We’re pleased to share a recent review of a new book out by our 3rd cohort ICI Fellows titled Environmental Sustainability from the Himalayas to the Oceans: Struggles and Innovations in China and India (Springer 2017). The book is edited by Shikui Dong, Jayanta Bandyopadhyay and Sanjay Chaturvedi. Along with Nidhi Shrinivas, Victoria Marshall and Lo Sze Ping, this group of scholars from India, China and the US were part of the final cohort of India China Fellows working on the topic of Social Innovation for Sustainable Environments (2010-13).

Here is a brief excerpt from the review in PrimePost by Vithal Rajan titled India, China Collaboration Needed To Protect Ecology.

While general public anxiety over our fast degrading environment has produced a plethora of books, none is better than this one, written with so much attention to detail, and history, making complex scientific facts easily accessible as much to the lay reader as to the scientist. The book is delightfully illustrated with carefully drawn maps and charts, and beautiful photos, which all aid the reader in understanding the threats to the fragile ecology of the Himalayan region, affecting both India and China.

A phalanx of authoritative scientists have authored this book, Indian, Chinese, and international. In the present cacophonous political atmosphere, the authors refreshingly argue, repeatedly throughout the book, for joint international action and joint regional bodies between India and China to help reverse ecological degradation in the Himalayan region, which is drastically eroding the quality of life for millions north and south of the mountain range.

The two principal authors, Jayanta Bandyopadhyay and Shikui Dong, go into the early histories and theologies of the two great Asian civilizations to highlight the ecological sensitivity embedded in their cultures. Shikui Dong starts his exposition of the present state of play in China with a conventional bashing of the Mao period in the 1950s and 1960s, a period when all governments were equally ignorant and irresponsible.

You can read the full review online here.