Known as “Earth’s kidneys,” wetlands provide a variety of ecological benefits: habitats for diverse species, flood containment, pollutant purification, and carbon absorption. But in China, wetland loss and degradation has exposed people to the whims of climate change. What has China done to protect its wetlands, and how should the country better adapt to climate change with wetlands—a “Great Wall” made of mudflats, mangroves, and waterbirds? Jianbin Shi and Xiaojing Gan, two China-based wetland experts from the Paulson Institute, may enlighten us.

The abundance of milk, cheese, and egg on our kitchen tables are inseparable from the rise of large feed-grain-dependent dairies. In today’s global dairy industry, giant dairy farms are displacing smaller farms and increasing methane emissions. China’s rapid dairy expansion, alongside major players like the EU, US, and New Zealand, also raises environmental concerns. What can government regulators and stakeholders do to curb greenhouse gas emissions from the dairy industry?

Faced with the grim situation of normalized extreme heat and drought, it is imperative for China to improve agricultural resilience to climate change. Rural communities, often led by women, are using seed banks and traditional techniques to boost local crop diversity and food security in order to adapt to climate change.

In December 2022, at the Nansha District port in the Pearl River Delta, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation unveiled China’s first oceanographic drilling ship—capable of mining 10,000 meters deep. This launch showcased China’s rapid advances as a major player in the global race to extract critical minerals at the bottom of the ocean.

Picture this: A parade of yaks carrying insulated boxes containing meter-long ice core samples from Tibetan glaciers. “Yaks are like cats,” elite glacier scientist Lonnie Thompson explained in a 2023 Wilson Center webinar. They like to wander off — and it takes experienced Tibetan yak herders to keep them moving in the same direction. 

Yet these yak-schlepped ice cores are essential to climate science, added Ellen Mosely Thompson. They store thousands of years of atmospheric dust and gasses in distinct layers and serve as a record of our changing climate.

When cows eat, they burp. And what they exhale generates almost a third of global methane emissions – a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent in warming the climate than CO2. So tracking this short-lived climate gas is crucial.  

Six miles from Bakersfield, California, at the Bear 5 cow feedlot, this work is starting to happen. High-resolution satellites are being used for the first time at the feedlot to track methane emissions from cow burps. Measuring cow belches from space is bringing critical attention to the brewing climate issues from cows. After all, the methane produced by these gassy animals in one year at Bear 5 cow feedlot alone could power more than 15,000 homes in California.  

At a recent Wilson Center event on the shifting geopolitics of critical minerals, Cory Combs, Associate Director at Beijing-based Trivium China, noted that “the nature of global resource competition is changing—and quite rapidly.”

When Kevin Chen began his agricultural research 20 years ago, most dairy farms in China were small and family-owned. People of his generation did not grow up with milk deliveries or ice cream. Today, however, these farms have been replaced by massive agri-businesses raising tens of thousands of dairy cows, and dairy is a regular part of many people’s diets in China, thanks to rising incomes and years of governmental promotion of cheese, yogurt, and milk.