In Sidoarjo City, Indonesia, student river detectives catalog the microplastics they sample from the Brantas River, the longest river in East Java. Plastic waste threatens this water that seventeen million people depend on for drinking water, fishing, and irrigation. Daru Setyorini and her team from ECOTON (Ecological Observation and Wetlands Conservation) organized this program to educate youth and inform policymakers on the scope of the problem. 

Young Africans are flocking to Confucius Institutes to learn Chinese and throw in their lot with the Asian superpower. The “Chinese Dream” is leaving the American Dream in tatters in much of the developing world. Many developing countries see partnerships with China as the route to their future success, especially in an era in which the United States has turned inward and is apparently a less generous and reliable partner. However, anti-Chinese sentiment is also intensifying. Chinese loans and investment are welcome, but recipients are also unsure about the environmental and social implications of partnering with such an untested player.

In China’s campaign to get its population of 1.4 billion vaccinated against COVID-19, the magic number is 77.6 percent. Government agencies all over the country, from Inner Mongolia to Jiangsu, uniformly pledge to get this exact percentage of their populations vaccinated. A rural township in Harbin boasts that it’s fully vaccinated 11,025 of its population of 14,198, 0.05 percentage point above the sacred target of 77.6 percent. So, just what is the significance of 77.6?

Fish is brain food. This is a lesson we learned from our mothers and grandmothers. They were right—the Omega-3 fatty acids in fish are good for our health. Omega-3 is an essential fat, but our bodies cannot make it, so it must come from the food we eat, and fish is the best source. Fish, like people, cannot make Omega-3, so they too get it from their food.

Growing up in Xicai village in rural Hebei Province, Chen Liwen spent plenty of her childhood outdoors, where she cultivated a deep connection with nature. This connection eventually led her to pursue a career working at environmental NGOs. Early in her career while she was surveying landfills outside of Beijing, she discovered “mountains” of putrid waste that were leaking into waterways, making nearby residents sick. That incident sparked her to focus her work on reducing waste and waste pollution. After working on urban waste issues Chen became concerned that pollution reforms to expand waste sorting and recycling in cities were not extended to rural areas, where 40 percent of China’s population live. 

Attempts to reduce the amount of waste flowing into the ocean from Indonesia are having limited success.  

Smog, water pollution, deforestation and desertification—for decades, citizen activists and protestors have attempted to fight the environmental impacts of China’s development and industrialization. Now, confronted with climate change, the Communist Party of China (CCP) is well aware not only of citizen discontent, but also of the risks that climate change poses to the long term security, stability, and survivability of the regime. Rising seas will affect the great cities of Shanghai, Tianjin, and other areas along China’s coast. Glacier melt on the Tibetan Plateau will cause floods in the short term and in the long run fail to replenish the falling aquifers of the thirsty North China Plain. The prospect of high numbers of displaced Chinese citizens, internally displaced by global warming, is real. 

Spring is the best time to eat snails, when they are their plumpest, sweet and rich in protein. Snails have been slurped in China for centuries and are an inexpensive treat for a holiday celebration. In contrast to French escargot, which is served with butter and garlic, the Chinese eat snails in stir-fry, braised or boiled and eaten right from the shell. Not all snails are a treat, however, and unfortunately some are extremely damaging to crops and natural ecosystems when they are introduced into a non-native environment.