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08 June 2016: Researching the Chinese food-energy-climate change trilemma

Professor Mark Harvey recently returned from a research trip to China, in Beijing and Shanghai, interviewing experts on China's climate change sustainability crisis relating to agriculture, food and in particular the transition to eating more meat. 

Overuse of chemical fertilizers and high levels of pollution from internsive pig farming are occurring at a time when China is shifting sharply away from food self-sufficiency, with increasing imports of animal feed and meat. Politically, this is taking place in the context of a major transition in land-holding with some promoting marketization of land which could result in the end of peasant small-holders.

Mark was also helping to consolidate research links between CRESI at Essex, the Sustainable Consumption Insititute (University of Manchester) and members of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative. He was particularly intrigued by one of his interviewes quoting Karl Polanyi: 'Leaving the fate of soil and people to the market would be tantamount to annihilating them.' The tensions of China's trilemma are indeed intensifying.

Click here to see the photos from my presentation at The Centre for Energy and Environmental Policy, Beijing Institute of Technology.

Click here for more information on the  workshop I held on 'Sustainable Consumption and Drinking Water' at The Sociology Department, Shanghai University,