to reduce human activities in ecological conservation areas. In this regard, China must not only learn profound lessons from industrialized countries but also search for international cooperation. The United States provides some good comparative case studies on the environmental protection, grassroots environmental management, and conservation policies in western regions This book attempts to address key questions about Chinese and U.S. environmental policies by looking at historical development of environmental protection and current environmental policy in the western regions of the two countries.

This path-breaking collection covers the significance of China's extreme environmental challenges for both Chinese society and the world, how these challenges are impacting domestic Chinese society and its political institutions, and how these institutions are responding in their efforts to address the environmental problems.