Farmer of the Hani minority near his village of Puduo, Yuanyang county

A farmer of the Hani minority near his village of Puduo, Yuanyang county, Yunnan, China. Source: Takeaway / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0 / GFDL. 

Project (2020-)

Forging ahead under a Changing Sky: Meteorological Services and Crop Seed Breeding as Climate Change Adaptation in China

Anthropogenic climate change is no longer a scientific prediction but an unfolding, lived experience that is increasingly affecting people and the more-than-human world. As climate change mitigation has so far failed to stay within “safe” amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, adaptation to changing environmental conditions are becoming more urgent. In agriculture, climate change introduces further uncertainties in food security in addition to a wide range of other challenges.

With a focus on agriculture in the People’s Republic of China, this project seeks to understand ways in which climate change adaptation is addressed in a non-democratic political system and how socio-ecological transformations are discussed amongst domestic experts. The research focuses on rural meteorological services (incl. weather modification) and crop seeds and asks how do these fields interact with the questions raised by climate change? How does the issue of climate change enter and integrate into long-standing debates around progress and reform amongst experts and decision-makers?

Farmer of the Hani minority near his village of Puduo, Yuanyang county

A farmer of the Hani minority near his village of Puduo, Yuanyang county, Yunnan, China. Source: Takeaway / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0 / GFDL. 

The project’s in-depth reading of party-state documents and domestic scientific publications allows a nuanced analysis of debates, hierarchies, and practical sensemaking at the intersection of climate change and agriculture, environmental change and decision-making. The findings will contribute to research interested in reflexivity in environmental decision-making and coping with climate change uncertainties at the interface of science and policy.

Past Events

Two Seed Stories: Integration of Climate Change into Chinese Social Science of Agriculture

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China’s Meteorological Services and Climate Resources in Motion: Thinking Through Weather Modification as Climate Engineering

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Experimenting with Socio-Material Relations: Rural Meteorological Services and its Integration into Agricultural Practices in China

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Publications

Große-Bley, Jelena (2022). “Perspectives on Crop Seeds in the Wake of China’s Modern Seed Industry.” Sino-German Agricultural and Food Update 17 (2021/22): 3–7. https://www.dcz-china.org/newsletter-archive.html.

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Große-Bley, Jelena (2023). “Review of: Smith, Nick R.: The End of the Village: Planning the Urbanization of Rural China. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press 2021.” Pacific Affairs 96 (1): 143–146. https://pacificaffairs.ubc.ca/book-reviews/the-end-of-the-village-planning-the-urbanization-of-rural-china-by-nick-r-smith/.

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Große-Bley, Jelena (2023). “Review of: Kaufmann, Lena: Rural–Urban Migration and Agro-Technical Change in Post-Reform China. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2021.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society 17 (1): 118–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/18752160.2022.2162364.

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Große-Bley, Jelena (2022). Local Meteorological Services in the Mao and Reform-Era in China. Observations 8. Berlin: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. https://doi.org/10.17617/2.3481149.

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