CCCS 2021 Seed Funding Winning Projects - PhD Publication

Junxian Chen

‘The Chinese way to greenways: implementation processes and outcomes of four cases in the Central Zhejiang City-Region’

China has recently seen a boom in greenway projects as an urban sustainability fix. This paper evaluates different greenway implementation outcomes across jurisdictional boundaries, and explains the institutional reasons behind the differences. A greenway assessment framework was proposed linking ecological, social and economic goals to a set of indicators. Through the spatial analysis of four greenways in the Central Zhejiang City-Region, each of which led by a unique actor (i.e., a township government, a county department, a cross-agency department or a state-owned company), this paper reveals that the greenway led by a cross-agency department performs better than others in terms of cultural promotion, regional integration and habitat connectivity improvement, and that the SOE-led greenway is oriented towards rural tourism. Findings from this comparative study will have implications for the efficient delivery of green infrastructure (GI) projects in China and around the world.

Project Mini Essay

Hong Jiang

‘Contemporary river channel change processes under multiple, interacting, human-impacts in the Han River, China’

Hong’s thesis has been exploring the 2000-year history of interactions between humans and the Han River, one of the great rivers of China.  It is divided into two parts: the ancient history of change from 221 BC to 1967, and modern changes to the channel of the Han River since construction of the mega-dam at Danjiangkou in 1967.  The CCCS PhD Publication Project will be used to support preparing two manuscripts from the work on the modern river.  The first one describes a remote sensing methodology, which uses free satellite data to reconstruct the depth of the full riverbed of large rivers annually, while researchers were normally restricted to reconstructing channel change from a series of cross-sections.  The second one is on geomorphic change processes in the river, which reveals that the interactions between different river modifications, including mega-dams, groynes, and sediment mining practices, could cause unintentional consequences, while existing studies looked at the impact of multiple modifications more collectively than interactively.

Wendi Li

‘Youth Climate Activism Beyond the Internet: Constructing a Youth-driven Global Climate Public Sphere in Hong Kong’

Since the end of 2018, a youth-led global climate public sphere is taking shape with the rise of global youth climate activism. This represents a new concept within the communication of climate change activism and policy impacts, focusing on how like-minded young individuals build communities of their own rather than joining mainstream environmental non-governmental NGOs. These youth-led, community-based environmental organisations play an increasingly significant role in leading collective climate actions and campaigns, focusing on everyday and policy changes, in a local-global nexus across national borders. This paper draws on interview data with five members of Bye Bye Plastic Bags Hong Kong (BBPB HK), the Hong Kong chapter of a global youth-led environmental initiative, supported by observations of their social media use and participation in both online and offline climate activities. In adopting BBPB HK as a case study, this paper argues that a youth-driven global climate public sphere is under construction with these young people becoming the pillar of today’s climate activism.

Project Mini Essay