Magazine of the United Nations Environment Programme discussing worldwide environmental policies and other concerns. This issue is devoted to the economic importance of biodiversity and how protecting or restoring habitats can significantly reduce the costs in a variety of industries and infrastructures.

This report outlines the strategic direction of the energy sector to meet its growing energy demand in an environmentally-sustainable manner over the next two decades, and presents a pathway of policy frameworks and financing mechanisms to get there. This study found that large-scale deployment of energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies can simultaneously stabilize East Asia’s CO2 emissions by 2025 and significantly improve the local environment and enhance energy security, without compromising economic growth.

This research seeks to answer why and which Chinese people go to the street to protest. I argue that different sectors of Chinese society differ from each other regarding their tendencies to participate in protest. In addition to their grievances, the incentives to participate in protest and their capacities to overcome the collective action problem all needed to be taken into account. Using individual level data along with ordinary binary logistic regression and multilevel logistic regression models, I first compare the protest participation of workers and peasants and find that workers are more likely than peasants to participate in protests in the context of contemporary China. I further disaggregate the working class into four subtypes according to the ownership of the enterprises they work for. I find that workers of township and village enterprises are more likely than workers of state-owned enterprises to engage in protest activities, while there is no significant difference between the workers of domestic privately owned enterprises and the workers of foreign-owned enterprises regarding their protest participation. Finally, I find that migrant workers, which refers to peasants who move to urban areas in search of jobs, are less likely than urban registered workers to participate in …

Epidemiological studies show that China has a lower prevalence rate of major depression than that of Western countries. The disparity in prevalence is commonly attributed to the tendency of Chinese to somatize depression. Empirical evidence of Chinese somatization has yielded mixed results. The present study thus aimed to 1) examine differences in somatic and psychological symptom reporting between Chinese from Macau and Americans in America and 2) identify cultural and psychological variables that would predict somatization. Independent and interdependent self-construals, sociotropy, and emotional approach coping were hypothesized to predict somatization of depression. Participants included 353 Chinese and 491 American college students who completed self-report measures online. Contrary to prediction, results indicated that Americans endorsed a higher proportion of somatic symptoms than Chinese did. Sociotropy predicted both relative endorsement and severity of somatic symptoms for the American sample, whereas emotional expression coping was related to somatization in the Chinese sample. The findings challenge the common assumption of greater Chinese somatization and highlight the importance of context in understanding the relationships between somatization and cultural and psychological variables. Implications of the present study and future directions are discussed.

Se Enkhbayar (b. 1956) is one of the most important contemporary Mongolian composers in China. His choral tone poem, Önchin Botog, integrates the traditional Mongolian musical elements Urtiin Duu (long song) and Khöömii (throat singing) with modern choral music and is one of the most representative works in the genre of modern Mongolian choral music. The purpose of this study is to provide a performance guidance for non-Mongolian musicians on Se Enkhbayar's work, Önchin Botog, by presenting his biographical and cultural backgrounds, discussing the use of traditional Mongolian singing styles, special rhythmic patterns (horse-step rhythm) and Chinese pentatonic scales. For conductors, this guide can shorten preparation time by providing musical analysis for artistic interpretation and practical points for sound effect creation. For solo singers, this guide will enable a Bel Canto singer to sing Urtiin Duu in Mongolian singing style. For Khöömii singers, this guide provides supplementary practical suggestions.