The Imagined Landscape | Illumination

The Imagined Landscape. Story by Bob Thomas.

Two earlier visits to China gave him an indication of the exploding economy and the need for new environmental thinking. "You read about these things, but you can't understand the scale," he says. "There is nowhere else in the world where this is happening at such a dramatic pace and scale. What happens in China today and in the next few decades will have impact on the U.S. and other countries across the world. We have a stake in understanding what's going on in China."

The good news, Urban says, is that the Chinese government is now spending a great deal of money on environmental issues. "They do not want to be embarrassed on the world stage. They have entered the World Trade Organization. They will host the 2008 Olympics and can't have world cameras showing people coughing from the polluted air hanging over Beijing."

Worsening environmental conditions and problems such as unsafe drinking water or air pollution from coal-powered industries may also provide a potential for grassroots movements to develop, so long as these don't threaten government control.

Still, China isn't the U.S., Urban says, where environmental issues are spearheaded by local pressure groups. "I don't know that such movements are possible in China," he says. "The way the Chinese value individual aspects of the environment are frequently different than the way we do in many respects. If you don't have electricity or clean running water, it will affect how you think about things," he says.

People must pick and choose priorities, Urban says. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for example, is doing the same kind of thing to the Missouri River as the Chinese are to the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. Still, Urban acknowledges, China has a lot of work to do before it achieves anything close to the environmental protections most Americans take for granted.

One thing that might help is establishment of a Chinese version of the land-grant universities that have helped American farmers, and the geographers that study them, better understand the land. "It certainly wouldn't have been possible for me to concentrate on these issues," says Urban, "if it weren't for the land-grant system."

Published by the Office of Research.