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Weller, Robert P.

2006
Robert P. Weller. 2006. Discovering Nature: Globalization and Environmental Culture in China and Taiwan. Cambridge, U.K. Cambridge University Press. Publisher's VersionAbstract
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  • Robert Weller's richly documented account describes the extraordinary transformations which have taken place in Chinese and Taiwanese responses to the environment across the twentieth century. The book focuses on nature tourism, anti-pollution movements, and policy implementation to show how the global spread of western ideas about nature has interacted with Chinese traditions. Inevitably differences of understanding across groups have caused problems in administering environmental reforms. They will have to be resolved if the dynamic transformations of the 1980s are to be maintained in the twenty-first century.

2002
William P. Alford, Robert P. Weller, Leslyn Hall, Karen R. Polenske, Yuanyuan Shen, and David Zweig. 2002. “The human dimensions of environmental policy implementation: Air quality in rural China.” Journal of Contemporary China, 11, 32, Pp. 495-513. Publisher's VersionAbstract
The People's Republic of China is experiencing severe air pollution with very serious public health and economic consequences. Over the past decade, the Chinese government has sought to utilize bureaucratic, political, legal and educational vehicles to address these problems. This paper examines the ways in which those policy measures have been communicated to, understood by, and acted upon by the citizenry, drawing in important part on household and epidemiological surveys conducted in Anhui. Our study suggests that the central government's message has yet to be absorbed to the degree intended and then considers both why this has been the case and how the effectiveness of policy mechanisms might be enhanced.
Final Manuscript in DASH
1998
Robert P. Weller and Peter K. Bol. 1998. “From Heaven-and-Earth to nature: Chinese concepts of the environment and their influence on policy implementation.” In Energizing China: Reconciling Environmental Protection and Economic Growth, edited by Michael B. McElroy, Chris P Nielsen, Peter Lydon, and eds.. Cambridge, MA: HUCE/Harvard University Press. Publisher's VersionAbstract

As China develops its booming, fossil fuel-powered economy, is it taking lessons from the history of Western industrialization and the unforeseen environmental harms that accompanied it? Given the risks of climate change, is there an imperative, shared responsibility to help China respond to the environmental effects of its coal dependence? By linking global hazards to local air pollution concerns—from indoor stove smoke to burgeoning ground-level ozone—this volume of eighteen studies seeks integrated strategies to address simultaneously a range of harmful emissions. Counterbalancing the scientific inquiry are key chapters on China’s unique legal, institutional, political, and cultural factors in effective pollution control.

Energizing China, the stage-setting publication of an ongoing program of Harvard–China research collaboration, is distinguished by its conceptual breadth and spirit of exchange. Its contributors include twenty-two Western and seventeen Chinese scholars with a disciplinary reach that includes science, public health, engineering, economics, public policy, law, business, and China studies.