Cecilia
The completion of this GISP has fulfilled many of my goals for the class, but at the same time I learned many unexpected things. My first goal was simply to learn. I appreciate the concrete knowledge I gained from the GISP, especially the material covered in the early part of the class. A basic understanding of governmental regulatory structures yielded deep insight into the root of many pollution problems. I also enjoyed picking up information about international policy that concerned China, much of which came from Professor Karp. I believe that we spent an adequate amount of time discussing the political and economic framework of environmental issues in China, before delving into the point sources of pollution. Each week’s presentation was filled with interesting facts and anecdotes, but I think we could have done a better job synthesizing. Many of the pollution problems discussed could occur anywhere in the world, and I would have liked more exploration of Chinese approaches to pollution control. Additionally, I wish we had covered how certain aspects of Chinese culture and traditions influence environmental attitudes and practice in China. Wumeng briefly covered this subject in his first presentation, and we also discussed guanxi in depth – but more exploration could yield a deeper understanding of environmental problems. A suggestion for the future could be to bring in a guest lecture on this subject, perhaps somebody from the East Asian Studies or Religious/Contemplative Studies departments. Additionally, I thought that two weeks spent discussing water pollution and resource management became redundant. Instead, one of those weeks should have been devoted to air pollution, which is the source of much of China's chronic disease. As for the class layout, I think that having the presenters for each week also write the week's response created redundancy and discouraged students from fully exploring a topic if it wasn't assigned to them. There should have been more of an emphasis on preparing discussion questions before had and reflecting afterwards on the part of all students, not just the two presenters for each week. Additionally, more personalized peer feedback would have been useful in improving our presentations.
My final goal for the GISP was to find a way to apply my knowledge. I hope to travel to China next year and do environmental, health-related, or educational work. Thus far I have not found any concrete connections, but the GISP has established a very basic network for me and probably boosted my credentials for doing environmental work in China. The unit on NGO’s was particularly fascinating and showed me the difficulties, as well as the importance, of working for an NGO in China. I plan to look into NGO opportunities in the near future. As for general skills, the GISP challenged and improved my ability to coordinate events and meetings, and was a powerful learning experience on how to work with others. The GISP was an opportunity to study exactly what I am interested in, and in many ways it both fulfilled and extended my interest in environmental issues in China. Running the course was more challenging than I expected, but the knowledge I gained was more than worth the effort. In the future, I hope to maintain an academic connection to this subject, as well as the friendships I have gained with the other students in the class.
Harmony
I am honestly sad to see the end of the semester and the official end of this class. It has been an incredible learning experience in ways that I had both hoped for and had not anticipated at all. Thankfully, I think that we managed to work towards fulfilling several of the initial goals that I had set of at the beginning, although I don’t feel comfortable saying that we necessarily succeeded in fully answering any of my questions.
I feel confident in my knowledge of several important frameworks for considering the state of the Chinese environment as a whole: the historical contexts, the general governmental and regulation structure. In the first month of the class, we really tried to address how these background issues that define how humans interact with their environment have operated and shaped the situation in modern China. This may have been the strongest point of the class curriculum and I believed it worked very effectively: once we had a working knowledge of these, it allowed us to see how generalizations applied to specific pollution sources or resource issues. Themes particular to China, (such as the decentralization of the regulation of many laws and how this has only strengthened the role that local guanxi plays in seeing that national environmental standards are met,) were repeated throughout the more specialized topics that we discussed. It was relevant in both larger planned class topics and in our discussions of current events.
In general, I found that the class often strayed into discussions that are more often found in social science and humanities classes and I benefited from this. Between my classmates and Caroline, I often picked up on connections to other countries’ situations, history and generally across disciplines that I am less familiar with. Although there are many aspects to China that are unique and will likely remain so, there are plenty of others that have analogues in other countries or that are drawn and directly influenced by interactions with the West. Caroline was very helpful in contributing insight from her extensive background in environmental policy and management in other countries.
I think that working on this class also gave me some important basic practice and knowledge in what information regarding China’s environment is readily available and where and how to look for it. I don’t think that I have too many facts about particular pollution levels or emissions rates memorized, however, in addition to my notes from class, I feel like I have familiarity with how to look for the most updated statistics on this. Additionally, I feel like our discussions involving sectors that I might pursue to do work in: NGOs, research institutions/universities; have let me know some of the major roles that these play and ways that they are both ineffective and effective. I am glad that I will have this context if I do look further into either of these options for my future.
Lastly, I learned much about the creating the class as a group effort – which was not something that I had set as an original goal to realize from this work. This class may have been one of the longest and largest sustained projects that I have worked on and I learned much from the dynamics of the group and our relative successes and failures. Although I am sure that I still have much to learn before I could create the “perfect class”, I am much closer to understanding successful learning and teaching techniques. Unfortunately, the extensive amounts of time and effort that when into organization of the class detracted from some things that I wanted to address during the semester. I am somewhat disappointed by the minimal extent to which Chinese language was incorporated into our class dynamics. I also believe that we often never had time for important synthesizing discussions of potential solutions and analyzing those proposed by others. However, I hope that we can maintain the connections that we established between classmates and with some of the professionals we contacted during the class and continue to have these discussions in the future.
Justin
This has been a great semester for learning experiences, in no small part due to this GISP. I'm quite thankful for all that I've learned from the central subject of China and its environmental issues to all sorts of other bits that came with the package such as logistical planning and being adept enough to get seven people to push themselves towards common goals. Pretty nice.
My first goal was basically learning more about China and its environment. I'm glad to say, especially as that was the focus of this GISP, that this was accomplished. I had not known the extensive legislative framework China has in place in response to its increasing environmental pressures. I had not known how rampant was the disregard for these laws. I had not known the magnitude of how importance China's response is to its environmental issues. Now I know a bit more about all of this.
I had as my second goal an exploration of the historical and cultural background of China that led to its current environmental state. While this GISP did touch history in detail, it was limited to a couple presentations and a small portion of our readings. However, I'm not miffed about this for the time was better spent investigating the current situation in China. This only means that I am to investigate China's history on my own, and when I do so that I'll be better able to connect that past with the present.
The GISP part of our "Modern Issues of China's Environment GISP" I got in part and not in full. I wish I had participated much more than I did during this past semester, but I am very glad to have participated at all. This GISP has really taught me how self-driven learning can become and the benefits that undoubtedly follow such an approach. I was really amazed at how much my fellow classmates had to give, and their contributions along with the many contributions of our advisor Caroline Karp will stay in memory for quite some time.
There's so much left to learn about China. I see this GISP as an amazing stepping stone towards fuller understanding. Onwards!
Kayla
I learned a lot throughout and through the GISP, ranging from concrete facts about China’s environmental issues and the way the country is moving towards solutions, to the problems that arise when putting together and leading a class.
On the course content side of things, many of the problems, features, tactics related to China’s environment that we talked about, of which I had no knowledge prior to the class, are now a part of my everyday vernacular. For instance, though I knew China’s environment was to and currently does face enormous challenges, I didn’t know about the enforcement gap between local and central government: thinking the government was all-powerful, I was distraught at what I believed was a simple prioritization of economy over environment. While I still think that China often privileges economic development over environmental protection, I have a deeper understanding of the complexities that contribute to this – such as: a) government promoting officials based on the GDP of their jurisdiction rather than solid enforcement of environmental laws; b) relatively strong laws that are hampered by a planned-out decentralization of government, which allows greater flexibility on the local level but also leads to lax environmental protection; c) the lack of resources Environmental Protection Bureaus are provided. I am familiar with terms and organizations like the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Friends of Nature, GONGOs, that structure and determine the way China approaches the environment, permitting me to better comprehend why China’s environment looks the way it does now, and how that might change in the future (i.e. what areas have room to grow, and where China’s greatest strengths lie or the channels through which it is most likely the country will become more sustainable).
In terms of arranging the class, looking back, I think we did a number of things right. For instance, the amount of time spent on policy and government structure was really an essential foundation to the other topics we covered throughout the semester. It informed the way we talked about almost every subject, and gave all of the students, each from a different background, a common language to communicate with. It helped us relate very specific issues or cases we studied, such as pollution in Lake Taihu, back to broader themes, tying the course together. In addition, I think the amount of care we put into getting a variety of points of view on the topic paid off big time. Having a diversity of perspectives both among the students taking the course and from without (from readings and guest speakers or participants [at the symposium and in class]) was incredibly useful to the learning process. For example, coming from a humanities background, I tend to think about the material I encounter in theoretical ways, or in broad strokes. But there were many students in the class coming from a more science place, and they were able to offer up information I had never come across (take the ubiquitous [towards the end of the class] Kuznets curve as an illustration), or ask questions I honestly had never thought about. This helped me slowly come to analyze books, websites, scientific articles related to China’s environment in a new, more widely informed manner.
On the downside, I believe we often (particularly in the middle of the course) spent too much time rehashing material in the readings, and not enough time on discussion. While I do enjoy lecture style, I came to realize that in a class mainly run by students, discussion is the most fruitful part of the experience, the way to get the most out of your peers. While some of the longer presentations were able to incorporate material not in the readings in an exciting way, I think shorter presentations that include new information are entirely possible and preferable. I wish that we had been clearer from the beginning on how long we expected presentations to be (preferably around 15-20 minutes, though no longer than 30), and that it would be best if everyone brought comments/questions to each class. We also spent a great deal of time and effort dealing with what I would term “administrative” duties (i.e. planning, organizing, etc.) instead of doing outside-of-the-box things like watching movies or having Chinese-language-based sessions. I don’t know if more planning ahead of time would have helped much, since we basically met at least once a week for the whole term prior to the class, but perhaps one could conceive of a course that by nature required less of this.
I also have more resources at my fingertips now, if I continue to study this subject, than I did when I started the class. For instance, beforehand, I wouldn’t have thought of professors at other universities as a resource open to me, but now I see them as incredibly willing to share their knowledge.
Overall, I’m really glad I took advantage of this opportunity Brown provides. It was a fantastic learning experience, and though stressful at times, a ton of fun.
Devon
(1) The course, overall - I really enjoyed being part of this GISP. I’ve always wanted to learn more about this topic and it was great to work with people who were so interested in China and committed to the course. I thought everyone did a good job teaching one another, and I really appreciated Caroline’s contribution to our discussions. China and its environmental problems will only become more important, and I think we’ll continue to draw on what we’ve learned and the connections we’ve made for years to come.
One criticism of the course that we've discussed is that we didn't devote much time to synthesizing ideas, and we didn't leave enough time for discussion. In retrospect think it would have been cool if we made each class completely discussion-based, with brief background by discussion leaders into certain topics if needed. As Caroline has suggested, we could have done a better job giving one another feedback on our teaching and our effort in the course in general. I also would have liked to have done a class devoted to energy and climate change, although we talked about this topic in other contexts. Finally, I think we could have used the blog more effectively. We didn't make it clear who our audience was and I don't think it is that useful or accessible to the general public. One idea for making the blog more open would be to feature key readings and discuss our analysis of them and how they fit in the context of the course. This would be a useful resource for others and a good record for ourselves.
(2) What I learned - One of my favorite aspects of the course has been learning how China’s culture and society structure effects its environmental impact. For example, rural Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) are successful for the same reason that they are so harmful to the environment; they make use of China’s very large rural population, and they employ cheap, polluting technologies. China’s model of economic development is very different than other countries, and creates a different set of challenges in for environmental a regulation. Other examples include the role of guanxi in EPB regulation and people’s respect for government authority when calling for environmental clean-up. However, I think we could have given this topic more attention and discussed it in more depth.
The first classes where we studied China’s environmental policy, economic growth, and international relations we some of my favorite, since they helped me to better understand the context of China’s environmental problems and attitude toward environmental protection. In particular I enjoyed learning about China’s strategic relationships with foreign countries and its role in climate change negotiations during Timmons’ guest lecture.
One of my favorite books from the semester was Bryan Tilt’s The Struggle for Sustainability in Rural China. This book allowed me to synthesize a number of topics from the course; it helped me understand the severity of pollution in rural China, how local government works in China and why it is so hard for environmental protection to work on the local level, and the nature of collective action in China and the role it can play in enhancing environmental protection.
(3) Symposium - I really enjoyed the process of organizing and implementing the symposium, and I thought we did a great job of getting the word out and opening the event to a wide audience. The symposium itself gave me a more complete perspective on China’s attitude toward climate change and energy as well as its contribution to climate change. Although it took a lot of organizational time, I learned a lot from this process about how effectively organize an event as a group -- I think we did a great job!
(4) What I still want to learn - I’d like to learn more about clean energy in China, China’s potential to curb its emissions, and how climate change will affect China. It was very interesting to learn about how the combination of poor water management and climate change is creating major environmental problems in Yunnan and western China, and I’d like to understand how these effects may play out in the future. I’m also interested in doing environmental research in China at some point, and this course did a great job in preparing me for this!
(5) Contacts - In the symposium planning process we made solid contacts with our guest speakers (Dr. Robert Kaufmann (BU), Dr. Emi Uchida (URI), Dr. Hengwei Liu (Tufts), and Dr. Xingshu Zhao (Tufts)), and we’re now aware of many prominent Chinese environmental researchers and activists in the US and China. We’ve also made connections with faculty and students at Brown who are interested in the topic, including Caroline, Timmons, Chung-I Tan, Dean Bergeron, Shelley Stephenson, and the people who attended our symposium. This is important in building discussion and interest in China’s environment at Brown, and we may have planted a seed for much greater engagement on this topic to come! These contacts will also help us going forward if we choose to work or do research in China, or generally if we pursue careers relevant to this topic.
Closing thought: It would be cool to get together 10 or 20 years from now and talk about the state of China’s environment and what has changed!
