Pro-poor intervention strategies in irrigated agriculture in Asia: poverty in irrigated agriculture: issues and options: China

Irrigated farming / Poverty / Households / Income / Irrigation management / Institutions / Conflict / Legal aspects / Water policy / Water allocation / Price policy / Water rights / Water market / Irrigation programs / Public ownership / Models / Regression analysis / Farm size / Labor / Productivity / China

ESSE 2017. Proceedings of the International Conference on Environmental Science and Sustainable Energy

Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physical-, biological-, and information sciences to study and solve environmental problems. ESSE - The International Conference on Environmental Science and Sustainable Energy provides a platform for experts, professionals, and researchers to share updated information and stimulate the communication with each other. In 2017 it was held in Suzhou, China June 23-25, 2017

Community seed banks in China: achievements, challenges and prospects

The rich agrobiodiversity of China is under unprecedented threat, experiencing a dramatic loss of many valuable local varieties and wild relatives of main crops. The country's formal conservation system of ex situ genebanks faces serious challenges to address this loss. Community seed banks can play a key role to complement the conservation activities of these genebanks and provide other important collective goods, such as evolutionary services, but although they have been around for some 35 years in various parts of the world, in China they have a much shorter history. In recent years though the number has increased to almost 30 in 2020, in particular due to the efforts of the China Farmers' Seed Network. The community seed banks in the country are very diverse in terms of functions and services, forms of management and institutional linkages. Compared to the most common functions of community seed banks in other countries, China is bringing an important design innovation through two new functions: adding value to seed and produce through innovative marketing strategies, and building regional and national seed system linkages and fostering collaboration. The review of community seed banking not only provides rich empirical evidence, but also makes an important contribution to theory. Building on the achievements of community seed banking in the last decade, there is scope to scale this kind of very valuable agrobiodiversity conservation approach through more effective uptake and support by relevant national policies

Social Insurance for Rural-Urban Migrant Workers in China: Regional Disparities

Research on rural-urban migrant workers and regional disparities in China has attracted many scholars since the economic reform in the 1980s. After the 2000s, the state began to rethink and readjust the relationship between economic growth (efficiency) and social justice (equity). Problems arising from the economic transition, especially the social protection for rural-urban migrant workers, have become the new policy priorities of the state. This thesis combines these three topics, and explores the regional disparities of social insurance programmes for rural-urban migrant workers in China. It first discusses the provincial differences of social insurance systems for rural-urban migrant workers, by reviewing an extensive number of official documents issued by both central and local governments. Then it develops the possibility of welfare regimes in China, based on different typologies of welfare states in the Western and East Asian countries. Last it explores the experiences of rural-urban migrant workers and their opinions on social insurance system, through in-depth interviews

Groundwater overexploitation in the North China Plain: A path to sustainability

Over-pumping of aquifers is a worldwide problem, mainly caused by agricultural water use. Among its consequences are the falling dry of streams and wetlands, soil subsidence, die-off of phreatophytic vegetation, saline water intrusion, increased pumping cost and loss of storage needed for drought relief. Stopping or reversing the trend requires management interventions. The North China Plain serves as an example. A management system is set up for a typical county. It contains three components: monitoring, decision support based on modelling, and implementation in the field. Besides all monitoring data, the decision support module contains an irrigation calculator, a box model, and a distributed groundwater model to project the outcomes of different water allocation scenarios. In view of grain security, a solution combines an adaptation of the cropping system with imports of surface water from the South. The Open Access book does not only describe the problem and the path to its solution. It also gives access to nine manuals concerning methods used. They include computer programs and the game Save the Water. The Chinese experience should be of considerable interest to other regions in the world which suffer from over-pumping of aquifers

Green Technologies for Production Processes

This book focuses on original research works about Green Technologies for Production Processes, including discrete production processes and process production processes, from various aspects that tackle product, process, and system issues in production. The aim is to report the state-of-the-art on relevant research topics and highlight the barriers, challenges, and opportunities we are facing. This book includes 22 research papers and involves energy-saving and waste reduction in production processes, design and manufacturing of green products, low carbon manufacturing and remanufacturing, management and policy for sustainable production, technologies of mitigating CO2 emissions, and other green technologies

Groundwater overexploitation in the North China Plain: A path to sustainability

Over-pumping of aquifers is a worldwide problem, mainly caused by agricultural water use. Among its consequences are the falling dry of streams and wetlands, soil subsidence, die-off of phreatophytic vegetation, saline water intrusion, increased pumping cost and loss of storage needed for drought relief. Stopping or reversing the trend requires management interventions. The North China Plain serves as an example. A management system is set up for a typical county. It contains three components: monitoring, decision support based on modelling, and implementation in the field. Besides all monitoring data, the decision support module contains an irrigation calculator, a box model, and a distributed groundwater model to project the outcomes of different water allocation scenarios. In view of grain security, a solution combines an adaptation of the cropping system with imports of surface water from the South. The Open Access book does not only describe the problem and the path to its solution. It also gives access to nine manuals concerning methods used. They include computer programs and the game Save the Water. The Chinese experience should be of considerable interest to other regions in the world which suffer from over-pumping of aquifers

Secure and Sustainable Energy System

This special issue aims to contribute to the climate actions which called for the need to address Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, keeping global warming to well below 2°C through various means, including accelerating renewables, clean fuels, and clean technologies into the entire energy system. As long as fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) are still used in the foreseeable future, it is vital to ensure that these fossil fuels are used cleanly through abated technologies. Financing the clean and energy transition technologies is vital to ensure the smooth transition towards net zero emission by 2050 or beyond. The lack of long‐term financing, the low rate of return, the existence of various risks, and the lack of capacity of market players are major challenges to developing sustainable energy systems.This special collected 17 high-quality empirical studies that assess the challenges for developing secure and sustainable energy systems and provide practical policy recommendations. The editors of this special issue wish to thank the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) for funding several papers that were published in this special issue

Fiscal Policy in China: Taxation and Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations

In this book, Professor Bahl examines and analyzes China\u27s 1994 taxation reform as a case study of an attempt by a major developing country to modernize its fiscal system. The 1994 reform is noteworthy because it was the most systematic and comprehensive restructuring of China\u27s revenue system since the beginning of its economic reform in 1979. This far-reaching reform extended to the country\u27s tax structure, tax administration, central provincial fiscal relations, and provincial-local fiscal relations. The author traces the history of this reform over the past two decades and evaluates its impact, including an extensive review of the analytical work of other scholars. Through detailed quantitative analysis, he draws parallels with the fiscal reform options followed in other economies. The concluding chapter examines the possibilities for continuing taxation reform in China