Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2007 in the subject Environmental Sciences, grade: B, Natural Resources Institute - University of Greenwich at Medway, language: English, abstract: China is one of the most affected countries in the world in terms of extent and economic impact of environmental degradation. Desertification is the most severe environmental land degradation problems facing China, commonly caused by wind erosion. Wind erosion occurs widely in arid, semiarid and dry sub-humid zones of northern China, where precipitation is rare and vegetation is sparse. In China desertified land covers an area of 3.3 million km2, accounting for 34% of the total land territory or 79% of the entire arid lands in China. Annual direct economic loss caused by desertification is approximately $6,500,000,000. The best way to control this problem in China are: (1) rehabilitation of tree plantation for complete desertification control, (2) improvement of the economic development system through: (i) economize in the use of resources; (ii) moderate exploitation of the resources; and (iii) environmental protection; and (3) providing measures that should be suited to local conditions such as irrigation system and forage farming system.

The pace of environmental degradation in China has intensified in recent decades. With rapid demographic and economic growth, the current state of degradation has antecedents beginning hundreds of years ago. Patterns of China's Lost Harmony combines historical documentation with contemporary assessment to determine the degree of human impact upon the country's vegetation, soils, water, air and wildlife. This will serve as an important reference tool for understanding the historical scope of environmental degradation and for assessing attempts to control environmental degradation since the 1980s.

As the dazzling economic and social changes in China have imposed substantial impact upon the quality of environmental governance, it is time to review the problems and progress in the politics of China's environmental protection. This book analyzes the factors in China's governance and political process that affect and restrain its capacity to handle the mounting environmental problems. It argues that solutions to China's ecological woes to a larger extent lie in the political and institutional changes rather than in engineering, technological and investment input. The book talks about new policies and reform measures in the green area taken by the government since 2007, arguing that some of them may be quite effective in the long run, as long as they alter institutional factors and the ?growth-first? mindset that obstruct the green effort.The book also includes discussion of China's climate change policy not only because global warming has come under the limelight of the international community in recent years, but also because it offers a unique dimension to analyze the country's environmental diplomacy and domestic bureaucratic structure on emissions cutting and related energy issues. China is currently at the crossroads of further political and economic reform, and the intensified public attention to environmental pollution may help the Chinese Communist Party to decisively push forward the long-sluggish political reforms.

"The assessment builds on the work of the Livestock, Environment and Development (LEAD) Initiative"--Pref.

Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.

It has always been thought that some level of pollution and waste is unavoidable in development projects. But no one has made much effort to quantify and assess the extent of this sort of damage. In this book a group of analysts from the Asian Development Bank and from the East West Center propose a means of constructing useful economic evaluations of the impacts of development projects on the environments in which they are constructed. This study demands the systematic evaluation of all the intentional and unintentional consequences of development initiatives before they are determined upon. It is essential reading for development economists, analysts and bankers. Originally published in 1986