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CONFERENCE
ABSTRACTS
THE 7TH BIENNIAL CONFERENCE OF
EAST ASIAN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORYDAEJEON, KOREA
JUN28 - JUL2, 2023

Multiple Crises andthe Asian Anthropocene:
Climatic, Ecological, and(Post)Colonial Perspectives

Association for
East Asian Environmental History

1

EAEH 2023

The Local Preparatory Committee
Chair (President of AEAEH)
Buhm Soon Park 朴範淳 (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
Co-chair (Vice President of AEAEH)
Manyong Moon 文晩龍 (Korean Research Institute of Science, Technology and Civilization,
Jeonbuk National University)
Committee Members (alphabetical order by last name)
Myung-Ae Choi 崔明愛 (Department of Cultural Anthropology, Yonsei University)
Deokhwa Hong 洪德和 (Department of Sociology, Chungbuk National University)
Jaehwan Hyun 玄在煥 (Institute of Liberal Education, Pusan National Unversity)
June Jeon 全準 (Department of Sociology, Chungnam National University)
Sekwon Jeong 鄭世權 (The HK+ Institute for Integrated Medical Humanities, Kyung Hee
University)
Yeonsil Kang 姜姸實 (National Science Museum of Korea)
Dokyun Kim 金鍍均 (Korea Environment Institute)
Soo Hyun Kim 金秀賢 (Center for Anthropocene Studies, KAIST)
Tae-Ho Kim 金兌豪 (Korean Research Institute of Science, Technology and Civilization, Jeonbuk
National University)
Yongjin Kim 金容振 (Center for Anthropocene Studies, KAIST)
Hyunsook Lee 李賢淑 (Institute for Ecological and Environmental History)
Jongmin Lee 李鍾珉 (Science and Technology Management Policy, University of Science andTechnology)
Jung Lee 李貞 (Ewha Institute for the Humanities, Ewha Womans University)
Jongtae Lim 林宗台 (Department of Science Studies, Seoul National University)
Eunjeong Oh 吳殷政 (Department of Anthropology, Seoul National University)
Seona Park 朴璿娥 (Center for Anthropocene Studies, KAIST)
Hanah Sung 成瀚雅 (Center for Anthropocene Studies, KAIST)
Chuyoung Won 元柱榮 (Catholic University of Korea)
Doogab Yi 李斗甲 (Department of Science Studies, Seoul National University)

1The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

DAY 1
Wednesday, June 28
Chung Kunmo Conference Hall, E9, KAIST[Welcome address] Buhm Soon Park
President. Association for East Asian Environmental History, KAIST[Congratulatory remarks] Myung Ja Kim
Chairperson, Board of Trustees, KAIST
Place: Chung Kunmo Conference Hall
Time: 15:00-15:20
ED1-S1[Opening session]
Keynote speech 1: Julia Adeney Thomas
University of Notre Dame

"Framing the Future: The Environment, Climate Change, and the
Anthropocene in Asia"
Place: Chung Kunmo Conference Hall
Time: 15:20-15:50
Moderator: June Jeon, Chungnam National University

ED1-S2[Opening session]
Keynote speech 2: Simon Turner
University College London"A Golden Spike for the Stratigraphic Anthropocene"
Place: Chung Kunmo Conference Hall
Time: 15:50-16:20
Moderator: June Jeon, Chungnam National University

ED1-S3Roundtable

Place: Chung Kunmo Conference Hall
Time: 16:20-17:50
Chair: Buhm Soon Park, KAIST
Fa-ti Fan, SUNY Binghamton
Jürgen Renn, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology (*participating online)
Scott Gabriel Knowles, KAIST2

EAEH 2023

DAY 2
Thursday, June 29
Science Culture Center, IBS
ED2-S1[Special lecture] Scott Gabriel Knowles
KAIST"Death, Life, and Longing in the Pandemicene"

Place: Auditorium
Time: 11:15-12:00
Moderator: Jaehwan Hyun
Pusan National University

ED2-02

Disaster Track (1): Nuclear Memory in the Body and the Environment

Place: S221-A Time: 9:00-11:00
Chair: Jaehwan Hyun
Pusan National University
Robert Jacobs
Hiroshima Peace InstituteYuko Takahashi
Hiroshima Jogakuin University
Yunjeong Joo
Pusan National University
WooChang Kim
Seoul National University

Commentator: Ryuma Shineha
Osaka University
The Global Hibakusha during the Cold War

ED2-04Development and Environment (1)Layered Hardships for Korean Atomic-Bomb Victims
Living with Slow Disaster: Memories of Haeneyo, Sea Weeds and Nuclear Plants in
Gori, Pusan
Living in the Nuclear Village: An Exception Space Created by the Clash ofDevelopmental Desires

Place: S305 Time: 9:00-11:00
Chair: Yeonsil Kang
National Science Museum of Korea
Young Rae Choi
The colonizers, the developmental state, and uneven geography of development:
Florida International University Reclamation of tidal flats in South Korea, 1900s-1980s
Soonbae Kwon
The Oncheon Stream Restoration Project and the Politics of Natural Restoration in
Pusan National University
Busan during the 1990s and 2000s
MinHwa Yun
A Study on the Application of Citizen Science to the Urban Ecological Corridors
Ewha Womans University
Monitoring Project in Korea
Jane Sung Hae Kim
Life after the ‘Living Laboratory.’ – A Study of Slow Disaster in Jangjeom Village
Jeonbuk National University

ED2-05

Environment and Art (1)Place: S304 Time: 9:00-11:00
Chair: Jongmin Lee
University of Science and Technology
Masatake Shinohara
The possible making of a realm of coexistence beyond humans in the Anthropocene
Kyoto University
Jongmin Lee
Remembering Coal and Understanding Korean Hinterlands: Undercover Senses of
University of Science andHistory and Environment
Technology
Soyo Lee
Getting in touch with the heterogeneity of landfilled municipal solid waste in South
Korea National University of Arts Korea

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
ED2-06

Human and Nature in Premodern East Asia

Place: S303 Time: 9:00-11:00
Chair: Jung Lee
Ewha Womans University
Brian Lander
Brown University
Luo Qilong
Guizhou University
Kiebok Yi
Seoul National University
Jong-wook Jeon
Jeonbuk National University

ED2-07

The Historical Ecology of the Yangzi Delta Region: On the Economy of the Wu andYue Kingdoms
Vegetation in early Chinese ancient gardens and its cultural implications
Revisiting the Gendered Medical Body in Joseon Korea: An Examination of Medical
Narratives and Cognitive Practices
Perspectives of Korean traditional knowledge on humans, animals, and nature

Barriers of energy transition in East Asia

Place: S302 Time: 9:00-11:00
Organizer & Chair: Seona Park
KAIST
Seona Park
Scaling-up renewable conflicts: From site to history
KAIST
Jong-min Choi
A Study on the Changes in the Actor Composition and Policy of the Japanese Nuclear
SNU Environmental PlanningPower Promotion Bureaucrats’ Group after the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
Institute
Hye-Jung Shin
‘Survival' before Climate and Environment
Seoul National University- A qualitative research on Perceptions and Beliefs on
Climate and Environment of Participants in the Taegeukgi Rally Dasom Lee
Understanding energy citizenship: how cultural capital shapes the energy transition.
KAIST
Sikke R. Jansma andLe Anh Nguyen Long
University of Twente

ED2-08

An Environmental History of the Asian Monsoon: Linking Climate Change
Science and Climate Adaptation Science (1)Place: S221 Time: 13:30-15:30
Chair: Toru Terao
Kagawa University
Satoshi Murayama
Kagawa Univesity
Masahide Ishizuka &Kagawa Univesity
Gantsetseg Batdelger

Pre-modern flood and drought in Kasa County, Kyoto, Japan: Shaking steady state in
the Asian monsoon
Asian dust characteristics influenced by surface conditions in the northern Gobi
Desert, Mongolia: natural environmental changes or anthropogenic influences?

Information and Research Instituteof Meteorology Hydrology andEnvironment

Michihiro Ogawa
Impact of Monsoon Drought on Agrarian Society on the Deccan Plateau in Western
Institute for Advanced Studies on India during the Great Famine (1876-1878)
Asia, University of Toyo

4

EAEH 2023
ED2-09Disaster Track (2): Disaster Science, Investigation, and Memory

Place: S221-A Time: 13:30-15:30
Chair: Joelle Champalet
KAIST
Youngkwan Ban
Jeju 4.3 Peace Foundation
Seulgi Lee
KAISTJinyoung Park
Pusan National University

Discussant: Sarah Senk
California State University Maritime Academy
Breaking the Long Silence: The Jeju 4.3 Exhumations

ED2-10Trans-Asian Sciences, Environmental Interventions, and the Diplomatic Roles in
Postwar Japan and Korea

Fragments of a Disaster: The Sewol Ferry Special Investigative Commission
The Korean Humidifier Disinfectant Disaster and the Science: Investigation,
Responsibility, andMemoryPlace: S306 Time: 13:30-15:30
Organizer: Jaehwan Hyun
Chair & Discussant: Jongmin Lee
Pusan National University
University of Science and Technology
Kaori Iida
A Japanese agricultural vision in the 1930s to 1960s, as an alternative to a Eurocentric
Grad. Univ. for Advanced Studies historical narrative(SOKENDAI)
Hidekazu Sensui
Postwar American Attempts to Foster a Vernacular Model of Land Use in East Asia
Kanagawa University
Jaehwan Hyun
North Korea’s bird diplomacy and (Korean) Japanese ornithologists, 1963-1996
Pusan National University
John P. DiMoia
Rho Chae-Sik, Environmental Science, and Identifying Air Pollution, 1959-early 1970s
Seoul National University
ED2-11Development and Environment (2)Place: S305 Time: 13:30-15:30
Chair: Jane Sung Hae Kim
Jeonbuk National University
Chun-Yi Ho
National Taiwan University
Juyoung Lee
Johns Hopkins University
Yeonsil Kang
National Science Museum of
Korea
Jungha Hwang
Seoul National University
ED2-12

International aid, developmentalist state, and local technology imitation: The
subterranean Anthropocene in Cold War Taiwan (1950-1975)
Agriculture, Fertilizer, and the Industrial Landscapes of Taiwan and South Korea during
the 1950-60s
From Thermal Pollution to Future Energy: Local Environment and Reimagining Cold
Byproduct of Soyang Multipurpose Dam in South Korea
Dam as a Relational Artifact: A Case of Environmental Impact Assessment of thePeace Dam
Environment and Art (2)Place: S304 Time: 13:30-15:30
Chair: Manyong Moon
Jeonbuk National University
Chihchung Chang
Indepdndent Researcher / Artist
Young June Lee
Kaywon University of Arts andDesignTakashi Arai
Artist, Researcher at Tono
Culture Research Center
Manyong Moon
Jeonbuk National University

The Catastrophic Coastlines Shaped by Others - Relocation, War and Shipwreck
Taxonomy of Vessels: its Fluctuation in Relation to the Change in Maritime Industry
and Environment
Two Shores - Seawall Construction after the Great East Japan Earthquake andJapan's Border Restrictions during the Pandemic: Some Thoughts from Artist's andInternational Family's Perspective
National Science Museum and Natural History Studies of Seok Ju-myeong

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
ED2-13

Anthropocene Estuaries and Deltas (1)Place: S303 Time: 13:30-15:30
Organizers: Guan-hong Lee (Inha University) and Yoshiki Saito (Shimane University)
Guan-hong Lee
Inha University
Yoshiki Saito
Shimane University
Timothy Dellapenna
Texas A&M University
Steven M. Figueroa
Inha University"Global distribution of altered estuaries"

ED2-14Rethinking Human and Nature

Asian deltas/estuaries and the Anthropocene
Habitat alterations and geomorphic response to estuarine dams and land reclamationon the Korean Peninsula
How do estuarine dams alter tide, river, and sedimentary processes? Lessons learned
from field observations and numerical modeling

Place: S302 Time: 13:30-15:30
Chair: Tae-Ho Kim
Jeonbuk National University
Alexander Damianos
University of Kent
Cheong-Ho Yi
Korea University
Taewoo Kim
Kyung Hee University
Tatsushi Fujihara
Kyoto University
ED2-15

Formalising the Anthropocene: science, law and geo-forensicality
Culture is emphasized in the pursuit of sustainability
The Matter and Meaning of Natures in East Asia
Philosophy of Decomposition: Waste, Art and Ecology

An Environmental History of the Asian Monsoon: Linking Climate Change
Science and Climate Adaptation Science (2)Video Session
Place: S221 Time: 15:50-17:50
Chair: Toru Terao
Kagawa University
Haruhisa Asada
Post flood management and the history of the rice-based agriculture development inNara Women's University
Bangladesh
Hideyuki Kamimera
A relation between a river and local residents: A study from the viewpoint of
National Research Institute for Earth environmental history
Science and Disaster Resilience

Masahide Ishizuka
Kagawa University
Gantsetseg Batdelger

Asian dust characteristics influenced by surface conditions in the northern Gobi
Desert, Mongolia: natural environmental changes or anthropogenic influences?

Information and Research Instituteof Meteorology Hydrology andEnvironment

A. T. M .Shakhawat Hossain & The Recent Change of Monsoonal Climate And It's Impact on Environment, Society &Jahangirnagar University
Sustainability of Ukhiya, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh-A case Study
Toru Terao
Kagawa University
ED2-16

Disaster Track (3): Disastrous Futures in Uncertain Environments

Place: S221-A Time: 15:50-17:50
Chair: Hyunah Keum
Discussant: Scott Gabriel Knowles
KAIST
KAIST
Vivian Choi
Indian Ocean Science: From a “Vast Unknown” to Slow Disaster
St. Olaf College
Hyeonbin ParkThe Forest-Thinning Policy Caused Wildfire Disasters?: Forestry in South Korea 1998KAIST
2022
Health-Related Harm and Vulnerability in Slow Disasters (Climate Crises): A
Eun Kyung Choi
Kyungpook National University Conceptual Exploration

6

EAEH 2023
ED2-17National Development, Transnational Environment: Environmental History of theCold War in the Two Koreas

Place: S306 Time: 15:50-17:50
Organizer and Chair: Robert Winstanley-Chesters
Discussant: Lisa Brady
University of Edinburgh / University of Leeds
Boise State University
Robert Winstanley-Chesters Securitising Fisheries in Cold War Environmental Histories of the Sea of Okhotsk
University of Edinburgh/ University of Leeds

Max Altenhofen
University of Tübingen
Jaeyoung Ha
UC San Diego
Sulim Kim
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

From Model to Norm? – The Forest Management Cooperatives in Ulju-gun, 1970-80s

ED2-18Development and Environment (3)Preservation as a Force of Development: Local, National, and Cold War Dynamics in
the Making of South Korea’s First National Park
Green Utopia House: The Transnational Entanglements of Housing Development and
Eco-Socialism in Postwar North Korea

Place: S305 Time: 15:50-17:50
Chair: Juyoung Lee
Johns Hopkins University
Rui Liu, Chih-hung Wang
National Taiwan University
Yeseul Park
Seoul National University
Ilana Herold
KAIST
Michael Wollrath
Martin-Luther-University HalleWittenber

ED2-19The Transformation of Large Socio-Technological System with Chinese Features: A
Case Study of T Power Plant'Localizing' Energy for Nation?: the Nuclear Fuel Development Project in South Korea,
1976-1989
Grassroots activism meets the sustainability fix: Urban agriculture policymaking andcontested governance in South Korea
Sacredness Through Commodification: Attempts to Normalize Invasive Species in The
Indonesian Ornamental Fish Trade

Pollution and Rehabilitation

Place: S304 Time: 15:50-17:50
Chair: Junho Jung
Jeonbuk National University
Kat Austen
UCL and Studio Austen
Seulgi Lee
KAISTJingyuan Wu
University of Tokyo
Conrad Hirano
Northwestern University

ED2-20Artistic perspectives on transitions in post/extractive landscapes at the rubicon of the
post-anthropocene: the case of Lusatia’s landscapes
Anthropocene Literacy: From a National Industrial Complex in South Korea
Tracing the Local Government’s Idea of Pollution Problem in Xiangjiang River Basin,
China
The Mantetsu-led Anti-Smoke Campaign in 1930s Dalian

Anthropocene Estuaries and Deltas (2)Place: S303 Time: 15:50-17:50
Roundtable Chair: Guan-hong Lee
Inha University
Participants:
Wook-Hyun Nahm (KIGAM)
Simon Turner (University College London)
Yoshiki Saito (Shimane University)
Timothy Dellapenna (Texas A&M University)
Sreenivasulu Ganugapenta (Inha University)

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
ED2-21

Environment and Disease

Place: S302 Time: 15:50-17:50
Organizer & Chair: Hyunsook Lee
Korean Institue for Ecological & Environmental History
Hyunsook Lee
The Climate change and Epidemic in the 8th Century of Silla
Korean Institue for Ecological &Environmental History
Miyoung Shin
The introduction and transfer of specialized knowledge in the prevention of Japanese
Jeonbuk National University
encephalitis in Korea in the 1950-60s
Min-Suh Kim
The Cold War and Influenza pandemic in 1960's Hongkong
Yonsei University
Hyun-Sun Kim
The Little Ice Age and the Epidemics of Hubei Province in late Ming and Early Qing
Myonji University

8

EAEH 2023

DAY 3
Friday, June 30 Science
Culture Center, IBS
ED3-S1[Special lecture] Jürgen Renn
Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology"Geoanthropology: Science for the Anthropocene"

Place: Auditorium
Time: 11:15-12:00
Moderator: Hanah Sung
KAIST
ED3-01

Anthropocene CommonsPlace: S221 Time: 9:00-11:00
Organizers: Katrin Klingan, Carlina RosséeAngewandte Wien
Bauhaus Univ. Weimar / HKW
Megan Black
Networks as aggregators of shared spaces
AC Delegate
John Kim
Conceptual identification of the AC themes: Shared Spaces, Pedagogies of Action,
Macalester College
and Resourceful Research
Sarah Lewison
Harm reduction for the soft Anthropocene
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale
Fernando Silva e Silva
Challenges of a Brazilian Anthropocene: education, research, and citizenship
APPH
ED3-02

Environment and industrialization in Asia (1): Japan

Place: S221-A Time: 9:00-11:00
Chair: Tatsushi Fujihara
Kyoto University
Akihisa Setoguchi
Kyoto University
Aaron Skabelund
Brigham Young University
M. William Steele
International Christian
University
Patricia Sippel
Toyo Eiwa University
ED3-03Modeling Human and Insect Populations: COVID-19, Malaria, and the EcologicalApproach to Infectious Diseases“To Bag Wild Ducks with a Net”: Japanese Royal Hunting and the (Re)invention of
Tradition
Japan’s Paper Industry in the 1930s: Where Did All the Wood Come From?

How Japan Became a Have-Not Nation: Copper Resources in the Modern Era

Korean Modern Environmental History, 1960s-1990s

Place: S306 Time: 9:00-11:00
Organizer: June Jeon
Chungnam National University
Daehoon Jeong
National Institute of Korean
History
Chuyoung Won
Catholic University of Korea
June Jeon
Chungnam National University
Sanghee Bae
Seoul National University

Chair & Commentator: Yeonsil Kang
National Science Museum of Korea
The construction of Uiam Hydroelectric Power Plant and the problem of landcompensation for submerged area
Development for the Environment: Environmental Crisis and Urban Planning in South
Korea during the 1970s
Scientization of Nature and the Construction of Environmental Subjects: A Creation of
the National Environmental Research Institute of South Korea, 1978-1981
Whose Garbage? Whose Environment?: Building a National System of Municipal
Waste Management in South Korea, 1990s.

9The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
ED3-05Tension and crisis in East Asian environment

Video Session
Place: S305 Time: 15:50-17:50
Chair: Teamin Woo
KAIST
Tae-woo Ko
The Darkness of the Great Acceleration: Did the History of Korea Advance in the 20thSeoul National University
Century?
Bulkhia U. Panalondong
A Survey of Environmental Social Movements in Democratic East Asia: An HistoricalCentral Mindanao University
Perspective

ED3-06

New approaches to environmental history

Place: S303 Time: 9:00-11:00
Chair: Federico Paolini
Università di Macerata
Hrvoje Petric
University of Zagreb
Ishizuka Masahide
Kagawa University
Thomas Hahn
UC Berkeley

Changes in Natural System of the Brijuni/Brioni Islands (Adriatic Sea, Northern
Mediterranean)
Characteristics of Precipitation Distribution and River Flood Using Historical
Precipitation Datasets: A Study for the Northern Kyoto Region, Japan
Mother Russia’s forests and China’s recent anti-desertification campaigns

ED3-07

Rethinking Hydraulic Societies

Place: S302 Time: 9:00-11:00
Chair: Shinobu Iguro
Otani University
Wakako Kumakura
Tokyo University of Foreign
StudiesMichihiro Ogawa
University of Tokyo
Shinobu Iguro
Otani University

Discussant: Ya-wen Ku
Institute of Taiwan History
Oriental Despotism or Bottom-up Approach? A Discussion on the Irrigation
Maintenance System of the Nile in Ottoman Egypt

ED3-08Global Perspectives to the Anthropocene

A Study of the Local Governance of Water Transportation on the Deccan Plateau inWestern India from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century
Boundary Perceptions of Wells and Ponds as Sources of Water for Domestic Use in
Rural Communities in Northern China from the eighteenth to the twentieth Centuries

Place: S221 Time: 13:30-15:30
Chair: Myung-Ae Choi
Yonsei University
Joseph Underhill
Augsburg University
Jamie Allen
Critical Media Lab
Jeremy Bolen
Georgia State University
Lucio De Capitani
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Hugo Ricardo Noronha deAlmeidaNOVA University of Lisbon
Ana Matilde Sousa

Planetary Explorations of Anthropocene River Futurities: Fluvial Networks of Creative
Resistance
The impossibility of a planet

Snapshots of a global/Italian Anthropocene: strategies of representation in Amitav
Ghosh and Wu Ming 1
Comic book “persons of mass destruction” and the reimagining of humankind in the
Anthropocene
The Floating Dakimakura: notes on a found photography

CIEBA – Artistic Studies ResearchCenter & University of Lisbon

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EAEH 2023
ED3-09Environment and Industrialization in Asia (2): Southeast Asia

Place: S221-A Time: 13:30-15:30
Chair: Juyoung Lee
Johns Hopkins University
Maya Dania
Chiang Mai University
Endira F. Julianda (et al.)Floating Tech-Lab
Novita Anggraini
Floating Tech-Lab
Kamil Muhammad
Floating Tech-Lab

ED3-10Damming of Mekong Rivers in the Age of the Anthropocene: Feral Frontier in Northern
Thailand from an Ecofeminism Perspective
Mangrove Aesthetics from the Inside: Time Traveling in and against the Landscape
ChangeSpectral Storytelling
Passages that Tell the Time: Mapping the Anthropogenic Markers of Muaragembong
Estuary

Human-Nature Interactions in Public Policy: Korean and Japanese Experiencesin the Anthropocene

Place: S306 Time: 13:30-15:30
Organizer & Chair & Discussant: Jongmin Lee (University of Science and Technology), Hiroki Oikawa (Yokohama National
University)
Yongjoo Han
The Landscape Entanglement of Development and Preservation: The
Seoul National University
Case of Nodeul Island in the Han River
Tatsuya Miyazoe, Kiyoka
Community Cat Activities in Japan: A Cognitive Reform Leading to
Kondo, Hiroki Oikawa
Change in Human-Nature Relationship
Yokohama National University
Hanah Sung
Politics of Rice Paddy Knowledge: Survey Sciences and Human-Land
KAIST
Relations in Cheonsu Bay
Daichi Kato, Kiyoka Kondo,
Ecosystem Services in the Anthropocene: What Should We Add to the
Hiroki Oikawa
MA (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment) Diagram?
Yokohama National University

ED3-11Imperial Forestry in the Territorial Expansion of Japan: Foresters, Science, andManagement

Place: S305 Time: 13:30-15:30
Chair: Koji Nakashima
Discussant: Shoko Mizuno
Kanazawa University
Komazawa University
Taro Takemoto
Quantitative aspects of forest management and timber trade in the Japanese Empire
Tokyo University of Agriculture
and Technology
Taisaku Komeie
Between the exclusion and promotion of swidden agriculture in imperial Japan: How
Kyoto University
did scientific foresters rediscover indigenous agroforestry?
Taisho Nakayama
Settler Colonialism of Foresters in Karafuto, a Subarctic Territory of the JapaneseKushiro Public University of
EmpireEconomics
Koji Nakashima
Formation and development of tropical forestry in modern Japan
Kanazawa University

11

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
ED3-12

Variegated State-Nature Relationships in East-Asia

Place: S304 Time: 13:30-15:30
Organizer: Junsoo Kim
KAIST

Chair: Sanghun Lee
Hanshin University

Discussant: Chulhyun Park, Junsoo Kim, Seulgi Lee
Kookmin University
KAIST

Jihye Yang
Northeast Asian History
Foundation
Jihoon Park
Chung-Ang University
Jin-Tae Hwang
Korea Institute for National
Unification
Sungeun Kim
KAIST

The Intertwined Politics of ‘Development’ and the ‘Environment’ in Korea during the1970s

ED3-13

Human and Nonhuman Animals

Putting the more-than-human state in its place

Bridging Over the Troubled Waters: Geopolitics of Transnational Cooperation in East
Asian Oceanography, 1985-2005

Place: S303 Time: 13:30-15:30
Chair: Tae-Ho Kim
Jeonbuk National University
Hao Zheng
Minzu University / UC Berkeley
Jeong Eun Lim
National Institute of Ecology
Pei Xiaoshan
Nankai University
Misung Kim
Yonsei University

ED3-14The Big Cat in the Western Regions: A Restudy of the Species and Extinction Causesof Xinjiang Tiger in Historical Era
Big Cats in Korea: A journey through time and culture
Elegy for Elephants: The end of the imperial elephant performances and the change ofthe human-elephant relationship in the late Qing Dynasty
Increase in Exports of Otter Skin and Its Ecological Environmental Consequences in
the Joseon Dynasty

Water Control in Anthropocene East Asia: (Post)Colonial River Engineering andits Multiple Impacts

Place: S302 Time: 13:30-15:30
Chair & Discussant: Eric Dinmore
Hampden-Sydney College
Lisa Yoshikawa
Witnessing an Ecological Debacle: Sun Moon Lake Hydroelectric Plant and Colonial
Hobart and William Smith
Environmental Management
Colleges
Miwa Shimada
The Yongding River Water Conservancy Projects in the Republic of China
Keio University
Ya-wen Ku
Reshaping the Landscape: The Construction and Impact of the Shihmen Reservoir
Academia Sinica
Seohyun Park
The Inundated City: Dam-Fetishism and the Failure of Flood Control in Seoul during
National University of Singapore the 1960s and Thereafter

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EAEH 2023
ED3-15

Roundtable: Anthropocene Commons Pedagogies

Place: S221 Time: 15:50-17:50
Chair & Introductory Presentations:
Carlina Rossée, Fernando Silva è Silva
Participants:
Lucio De Capitani (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)Ana Matilde Sousa (CIEBA – Artistic Studies Research Center & University of Lisbon)
Hugo Almeida (NOVA University of Lisbon)
Sarah Lewison (Southern Illinois University Carbondale)
Joseph Underhill (Augsburg University)
Jeremy Bolen (Georgia State University)
Jamie Allen (Critical Media Lab)John Kim (Macalester College)
Megan Black (AC / HKW)
Georg Schäfer (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
Simon Turner (University College London)

ED3-16

Environment and Industrialization in Asia (3): South Asia

Place: S221-A Time: 15:50-17:50
Chair: Chuyoung Won
Catholic University of Korea
Ru-Yu Lin
University of Sussex
Jahnavi Phalkey
Science Gallery Bengaluru
Sanjeeb Kumar Das
Regional Institute of Education(NCERT)
Juanjuan Peng
Georgia Southern University

ED3-18The Shaping of Crisis for Developing Home in the Eastern Himalayas
Anthropocene's Carbon
Floristic dynamics and Vegetational analysis of plant community in temple city
Bhubaneswar
State, business, and the local environment: the history of a post-1949 paper mill in
China

Human and Forest

Video Session
Place: S305 Time: 15:50-17:50
Chair: Koji Nakashima
Venue Chair: Teamin Woo
Kanazawa University
KAIST
Wu Qifang
Forests and Frontiers: A Study of Forestry Rights in the Yalu River Basin on the Eve ofNortheast Normal University
the Russo-Japanese War.
Baisakhi Bandyopadhyay
Sustainable forest management: Biodiversity conservation by sacred groves, sacred
The Asiatic Society Kolkata India landscape & sacred plant species & Traditional Ecological knowledge in India

ED3-19Relationship between Scientific and Public Awareness of Environment

Place: S304 Time: 15:50-17:50
Organizer: Michael Shiyung Liu (University of Pittsburgh)
Chair and Discussant: Federico Paolini (Università di Macerata ) & Michael Shiyung Liu (University of Pittsburgh)Federico Paolini
Science, technology and politics: the birth of an ecological
Università di Macerata
awareness in Italy
ChiaHsing Ho (James Hou)
Technology, Territoriality and environment development of
National Chung Hsing University mountain agriculture in Taiwan, 1960’s-1980’s
Wan-Chun Cheng
The Invisible Crisis: Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) of
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG) public health perspective
Michael Shiyung Liu
Knowing “nature” in late 19th century East Asia
University of Pittsburgh

13

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
ED3-20

Human and Wildlife

Place: S303 Time: 15:50-17:50
Chair: Soo Hyun Kim
KAIST
Tae-Ho Kim
Jeonbuk National University
Hsin-Hua Chiang
University of Tokyo
Muzayin Nazaruddin
Universitas Islam Indonesia
Riin Magnus
University of Tartu
Sang-ho Ro
Ewha Womans University

ED3-21“Little Cattle with Wings”: Industrialization of Farming and Cooking of Ducks in Modern
South Korea
Struggles in a shell: socio-ecological transformation of freshwater pearl cultivation in
Lake Biwa, Japan
The post-disaster transformation of interspecies dependencies: From talkative buffalo
to desemiotised cows on the slope of Mt. Merapi, Indonesia

Born-in-America in the Kingdom of Plants: Tobacco and the Psychoactive Revolution
in Early Modern Korea

The Water in Northwest China

Place: S302 Time: 15:50-17:50
Chair: Jung Lee
Ewha Womans University
Pan WeiYunnan University
Wu Yi-qun
Xinjiang University
Chen Zhiwei, Zhang Jingping
Lanzhou University
Wang Ruixue
Yunnan University

The "Marginal Population" in the absence of the State: A study on the problem of"moving-hills households" in Minqin, Gansu Province from 1900 to 1950
Case study on water conservancy dispute and administrative district adjustment ofTianshan South Road in late Qing Dynasty
The Wrtting of Landscape in Hexi Corridor from the Perspective of the Aggregation
Reclamation: Mainly Based on the Period of Qing Dynasty
Water landscape construction of Jiuquan Oasis from Qing Dynasty to Republic ofChina period

14

EAEH 2023

DAY 4
Saturday, July 1
Science Culture Center, IBS

ED4-S1[Special lecture] Axel Timmermann
IBS / Pusan National University"Modelling Climate Change Effects on Human Evolution"

Place: Auditorium
Time: 11:15-12:00
Moderator: Soo Hyun Kim
KAIST

ED4-S2[Keynote speech 3] Satoshi Murayama
Kagawa University"Asian Diversity, Asian Boundaries: Living Spaces within Asian
Monsoon"Place: Auditorium
Time: 15:30-16:00
Moderator: Jongmin Lee
University of Science and Technology

ED4-S3[Special Roundtable]
A roundtable for the “Asian” Association for Environmental
History: A new mission for the field of environmental history
around the worldPlace: Auditorium
Time: 16:00-17:20
Chair: Michael Shiyung Liu (University of Pittsburgh)
Shen Hou (Peking University) (*participating online)
Jenia Mukherjee (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur)
Julia Adeney Thomas (University of Notre Dame)
Buhm Soon Park (KAIST)
Donald Worster (Honorary Director of the Center for Ecological History at Renmin University of China, Kansas University)(*participating online)

15

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
ED4-01

Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Study on Environmental History of theNortheast China (1)Place: S221 Time: 9:00-11:00
Chair: Teng Haijian
Liaoning University
Teng Haijian
Liaoning University
Fan Lijun
Jilin Normal University
Li Yujun & Guo Xin
Liaoning Normal University

Discussant: Fan Lijun
Jilin Normal University
Nature and Frontier -- The Dimension and Paradigm of the Study of Environmental
History in Northeast China
Environment, Immigration and Diet:
The changes of Dietetic Culture in Northeast China in Modern Times
A Discussion on the Influence of Climate, Landform and Other
Environmental Factors in the War of the Jin Dynasty

ED4-02

Environmental Challenges in China and Korea, Past and Present

Place: S221-A Time: 9:00-11:00
Chair: Jaehwan Hyun
Pusan National University
Aaron Molnar
A Climate of Crisis: The Confluence of Mongol Imperialism and Climate Transition in
University of British Columbia Late Goryeo (1258-1392)
The Eruption of Mount Tambora and The Agricultural Production in Taiwan and China
Yu-Chien Jen
University of Carlos III
from 1815 to 1815: Perspectives from Adaptation Measures
Reeds, Snails, and Parasites: Bilharzia Disease and Riverine Ecology in China’s Lower
Yu-Cheng ShihBrown University
Yangzi Delta during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Limin Wang
Sanitation, Disease and Drinking Water in Kashgar City from the Late Qing Dynasty to
ShaanXi Normal University
the Early Republic of China Period

ED4-03

The Human-Environment-Climate Nexus: Exploring Disaster Responses andWater Related Hazards in East and Southeast Asia
Place: S306 Time: 9:00-11:00
Organizer & Chair: Fiona Williamson
Singapore Management University
Fiona Williamson
Sanitation, Disease and Drinking Water in Kashgar City from the Late Qing Dynasty to
Singapore Management
the Early Republic of China Period
University
Atsushi Ota
Rainfall and agriculture in Java in the 1900s
Keio University
James F. Warren
A tale of three storm surges, and, three towns, under three flags
Murdoch University

ED4-04

Environment in the Making

Place: S305 Time: 9:00-11:00
Chair: Setoguchi Akihisa
Kyoto University
Duskin Drum
New York University
Halla Jeeae Ko
Ewha Womans University
Bingru Yue
Queen's University

Dialectics of Future Forest Cities in East Asia
Multispecies Storytelling in Restoration and Consevation of Jeju Hanon Crater“Overcome the Wetlands and Educate the Youth”: State Farm Construction and the Sent
Down Youth Movement from the 1960s to the 1970s

16

EAEH 2023
ED4-05

Politics, Cold War and environment in East Asia

Place: S304 Time: 9:00-11:00
Chair: Donghyun Woo
KAIST
Kaihei Koshio
Soilless agriculture and War, focusing on the role of hydroponic farms in Japan as
Tokyo University of Agriculture supply bases for Korean War
Junho Jung
Making of "Pristine Vegetables" : Construction and Shifting Concepts of Environmental
Jeonbuk National University
Contaminants in Korea, 1960~1990s
Kyoung Shin
Environmental Civil Society Organizations and the State in China: Institutional Analysis
National Tsing Hua University of the Dynamics, 1980s-2010s
Joseph Seeley
Remaking North Korea Nature at the West Sea Barrage
University of Virginia

EF4-06

Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Study on Environmental History of theNortheast China (2)Place: S221 Time: 13:30-15:10
Chair: Teng Haijian
Tan Yuxiu
Northeast Normal University
Wan wenjie
Liaoning University
Lei Zhang
Lingnan University

ED4-07

Discussant: Fan Lijun
Jilin Normal University
Flood in Northeast China in Modern Times and its Countermeasures
under the Evolution of Regional Environment
The Statute and Ordinance and Environment: The interaction between
Qing Dynasty rulers and environment before the Qing entered the pass in 1644 from “TheStatute and Ordinance in Manchu Archives of Shengjing
Feeding Revolution: The Enterprise of Corn in North China, 1938-1950

Kichi (機智), Resourceful Eco-Techne with Material

Place: S221-A Time: 13:30-15:10
Organizer: Jung Lee
Ewha Womans University
Yeon-Kyoung Lim
Ewha Womans University
Ae-Ryung Kim
Ewha Womans University
Jung Lee
Ewha Womans University

ED4-08Chair: Hanah Sung
KAIST
Disconnected Network: A Human-Nature Assemblage Reformatted through the Technonatural Disaster Narratives of Undersea Cable in South Korea from the 1990s to the
2000s“Was that Mountain Really There?” Posthuman Ecological Approach to History ofNanjido Landfill
Crossing Boundaries with Tak trees: Transmission of eco-techne by moving with material

Towards a Planetary History and Planetary Humanities

Video Session
Place: S221-A Time: 13:30-15:10
Chair: Ranjan Chakrabarti
Netaji Subhas Open University
Mili Ghose
Martin Heidegger and the Creation of ‘Earth’ as a philosophic category
Independent Researcher
Aryama Ghosh
Expanding the Frontier of Temporality: A Conversation between Historical and Planetary
Jadavpur University
Times
Sekhar Mahapatra
From Environmental Humanities to Planetary Humanities
Jadavpur University

17

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
Conflicts, epidemics, and climate crisis: an environmental history in comparative
perspectives
Place: S305 Time: 13:30-15:10
ED4-09Organizer: Satoshi Murayama
Kagawa University
Chair & Discussant: Michael Shiyung Liu
University of Pittsburgh
Satoshi Murayama
The Earth System as an agent of humanity: perspectives derived from a comparative
Kagawa University
study on environmentally local economies
Characteristics of Precipitation Distribution and River Flood Using Historical Precipitation
Masahide Ishizuka,
Toru Terao, andDatasets: A Study for the Northern Kyoto Region, Japan
Satoshi Murayama
Kagawa University
Josef Grulich andSoldiers, Epidemics and bohemian rural enviroment in the 18th and 19th century
Václav Černý
University of South Bohemia

ED04-10The Politics of Sustainability: Elemental Media and Contemporary Art in East Asia
and Beyond
Place: S304 Time: 13:30-15:10
Chair: Bookyoung Son
Binghamton University
Eunha Chang
Independent Curator
Pei-chun Viola Hsieh
Binghamton University
Bookyung Son
Binghamton University

Discussant: Juhyun Cho
Yonsei University
Invasive Species, Colonialism, and Artistic Practice
The Aesthetics of Air and Tactile Politics in Wang Te-yu’s Inflatable Art, circa 1996
A Restoration of the Oldest Media in the Works of Lee Seung-taek, Kim Ku-lim, Park
Hyun-ki

18

EAEH 2023
Disaster Track (1):
Nuclear Memory in the Body and the Environment

Disaster Track (1):
Nuclear Memory in the Body and the Environment

ED2-02ED2-02The Global Hibakusha during theCold War

Layered Hardships for Korean
Atomic-Bomb Victims

Robert Jacobs

Yuko Takahashi

Hiroshima Peace Institute

Hiroshima Jogakuin University

Since the two nuclear attacks on Hiroshima andNagasaki in 1945, there have been over 2,000
nuclear weapon detonations in the world. The US
began testing nuclear weapons in the MarshallIslands less than a year after attacking Hiroshima.
We think of the Cold War as a period of time inwhich nuclear weapons were not used, but inreality, a nuclear explosion happened every 8.6 days
from 1950-1990. Many of these detonations spreadradioactive fallout into lands where millions ofpeople lived. Many were exposed to radiation andhad their health and lives upended. This lecture will
explore the history of the global nuclear weapon
testing, its harms and legacies.

This presentation examines various hardships
experienced by Korean victims of the atomic
bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
During the 1910-1945 colonial period, over 2
million Koreans migrated to the Japanese mainland,
and approximately 100,000 were said to havebeen victimized by the nuclear attacks. Following
Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule,among these victims, those who managed tosurvive were dispersed mainly across East Asia—
namely, South Korea, North Korea, and Japan.
Since then, they not only suffered from radiationinduced illnesses, but also left without appropriate
support that multiplied their hardships, or causing“secondary” damages. The presentation examines
Korean hibakusha’s hardships and discusses causal
factors that concern colonialism, ethnocentrism,
nationalism, and the Cold War regime in the East
Asian geopolitical context.

19

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
Disaster Track (1):
Nuclear Memory in the Body and the Environment

Disaster Track (1):
Nuclear Memory in the Body and the Environment

ED2-02ED2-02

Living with Slow Disaster: Memories
of Haeneyo, Sea Weeds and Nuclear
Plants in Gori, Pusan

Living in the Nuclear Village:
An Exception Space Created by the
Clash of Developmental Desires

Yunjeong Joo

WooChang Kim

Pusan National University

Seoul National University

Since the two nuclear attacks on Hiroshima andNagasaki in 1945, there have been over 2,000
nuclear weapon detonations in the world. The US
began testing nuclear weapons in the MarshallIslands less than a year after attacking Hiroshima.
We think of the Cold War as a period of time inwhich nuclear weapons were not used, but inreality, a nuclear explosion happened every 8.6 days
from 1950-1990. Many of these detonations spreadradioactive fallout into lands where millions ofpeople lived. Many were exposed to radiation andhad their health and lives upended. This lecture will
explore the history of the global nuclear weapon
testing, its harms and legacies.

Korea has 24 nuclear power plants in 4 regions.
Each region has more than 6 nuclear plants in
one city. I have lived Wolsung(one of them, has 6
nuclear plants and a radioactive waste repository)for 8 months to research and try to understandhow and why this exceptional space was created.
Kepco(Korea Electric Power Corporation) has been
wanting to make Enertopia which is filled with
nuclear plants. And some residents who live nearplants have been satisfied with living in Utopia
and haven't tried to ask them for better safety
or criticize. In addition, Kepco has forced local
communities, including residents, social groups,
the press, and politicians, to support nuclear power
plants with various means of governance. Such as,
making white or black-list and sharing some ownersof restaurants in the demonstration against nuclear
plants on their intranet (for employees in Kepco).
And by supporting or giving funding, social groups
and the press in the community have not been
criticized freely. After 30-40years, this region has
become very exceptional place, while delayed
democratic space like Plutopia by Kate brown(2021)
Although this exceptional place but
quite
peaceful one made by the clash of developmental
desires, some people tried to criticize, dissolve thisexchange between danger and material abundance.
Some residents have made a task force to relocate
and have been demonstrating every Monday withdeath carriage. This research has some differences,
especially it refrains from the perspective thedichotomy between agreement and opposition about
nuclear plants. And try to understand nuclear village
with many stakeholders, not only Kepco, one of
the strongest. Even try to understand this exception
space through local’s perspective, context, andhistory.

20

EAEH 2023
Postcolonial Science in the Philippines:
Investigations and Institutions towards a National
ScienceED2-03PWB and COMVOL to PAGASA andPHILVOLCS: Postcolonial Meteorological,
Seismological, and Volcanological
Institutions in the Philippines

Kerby C. Alvarez
University of the Philippines Diliman
National and Filipinized scientific institutions in
the postwar Philippines are vital in the postcolonial
period nation-building efforts. These agencies aremandated to deliver plans and programs, which
are aimed at advancing economic development
and social progress through the benefits ofmodern science and technology. In a speech by
Juan Salcedo, chairman of the National Science
Development Board during the centennial
anniversary celebration of the Manila Observatory
on September 1965, he called the era “Age of
Science” and called on the people to support
Filipino scientists in their quest for knowledge andsolutions to the country’s problems.1 One of those
problems is the country’s constant encounters withenvironmental hazards – typhoons, earthquakes,
and volcanic eruptions. These natural hazards
caused persistent havoc to communities and cities,
from human lives to built structures and landscapes.
Therefore, studying these phenomena did not only
entail strengthening the scientific infrastructureof the country but also mobilizing the local
governments and uniformed personnel to respondto the challenges posed by these natural hazards.
Disaster response and reconstruction evolved frommere laboratory concerns to civil defense issues.
And the scientific institutions were at the forefrontof nationalized meteorological, seismological, andvulcanological sciences that pioneered the decadeslong program and efforts of crafting a responsive
Philippine disaster response and management.
This paper examines the institutional developmentsof the Philippine Weather Bureau (PWB) and theCommission on Volcanology (COMVOL) andtheir reorganized counterparts, the Philippine
Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical
Services Administration (PAGASA) and thePhilippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology

21(PAGASA) from the postwar years (the 1950s) to the1990s. This paper examines the activities, programs,
and policies of these institutions and attempts
to illustrate the multi-layered functions of theseagencies, both as centers of knowledge production
and organizations that contributed to the craftingof disaster response mechanisms grounded on civil
defense. For almost five decades, these institutions
entered the national arena as premier state-initiatedand state-governed agencies tasked with advancing
knowledge on disasters and educating the people.
Their institutional developments are emblematic
illustrations of the Philippine progress in science andthe enduring vision of national science for nationalbuilding.
1 Juan Salcedo, Jr., “The Manila Observatory andPhilippine Science, World Science, and Nationalism,”
Science Bulletin of the Science
Foundation of the Philippines, Volume 16(1) (Science
Foundation of the Philippines, 1965), pp. 10-11.
Keywords: Philippine Weather Bureau, Commission on
Vulcanology, PAGASA, PHIVOLCS, Philippine Science

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
Postcolonial Science in the Philippines:
Investigations and Institutions towards a National
Science

Postcolonial Science in the Philippines:
Investigations and Institutions towards a National
ScienceED2-03

ED2-03

Laguna de Bay in Serials: Biology,
Conservation, and History inPhilippine Scientific

Indigenous but introduced: science,development, and the (un)making of
Lake Lanao
Anthony D. Medrano

Ruel V. Pagunsan

Yale-NUS College

University of the Philippines Diliman

The world’s organisms are often classified as
native and non-native, indigenous and alien. These
simple binaries mark biological life and, in doingso, define what belongs where and why. But when
species travel, they change, transforming culturesand ecologies along the way. While some species
introductions can cultivate new livelihoods, newfood webs, and new types of ecological services,other kinds of biological flows can foster explosive
reproduction rates that rupture and ravage nature’s
ecosystems—resulting in cultural, economic, andbiodiversity losses.
In the case of Philippine freshwaters, it was thepairing of science and development that championed
an age of species movements in the wake of 1946.
Inspired by the possibilities of the postwar moment,
this new biological age made sense politically. It
was reasoned within the urgencies of economic
progress and food security. In practice, it meant thatindigenous fishes were introduced to alien habitats
while non-native types were stocked within native
freshwaters. From Luzon to Mindanao, and viceversa, indigenous fishes from one island wereplanted in another to feed and bolster the country’s
protein supply. This paper explores how scienceand development coalesced to boost the productionof Lake Lanao and, in the process, unmake
Mindanao’s rare ichthyofauna. In particular, it
charts the losses that followed the release of two
indigenous but introduced gobies locally known
as kadurog (Glossogobius giurus) and katolong(Hypseleotris agilis) and the ways in which thesenative species contributed to the extinction of Lake
Lanao’s endemic cyprinids and the Maranao worlds
they embodied.

Laguna de Bay (LDB) to examine its ecologicalstate. In 1928, the University of the Philippines
Limnological Station was established to evaluate theproduction of local fishes in the largest freshwaterlake in the Philippines. The station and otherresearch infrastructures facilitated the production ofliteratures that examined the species composition
and resource management of thelake. As one of the most productive resource
frontiers in the country, scientists similarly
investigated the lake’s capacity for introduced
species. In the period after 1946, as the nation faced
food security issues, scientists were drawing lessons
from LDB about the possibilities and perils ofcreating a fisheries capital.
This paper examines the epistemological historyof LDB as narrated in Philippine scientificpublications. It particularly follows the works of twoof the leading Filipino biologists in the postwar era,
Leopoldo Uichanco and Deogracias Villadolid, whoplayed pivotal roles in the foundational years of thestation. Reading LDB in serials also revealed stories
about the lake’s cultural and historical importanceand how the scientists remembered its past andreimagined the futures of its ecology and resources.
I argue that the scientific narratives created notionsof authority that shaped the conservation discourses
and nationalized the policies on the how the lakeshould be developed, regulated and protected.
Keywords: Mindanao, science, development, extinction,
biodiversity, ecology, and freshwaters, Mindanao State
University

Keywords: Laguna de Bay, limnology, postwar science,
Filipiniana

22

EAEH 2023
Postcolonial Science in the Philippines:
Investigations and Institutions towards a National
Science

Development and Environment (1)ED2-03

ED2-04

The Philippine Rodent ResearchCenter and the Control of Rodent
Outbreaks

The colonizers, the developmental
state, and uneven geography ofdevelopment: Reclamation of tidal
flats in South Korea, 1900s-1980s

Ma. Florina Y. Orillos-Juan
De la Salle University Manila

Young Rae Choi

Many species of rodents are agricultural pests – beit on a global or continental scale. Rodent
outbreaks that occurred in the past proved to be ascourge to human beings – not just because they
were instrumental in the spread of diseases but
more so because they destroy major crops like ricewhich eventually led to famine and shortage. The
Philippines has a long history of rodent outbreakthat caused so much misery to the lives of theFilipinos. These sufferings are etched in theirmemory through oral and written history, folklore,
and even language.
In 1955, Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay
issued Proclamation No. 179 which stipulated thatthe period of September 1 to 30 of that year andthereafter will be declared as Anti-Rat Campaign
Month. This was a landmark proclamation
because it clearly identified rats as one of thecountry’s major agricultural pests and the citizensof the republic, as well as the government had
the responsibility to bring rat infestation undercontrol. Thirteen years later, in 1968, the Rodent
Research Center (RRC) was established as a resultof the joint undertaking of the government of the
Republic of the Philippines and the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID).
Its headquarters were in the University of thePhilippines Los Baños campus. The objectiveof the RRC was to reduce the economic impactof agricultural losses caused by rodent damageof crops. This paper will delve on the nature ofresearch undertakings and types of training carriedout by the RRC. It will examine the research thrustsof RRC vis-à-vis the common practice of applying
rodenticides and other chemicals to control rodent
population. It shall also explore how the healthconcerns of humans prompted experts to re- assess
existing harmful pest management methods andcome up with solutions that are more ecologicallysound.

Florida International University
South Korea’s tidal flats, called getbol, are muddy
and grayish coastal wetlands under the tidal
influence that constitute the predominant land
form of South Korea’s west and southwest coasts.
Today, getbol is appreciated for its biological andgeological diversity for which it recently earned
UNESCO’s World Heritage status. Yet, throughout
the 20th century, more than 50% of getbol areas
were lost due to coastal reclamation, a civilengineering practice of enclosing and filling ingetbol. This paper closely examines this history ofgetbol from the 1900s to the 1980s. While being
messy and complex, the history shows the tendency
that reclamation evolved from small to large interms of scale, and from private-led to state-led. In
popular imaginations, the reclamation of getbol isthought to have been driven top-down by governing
authorities, in particular, by the “developmental
state” that roughly ran from the 1960s throughthe 1980s. While this explanation fits the generaltrend, this paper highlights that the state did not
act solely upon its own will but responded to thedesires of those that the state had to satisfy to gain
political legitimacy. Ultimately, in the context ofSouth Korea’s uneven geography of development,
this paper argues that the reclamation of getbol
transitioned from a project for the entire nation to a
project for the rural populations and the agricultural
sector lagging behind the country’s tantalizing
economic growth.

Keywords: rats, rodents, agricultural pests, Philippine
Rodent Research Center

23

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
Development and Environment (1)Development and Environment (1)ED2-04

ED2-04

A Study on the Application of Citizen
Science to the Urban EcologicalCorridors Monitoring Project in
Korea

The Oncheon Stream Restoration
Project and the Politics of Natural
Restoration in Busan during the 1990s
and 2000s
Soonbae Kwon

Yun MinHwa

Pusan National University

Ewha Womans University

This paper examines the social debate that
occurred surrounding the Oncheon Stream
restoration project in Busan, South Korea,
during the 1990s and 2000s. The stream's
restoration project was initiated by regional
environmental movements around the mid1990s, and now the Oncheon Stream isconsidered a representative restored streamof the downtown area in Busan. This
paper focuses on the clashes between local
governments, experts, environmental activists,and citizens in the course of restoration. Those
actors envisioned the meaning of ‘restoration’and the restored stream’s ‘function’ differently.
The issue of providing maintenance water tokeep the Oncheon Stream flowing showcases
the conflict over the direction and meaning of
the restoration. At the project's outset, the local
governments in Busan were mainly concerned
about restoring the stream's landscape aspects
and calculating the cost-benefit with a technicalapproach using artificial water supply. On theother hand, environmental activists and civicorganizations argued that the stream should berestored as a sustainable natural stream without
using artificial supply methods. The conflicts
also occurred in relation to the function of
the restored stream. The local governments,
experts, and environmental activists agreed
on the idea of making the stream a “waterfriendly space” for the citizens. The point ofconflict was its meaning. Landscape architects
employed by the local governments urged aneed for creating an artificial forest near the
stream, while environmental activists claimed
to create it as an ‘ecological park’ that would
minimalize human access. Meanwhile, in thelocal election context, the local governments
planned to establish a ‘civic park’ that is
occupied by artificial facilities for citizens’
leisure activities. Engaging with the previous
literature exploring the interpretive flexibilityof ‘restoration’, I will show that the actors in
the Oncheon Stream case strategically used theambiguity of the term 'restoring'.

This study proposes a 'Citizen Science Modelfor Urban Ecological Corridors' as a way
for the general public to participate in urban
ecological corridor research. The establishment
and use of new city plans in Korea haveresulted in the fragmentation of habitats andloss of biodiversity due to roadkill and othernegative impacts of human activities. To control
these impacts and promote natural ecologicalflows, the concept of urban ecological corridors
has been introduced into urban ecosystems.
Originally intended to assist the movement of
wildlife, ecological corridors have also beenutilized as spaces providing ecological services
to citizens, as most urban species have lessfear of humans. However, there is currently
a lack of monitoring facilities and records
regarding the presence of such facilities, whichhas prevented the evaluation of the ecologicalvalue of urban ecological corridors and theestablishment of differentiated installation
standards for existing ecological corridors.
In this paper, we explore the potential of
citizen science in monitoring urban ecologicalcorridors, proposing a citizen science model for
urban ecological corridors based on the resultsof studies online platforms such as 'Ecobank'and 'Wildlife Crossing Network', as well as
the National Institute of Ecology's 'A study onenhancing habitat connectivity in fragmented
landscapes.' This model collects and analyzes
data generated by the current monitoring
devices, and provides ways for citizens to more
efficiently count the number of organisms using
ecological corridors. Participants in the model
can experience the process of co-producing
knowledge about urban ecological corridors
with scientists, and by disclosing the resultsof monitoring, can enhance the social andacademic value of urban ecosystems.
24

EAEH 2023
Development and Environment (1)ED2-04
Life after the ‘Living Laboratory.’ –A Study of Slow Disaster in Jangjeom
Village
Jane Sung Hae Kim
Jeonbuk National University
Jangjeom Village is a small farming village
located on the outskirt of the City of Iksan,
North Jeolla Province. It has a populationof approximately 80 residents. The village
received media attention in February of 2017
when it was first reported that fifteen village
residents had been found with cancer. And outof the fifteen, ten had died. Later, the numberof deaths increased to fourteen residents, andthe total number of cases increased to twenty–
two. The village residents pointed their fingers
at the local chemical fertilizer plant, which had
been in operation since 2001, as the possible
cause of their illness. Taking over a local brickfactory, the chemical fertilizer plant promised
jobs for the sleepy little village when it
opened. However, immediately after the plantbegan operation, the village was filled with an
obnoxious stench akin to the smell of a rotting
corpse and heavy smoke from the factory.
Soon, the village residents began suffering fromvarious illnesses, including headaches, nausea
and insomnia. Their water was found to becontaminated and undrinkable when hundredsof fish died in local waters.
For years, the residents demanded action fromthe municipal government. Yet, the calls to thegovernment went unheeded until the 2017 news
reporting of the cancer cases. Public inquiries
and environmental and epidemiologicalinvestigations followed afterwards. In 2019,
the South Korean government acknowledged
the role of the chemical fertilizer plant inhaving caused cancer among the residents of
the Jangjeom Village. It was the first official
recognition of health damage wrought by anenvironmental disaster in South Korea.
This paper seeks to explore the history ofthis environmental and health disaster in the
Jangjeom Village as a case study of ‘slow
disaster.' And to do so, this study will trace thedisaster of Jangjeom Village from the time of
the Korean War (1950–1953), when the Foodand Agricultural Organization of the United
Nations (FAO) surveyed the North Jeolla
Province, including this region, as part of plans
to increase the agricultural productivity in wartorn Korea. In their recommendations, the FAO
emphasized the role of fertilizers and pesticides
in increasing food crop production. After theconclusion of the survey, the United Nations
Korea Reconstruction Agency (UNKRA)
funded the importation and establishment of
fertilizer plants across Korea. The Geumgang
Farming Co., the chemical fertilizer plant
responsible for the health problems of the
Jangjeom Village residents comes from thislong history of an aggressive and relentlesspush for fertilizer manufacturing in postwar
Korea. By taking a long historical approach
toward understanding the disaster of Jangjeom
Village as a slow disaster, the purpose of thispaper is to pluralize the temporalities andnarratives in the writing of disaster and question
the current view of Jangjeom Village as a casestudy of success in resolving environmental
and health disaster.

25

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
Environment and art (1)Environment and art (1)ED2-05

ED2-05The possible making of a realm of
coexistence beyond humans in the
Anthropocene

Getting in touch with the heterogeneityof landfilled municipal solid waste inSouth Korea
Soyo Lee

Masatake Shinohara

Korea National University of Arts

Kyoto University
In May 2022, a team of interdisciplinary researchers
from the Center for Anthropocene Studies at
KAIST, Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral
Resources, and Korea National University of Arts
conducted a core boring excavation at a thirty-yearold unsanitary landfill site in Gyeonggi-do, South
Korea to take an up-close look into the compositionof this anthropogenic deposit. The samples wereobtained as thirty-five cylinders, each of which is
1 meter in length and 5 centimeters in diameter,
consisting of a wide variety of materials that areorganic or inorganic, putrescible or imputrescible,and natural or artificial, as well as in different statesof degradation and preservation.
While these samples are currently being investigatedfor microbiological and geological characteristics,
they were also archived and fabricated into visualevidence by artists to be displayed in the context
of fine arts and public science. This presentation
shares the artist’s hands-on experience with thewaste samples, focusing on the heterogeneity anddiversity within the constructed assemblages ofanthropogenic materials. Municipal solid waste is
direct consequence of contemporary lifestyle andactive component of our changing environment;
however, its materiality is mostly hidden frompublic via physical and psychological barriers.
Although our samples are tiny fragments of a
specific ecological condition, getting in touch with
their details allows for new speculations upon longterm cycling of materials.
For archiving and visualization, general geologicaland biological specimen preparation techniques
were applied to the samples, along with 16S rRNA
gene sequencing, scanning electron microscopy& energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and lightmicroscopy for supplementary evidence.

In this presentation, I will show my thoughtthat in order to address the question of a form of
coexistence in difference among humans that isnecessitated in the age of the Anthropocene we must
try to attend to a certain realm of existence that
may be given as an insubstantial and indeterminate
spacious extension. To the extent that it is a realm inwhich humans in a heterogeneous way of living areallowed to dwell, it can be conceived as a certain
place that subtends and conditions the existenceof humans. Yet, it is different from a place as thesolid ground on which the human artifice fit for the
durable dwelling is firmly constructed. This is to
say that the notion of the place that humans inhabit
must be conceived as an amorphous and spacious
realm in which the mode of human inhabitation
bereft of a solid place is moving in space andtime. Likewise, I contend that such an engagementwith an exploration into such a dimension of
amorphous and indeterminate reality requires that
one abandons the familiar assumption that thehuman artifice embedded within the firm groundis secured from the perpetual threat of uncertainty.
As the photographic art of Rinko Kawauchi
discloses, within the realm at the threshold of
the already given structure of modern human
life, the irreducible aliveness of worldly things
is revealed in a way that exceeds the dominantmodes of representation that are blind to theplanetary reality of the world. Drawing on works
by Rinko Kawauchi, I adduce my attempt at suchan engagement with a question of the condition of
possibility for the construction of ideals for humanlife in relation to the amorphous and indeterminate
realm of coexistence that is given for us yet is notderived from us.

26

EAEH 2023
Environment and art (1)ED2-05
Remembering Coal andUnderstanding Korean Hinterlands:
Undercover Senses of History andEnvironment
Jongmin Lee
University of Science and Technology
What was coal’s place in Korean history ofdevelopment? How do you understand andremember coal history through arts? This
presentation aims to answer these questions using
Gangwoo Lee’s photos and writings during the past
two decades and other material.
Locating and extracting coal became important
industrial practices during industrialization andintensive labor and financial and health risks wereinterlinked with capital investment. Likewisecoal mining towns and their people have drawn
the attention of the writers and artists for a longtime. Korean coal development began from thelate nineteenth century with foreign explorers
getting extraction rights from the government andcontinued under Japanese Resident-General andGovernor-General. The Liberation, Korean War,and Division of Korea put more emphasis on coalmines in Taebaek and Sabuk regions of Gangwon
Province in South Korea.
Photographer Gangwoo Lee began his regular visits
to Taebaek and Sabuk in 2003/2004. The name of
Sabuk became attached to the labor struggle that
happened in 1980. Mining workers went on a strikein April 1980 which expanded to regional conflicts
which lasted for four days. After consensus wasreached, the police arrested the leaders who went
to prison for 2-3 years under martial law. Limited
media coverage afterward created an image of
Sabuk as the hinterlands with high intensity low
safety manual work and poor residents. Poems andpaint works helped us document and remember
lives at mining towns while affirming this image as
well.
Between 2004 and 2023, Gangwoo Lee tooklandscape photos of Cheol-am of Taebaek andSabuk of Jeonseon and recorded the images ofmining works, housing, and landscape while coalmines of the area closed one by one. He wanted to27

capture the lives and images of disappearing towns
and their workers and residents with landscape.
He took a different approach from other poetsand painters. He went up the mountains to grasp
panoramic images of the mountains, buildings, andrailroads. He also witnessed the redevelopment of
towns along the streams near Cheol-am station. This
presentation undercovers the images of coal mining
town such as darkness, shortness of breath, cold
surface, and heat of burning coal briquettes. Whileuntangling the history of development of coal andcasino industry in Taebaek and Sabuk through theseimages, I argue Gangwoo Lee and other artists andwriters contributed to our enhanced understandingof the relations between coal and development in thehinterlands of Korea.

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
Human and nature in premodern East Asia

Human and nature in premodern East Asia

ED2-06

ED2-06Vegetation in early Chinese ancientgardens and its cultural implications

Revisiting the Gendered Medical Body
in Joseon Korea: An Examination of
Medical Narratives and Cognitive
Practices

Luo Qilong
Kiebok Yi

Guizhou University

Seoul National University
As everyone knows, Chinese gardens play animportant role in Chinese culture. The styles
of gardens vary greatly in different historicalperiods, and the one of the main factors forming
this difference is the selection of vegetation. Until
now, the research results of ancient garden art andculture are abundant, but due to the lack of data, therelated results are mostly concentrated in the Wei
and Jin Dynasties. As for the gardens of Qin and
Han Dynasties and before, the discussion mainly
focuses on architectural patterns and officials, andthe study of vegetation is less. Therefore, basedon the handed down literature and combined witharchaeological data, this paper intends to explore
the vegetation and its cultural connotation in thegardens of early ancient China – from Shang Zhou
to Qin and Han Dynasties, clarify the origin anddevelopment of Chinese classical garden culture
from different angles, and then provide a cultural
theoretical evidence for today's garden construction.

This study aims to explore the diverse and everchanging history of Korean and East Asian
medicine by analyzing the evolution of medical
narratives and cognitive practices surrounding the
medical body during the Joseon 朝鮮 Dynasty(1392-1910), from a gender perspective. Insteadof adopting a modernist or feminist approach thatviews medicine as independent from society or
as subservient to social and political ideologies,
this research methodology breaks free from theseapproaches by providing a re-interpretation ofsex- or gender-related medical narratives. Using
the medical body as a lens, the study examines thefeatures of the narrative and its historical context
to explore how medical principles and cognitive
practices related to sex or gender differences have
evolved over time. Interestingly, these medical
discourses and issues were rooted in the questionof what constitutes a medically healthy, ideal body.
The medical bodies under scrutiny can be classified
into five categories: the body of cosmology, thebody of reproduction, the body of self-cultivation,
the body of sentimentality, and the body ofindividual agency. The historical transformation ofthese medical bodies offers a fascinating glimpse
into the diverse and dynamic terrain of the historyof Korean and East Asian medicine.

28

EAEH 2023
Human and nature in premodern East Asia

ED2-06Perspectives of Korean traditional
knowledge on humans, animals, andnatureJong-wook Jeon
Jeonbuk National University
From a comprehensive view of Eastern andWestern religions and philosophies, there has beena perspective that sees nature as the mother earth
that gave birth to all life forms. However, after the
Industrial Revolution, the perspective that humans
see nature as a resource, tool, or physical object
to be utilized became dominant alongside humaneconomic development. Humans began to perceive
themselves as subjects who acquire resources,
process them, and consume them. Nevertheless,it has become clear that this human-environment
perception cannot be sustained in the current global
environment. Even so, as modern individuals who
have been empowered by the strong baptism of
subjective abilities after modernity, we cannot
avoid feeling doubtful about whether the traditional
concept of nature as the mother earth can becomea practical and workable model that can harmonize
with the development of industrial and technologicalsocieties. In this context, let us revisit the discourseof Korean traditional scholars during the Goryeo
Dynasty and Joseon Dynasty, such as Yi Gyu-bo(李奎報), Yi Cheom(李詹), and Seo Yu-gu(徐有榘),
to explore their understanding of the hierarchy ofliving organisms, differences between them, andtheir relationship with humans, comparing themwith the crowing of a rooster and the crying of aperson or the death of a flea and a dog. Finally, let
us examine the perception of whales and rice pests
in late Joseon era Seo Yu-gu's work.
In general, we examine the perspective of
nature(天) and humans(聖) focusing on the conceptof "natural order". The key point is that nature andhumans have a relationship where they take turns
being superior to each other, and it is impossible
to fix one-sided superiority. This perspective isfascinating. Through this perspective, we hope togain insights into how humans, who were born innature and are still living in it, can view themselves
as beings of meaning and maintain sustainable

positions through certain relationships among othercreatures. However, even with a one-dimensional
equality, it may be challenging for humans tocontinue their significance as valuable beings in
the system of nature's harmony. It is not a formof blaming or belittling humans' sins. If we can
excavate a story that goes beyond such negative
possibilities and contribute to building a hopefulenvironmentalism that is inevitably coming in the
future, it will be a valuable discussion through thisacademic conference, drawing upon the discourseof traditional Korean scholars from the past.

29

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
Human and nature in premodern East Asia

Barriers of energy transition in East Asia

ED2-06

ED2-07

The Historical Ecology of the Yangzi
Delta Region: On the Economy of the
Wu and Yue Kingdoms

A Study on the Changes in the Actor
Composition and Policy of the Japanese
Nuclear Power Promotion Bureaucrats’Group after the Fukushima Nuclear
Disaster

Brian Lander

Jong-min Choi

Brown University

SNU Environmental Planning InstituteHistorians often describe the Yangzi Delta asa sparsely populated swamp that remained abackwater until it was colonized by northerners
during the first millennium CE. However, this idea
is based only on the lack of earlier written sources
and it ignores that the region had already been thecore of two of the most powerful kingdoms of theSpring and Autumn period, namely Wu and Yue.
This paper combines archaeological evidence fromearlier periods with textual evidence from later
periods to reconstruct the human ecology of thiswetland region and to speculate on the economic
basis of those two states. I will show that for
millennia wet rice agriculture was combined in theregion with the diverse products of the region’s
wetlands and forests, and will argue that althoughthe Han colonization destroyed the region’s
languages and many aspects of its culture, theagriculture and cuisine of the region survived.

After the Fukushima nuclear accident on March
11, 2011, public criticism was formed in Japanagainst the group that had been promoting
nuclear power development. Attention has beendrawn to the group called the "nuclear village(gensiryokumura)", which is largely divided into
the Japanese government, the power industry, andthe nuclear industry and the academia. In particular,
the Liberal Democratic Party, the Ministry of
Economy, Trade and Industry (hereafter, METI),and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,
Science and Technology have been pointed out as
key actors related. Especially, bureaucratic groups
centered on the METI have planned and guided
the nuclear industry based on embedded autonomy
born in the developmental state system, and havedesigned nuclear policies in their desired directions
through the closed decision-making process.
Though Japan was democratized under the leadof the U.S. after the defeat in WWⅡ, it’s nuclear
power policy has been virtually impossible for the
citizens to participate and has been developed in a
way that the government pushed ahead. However,after the catastrophic accident occurred, Japan's
nuclear policy now strongly demanded the change.
If so, has there been any change in the participationof bureaucratic groups in nuclear power policies
and the direction of the policies they design after
the Fukushima nuclear accident? This study aims to
track the composition of bureaucratic actors related
to Japan’s nuclear power policy and the changes in
the policies they design after the Fukushima nuclear
accident, and to compare the overall features before
the accident. This study will be able to present
the indicator that explains the direction of Japan's
nuclear power policy that promotes the restart ofnuclear power plants, despite critical public opinion
on nuclear power.

30

EAEH 2023
Barriers of energy transition in East Asia

Barriers of energy transition in East Asia

ED2-07

ED2-07‘Survival' before Climate andEnvironment

Understanding energy citizenship:
how cultural capital shapes the energy
transition

Hye-Jung ShinSeoul National University

Dasom Lee

Korean public opinions on climate change, which
are highly aware of the seriousness but weak inresponse and practice could be seemed response
skepticism, a sort of climate skepticism. A topicallife history qualitative interview data from four
participants in the Taegeukgi rally indicates how
response skepticism is formed and maintained. This
study looks at the participants of the Taegeukgi
rally as a political generation unit that shares strong
growth ideology, nationalism, and anti-communism.
This study finds that nationalism and growth
ideology based on survivalism is embedded at thecore of response skepticism. The world view ofgrowth ideology, absolutised by the precarious
division of Korean peninsula and survivalism thatit must develop constantly to survive competitionin the world, is based on a linear historical view ofsocial evolution and state-centered, human-centeredhierarchical ontology. Here, climate change is nota real problem, and the environmental issues are
marginalized and otherized.
The participants of the study approach climate
and environmental issues primarily through statecentered problem-solving discourses. However
when this eventually faces limitations in climatechange that the state cannot solve, the participants
use the rhetorics("What can we do in this small
country" and "Look at China") that justify it. They
are pessimistic about the future of the planet. They
recognize long-term global limitations but haveno choice but to prioritize immediate economic
survival. This study calls this survivalism ofparticipants as ‘survavalism with resignation’.
It can be inferred that the survivalist values of theparticipants were formed from the life experienceof chaos and poverty before and after Korean war,and embedding the survial oriented development
ideology of the state and society. This study
observes the survivalist value is being regenerated
and reinforced through learning communities suchas Taegeukgi rallies and conservative YouTube
channels, which share similar values with theparticipants.

KAIST

Sikke R. Jansma
Le Anh Nguyen Long
University of Twente
Community involvement and citizenship have been
crucial drivers in energy transitions worldwide. To
deepen our understanding of the energy transition
and to further promote energy citizenship, weleverage Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital toshed light on the inequities in community centeredenergy transition processes. More specifically,
this study demonstrates that cultural capital is an
important indicator of an individual’s willingness
to participate in renewable energy related behavior
and social movements. Using survey data in the
Netherlands as a case study, it finds that dependingon the type of energy citizenship, i.e., material
participation (investments) or communicative
participation (protest), different types of cultural
capital are in play. The results of this study imply
that a nuanced approach towards both concepts,
namely energy citizenship and cultural capital, areneeded. The scholarly and practical implications of
this study are discussed, and the study concludes
with pathways for more comprehensive community
engagement.

31

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
Barriers of energy transition in East Asia

An Environmental History of the Asian Monsoon:
Linking Climate Change Science and Climate
Adaptation Science (1)ED2-07

ED2-08

Scaling-up renewable conflicts:
From site to history

Pre-modern flood and drought in
Kasa County, Kyoto, Japan: Shaking
steady state in the Asian monsoon

Seona Park

Satoshi Murayama

KAIST

Kagawa Univesity

Existing renewable energy conflict studies havefocused on a site. Scholars have found common
grounds of renewable conflicts as crucial factors in
explaining the acceptability of renewable energy.
They focused on characteristics of the place/space
where the facility is to be located and the perceptionof people living around.
On the contrary, this study argues that the
renewable energy conflict needs to be scaled-up.
The strategy of this study is in two directions: First,
widen the time scale to examine the history of theenergy laws. Second, broaden the spatial scale toinvestigate national level, rather than a site level.
An analysis of history and laws is mainly dealing
with offshore wind farm. This methodology will
make a difference compared to existing literature on
renewable energy conflicts.
These strategies try to answer this question - Why
are similar renewable energy conflicts occurring
across the country? This study focuses on theimportance of historically formed institutions.
What happened a half century ago when the statecentralized energy system was formed? This study
explains how the government permits energy
facilities by following these old laws.

The aim of this paper is to visualize descriptive
data to make sense of the descriptions. Early
modern Japan, on the way to a modernized national
statistical management, has left unique and valuable
historical sources that are rare in the world.
These materials, which can be grouped together
under the title of Gunsonshi (= County villages
topography), describe the natural, environmental,
and social-cultural characteristics of an entire
region with a radius of about 20 km at the levelof each village and town throughout Japan. It
contains some quantitative data, but mostly
descriptive information. The first task is therefore
to digitize and map the descriptions so that they
can be visualized and analyzed statistically andmathematically. The Yura River, located in northernpart of Kyoto prefecture, is one of the Japan’s
first-class rivers, whose basin area is 1880 km2,
length of main channel is 146 km, municipalities
are 8 cities and 1 town, population is 0.33 million.
Between the Japan Archipelago and the EurasianContinent, there is a well-developed oceanic basinwith relatively warm sea surface temperature. It
interacts with strong cold surge from the continent
to make cold and wet winter climate with low
temperatures and heavy winter snow fall in thisarea. In summer also, due to abundant water vapor
from the Pacific Ocean results in extreme rainfall.
Such complicated hydro-climatological setting
in an Asian monsoon area created areal specificwater management and adaptation methods sinceancient times. In the early modern period, a certain
oscillating steady state between floods and droughts
is considered to have been ensured over a long
historical process. This may have been an empiricalenvironmental measure to avoid tipping points that
could cause a major environmental collapse.

32

EAEH 2023
An Environmental History of the Asian Monsoon:
Linking Climate Change Science and Climate
Adaptation Science (1)An Environmental History of the Asian Monsoon:
Linking Climate Change Science and Climate
Adaptation Science (1)ED2-08

ED2-08Asian dust characteristics influenced
by surface conditions in thenorthern Gobi Desert, Mongolia:
natural environmental changes oranthropogenic influences?

Impact of Monsoon Drought on
Agrarian Society on the Deccan
Plateau in Western India during theGreat Famine (1876-1878)
Michihiro Ogawa

Masahide Ishizuka

Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia,
University of Toyo

Kagawa Univesity

According to the long-term observation of “AllIndia Summer Monsoon Rainfall (1871-2017)” by
the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, India
saw the lowest amount of the monsoon rainfall
in 1876, which caused the Great Famine hitting
Western, Southern and Northern India during
the period between 1876 and 1878. The famine
commission under the British rule estimated about
five million people died because of this famine.
This famine, which the colonial famine policy wasestablished based on its experience of, is one of
the main topics of political, social and economic
history of India under the British rule. The author
considered how the rainfall patterns during theGreat Famine gave an impact on the agrariansociety on the Deccan plateau in Western India
focusing on its demographic changes.
This paper attempts to reconsider the impact
given by the pattern of monsoon rainfall during
the Great Famine based on the above-mentioned
research results by the author in wider contexts,
The Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai has thesection called “famine branch” including documents
on demography, rainfall and temperature, relief
camps, crop yields, conveying of staple crops, andtheir prices. This paper discusses how the rainfall
data in the previous work by the author can beconnected to these documents, many of which theauthor newly found in the archives. This discussion
leads to revisiting previous studies on the Great
Famine from environmental perspectives.

Gantsetseg Batdelger
Information and Research Institute ofMeteorology Hydrology and Environment
Asian dust (KOSA) is a well-known natural
phenomenon that occurs in East Asia. KOSA
are soil particles those are a few micrometers indiameter and are generated by strong winds. The
amount of KOSA varies greatly depending on
differences in surface conditions such as vegetation,soil moisture, gravel, and soil crusts. Such groundsurface conditions fluctuate from year to year under
the influence of precipitation and air temperature,as they are affected by global environmental
changes. On the other hand, the ground surface
conditions are also affected by anthropogenic
influences such as grazing by sheep, goat, cow andcamels. In Mongolia, where rapid modernization
is progressing, various changes in the living
environment are occurring, and it is necessary tokeep a close eye on how the impact of changes
in the natural environment will affect the living
environment in the future.

33

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
Disaster Track (2):Disaster Science, Investigation, and Memory

Disaster Track (2):Disaster Science, Investigation, and Memory

ED2-09ED2-09

Breaking the Long Silence: The Jeju
4.3 Exhumations

Fragments of a Disaster:
The Sewol Ferry Special Investigative
Commission
Seulgi Lee

Youngkwan Ban

KAISTJeju 4.3 Peace Foundation
In 2007, after a period of 60 years of silence, theremains of 380 individuals were discovered ona tarmac near Jeju Airport in South Korea. This
airport, known for its high volume of air traffic,
experiences almost 500 heavy plane arrivals anddepartures daily. The discovery of these intertwined
bodies has given rise to a disconnect between thetragedy and its commemoration.
To date, the Jeju 4.3 exhumation has uneartheda total of 411 remains, of which 141 have been
identified. The South Korean government has
provided annual support for this project. However,victims' families are legally barred from accessing
the airstrip, and no small sign has received approvalfor display at Jeju airport, despite the presence ofmany trivial dolhareubang statues that welcome
visitors with “Welcome to Jeju.” This presentation
will explore the emergence and incompletenessof contemporary memories of the disaster and theintertwined temporality imagined around the Jeju
4.3 exhumations. The memory of disaster endures
through its survivors. For others, memories arecontemporary products that emerge from such
events. This horrific past event, in which 10% ofJeju Island’s population was massacred, is seldom
remembered in South Korean public discourse. For
the families of the victims, the airport is a colossal
grave, while for visitors, it is a gateway to an exotic
travel experience. The government has controlled
the interests of the victims and the tourism industry.
Th exhumation disrupts this balance and opens up
an unending question mark on the site of "nonspace."

A disaster investigation commission is a public
institution that investigates, collects, processes,
and analyzes materials at the after-disaster site toproduce stories and knowledge. The investigation
has been commonly understood to be an area
exclusive to science and technology experts.
However, various non-experts, including disastervictims and bereaved families are also involvedin the disaster investigation process. Despite
their significance, how disaster investigationcommissions and non-experts meet in theinvestigation process lacks a description. This
study takes the South Korean Sewol Investigation
Commission (SIC), which operated from 2017 to2018, as a case study to see the dynamics arounddigital devices found at the site of the disaster
investigation. Interviews with bereaved families
and relevant experts and also reviews of archival
documents were conducted. This study suggests a
new way to understand a disaster investigation asa process of preparing fragments of disaster thatcan be used for both forensic and memorialization
purposes which can affect healing.

34

EAEH 2023
Disaster Track (2):Disaster Science, Investigation, and Memory

Trans-Asian Sciences, Environmental Interventions,and the Diplomatic Roles in Postwar Japan andKorea

ED2-09ED2-10

The Korean Humidifier Disinfectant
Disaster and the Science:
Investigation, Responsibility, andMemoryA Japanese agricultural vision in the
1930s to 1960s, as an alternative to a
Eurocentric historical narrative
Kaori Iida

Jinyoung Park

Grad. Univ. for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI)

Pusan National University
Our perspectives of crops have been shaped bydiverse elements such as biological andarcheological knowledge, experiences fromtransnational fieldwork, cultural preferences,
national interests, and identity. Some Japanesebotanists who explored outside the Japanesearchipelago between the 1930s and 1960s observed
the people and plants in different places and tried toconstruct an alternative worldview to overcome theEurocentric world history, through plants. I look at
the plant geneticist Kihara Hitoshi and one of his
disciples, Nakao Sasuke, who were both botanists
and explorers. Kihara proposed an alternative
historical view of the emergence and movement ofbread wheat (a crop regarded as crucial for western
civilization).
Nakao inherited Kihara’s idea about agriculture/
culture and proposed an expanded theory about
agriculture in the world, which was also a counterthesis to a Eurocentric historical narrative. His idea
was highly influential among Japanese scholars aswell as the general public. This paper examines
how the Japanese views of agriculture/culture wereformed and transformed during the expansion of
the Japanese empire as well as in the period of theAmerican agricultural intervention in Southeast Asia
and what impacts they made in both agriculture andthe practice of plant conservation in and outside
Japan. I also discuss how diverse agricultural
knowledge can be decentralized/centralized andconsequently remembered or forgotten.

The humidifier disinfectant disaster (HDD) is
considered to have caused unprecedented biocide
damage worldwide. There were an estimated 7,811
victims, 1,802 deaths, and hundreds of thousands ofproduct users. Although the humidifier disinfectant
had been sold since 1994, the damage was notdiscovered until 2011. Even today, in 2023, thedisaster is said to be unresolved; as such, it isconsidered as a “slow disaster.” It took longer
than a decade for the disaster to be recognized,
and the investigation is still ongoing more thana decade later. What is the role of science after adisaster has been identified? The task of recording
and remembering disasters has always been
considered only in the realms of social movements
and politics. In the HDD case, science does notconfine itself to laboratory science on the effects ofhumidifier disinfectants on the human body. In theintersection between science and social movements,
scientists wanted the knowledge they produced
to be helpful to victims. In particular, scientists
produced knowledge and called for institutional
improvements to enhance the systems that support
victims. They gave expert testimony to aid victims
in several lawsuits.
Furthermore, after the legal ruling in favor of
the company, scientists held a press conference
and argued the court needed to redefine its
understanding of science. In this way, the process of
producing scientific knowledge following a disasteris not just a process of acquiring more reliable andaccurate knowledge but rather one of rethinking
disasters, recording and remembering disasters,
and constantly asking what the social role andresponsibility of science in disasters are.

35

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
Trans-Asian Sciences, Environmental Interventions,and the Diplomatic Roles in Postwar Japan and
Korea

Trans-Asian Sciences, Environmental Interventions,and the Diplomatic Roles in Postwar Japan andKorea

ED2-10ED2-10

Postwar American Attempts to Fostera Vernacular Model of Land Use in
East Asia

North Korea’s bird diplomacy and(Korean) Japanese ornithologists,
1963-1996
Jaehwan Hyun

Hidekazu Sensui

Pusan National University

Kanagawa University
This paper examines how trans-Asian ornithologicalresearch on migratory birds became a diplomatic
tool for North Korea-Japan relations. In particular,
it pays attention to the role of Zainichi Korean andJapanese scientists in this civilian-level diplomacy,
with a focus on the Chōsen Sōren’s (The General
Association of Korean Residents in Japan) scientificarm and the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology.
From the late 1950s on, one of Sōren’s strategies
to maintain a “normal” relationship between North
Korea and Japanese civil society was to promoteacademic exchange between the Korea University(Chōsen Daigakkō) and Japanese universities
and research institutions. At the same time, theYamashina Institute for Ornithology revitalized its
prewar research on migratory birds with new birdbanding techniques and began to extend its interest
to other Asian countries, including the two Koreas,through the US military’s trans-Asian bird-banding
initiative, “Migratory Animal Pathological Survey.”
When the institute’s founder Yamashina Yoshimaro
refashioned himself as a builder of “Conservationin Asia” and the institute became a central nodeof networks of ornithologists across the Cold War
borders, North Korea began using the institute’s
mediation between the father- and son ornithologists
Won Hong-gu and Won Pyong-oh from the two
Koreas for their propagandist works towards theircivilians and the Zainichi people. By the mid-1980s,
Zainichi ornithologist Jeong Jongryol at the Korea
University initiated bird survey collaboration with
the institute, and in doing so he aimed to tie between
Japanese and Zainichi academic institutions. His
collaborative activities led North Korea to use theWon family ornithologists’ episode for cultural
diplomacy, such as a Japanese-North Korean coproduced film. Throughout this case study, I willshed light on an overlooked history in the makingof contemporary environmental diplomacy in East
Asia: Zainichi Korean scientists’ interactions with
North Korea and Japanese scientific communities.

Michigan University Center for Japanese Studies(CJS) had a field station in the early 1950s. Its
location, Okayama, was a rare choice as a researchbase. The CJS had a prospect that Okayama
and surrounding Inland Sea area would offer avernacular model of land use, which was to be
applied to the rest of the country. The heart of thatmodel lay in commercially viable winter cropping.
Mechanized farming, which had already advanced
in Okayama Plain due to its particular geographicalenvironment, was expected to develop multicropping further.
This paper focuses on one of the CJS geographers,
Forrest R. Pitts, to illustrate that CJS’s attempts andbeyond. While participating the CJS’s joint studyof a farming settlement, Niiike, in Okayama, Pitts
conducted his dissertation fieldwork in Kagawa
across the Inland Sea and observed there that intense
multi-cropping brought relative prosperity. After
that, he obtained a postdoctoral research assignment
studying culture change of Okinawa under thecontrol of the U. S. Army. Pitts chose a farming
settlement whose socio-geological environment
was similar to Niiike and explored the possibilityof economic development following the OkayamaKagawa model. Then Pitts took a teaching positionat the University of Oregon. In 1960 the university
sent a team of specialists, including Pitts, to the
Republic of Korea to advice the Korean government
to design an economic development plan. Pitts’s
recommendation was to introduce Okayama-stylecultivators into Korean paddy fields to promote
multi-cropping.
Pitts, as well as the CJS scholars in general, seemto have had a sense of cross cultural understanding.
Pitts criticized the ethnocentrism of some American
specialists who recommended American styleagriculture to occupied Japan. He rightly saw
the Okayama style land use and cultivator better
applicable to East Asian fields.
36

EAEH 2023
Trans-Asian Sciences, Environmental Interventions,and the Diplomatic Roles in Postwar Japan and
Korea

Development and Environment (2)ED2-10ED2-11

Rho Chae-Sik, Environmental
Science, and Identifying Air Pollution,
1959-early 1970s

International aid, developmentalist
state, and local technology imitation:
The subterranean Anthropocene in
Cold War Taiwan (1950-1975)

John P. DiMoia

Chun-Yi Ho

Seoul National University

National Taiwan University

In the early 1970s, South Korean physicist Rho
Chae-shik published numerous works concerning
environmental science ( 환경과학 ), focusing inparticular on the growing problem deriving fromfactory emissions. At the same time, Rho alsoemphasized the need for preserving, and possibly
enlarging, economic growth, meaning that he soughtto accommodate this new air pollution, rather thanto eliminate or reduce it.
This perspective, framing pollution as one with arational solution, reflects Rho’s previous training in
atmospheric physics, where he first worked for the
Korean atomic industry.
Receiving an international education as one of the
Korean War-era generation of younger scientists,
Rho started as a health physicist at AERI (Atomic
Energy Research Institute), tracking solar radiationand other phenomena associated with the upper
atmosphere.
In looking for the origins of a specifically South
Korean environmental science, part of the answer
lies not simply with the existing infrastructure
and the political climate, but also with the typesof training provided to the earliest generation of
specialists, and the interaction between this new
knowledge and Korean culture. Rho’s training
shaped him to look for particular types of pollutants,
while not necessarily looking at infrastructure andcolonial history.

This article discusses how Taiwan's "undergroundwater crisis" was influenced by geopolitical power
at different scales, specifically in the context of theCold War. The article examines how international
aid agencies, which support the "free China"
government to confront PRC, supported theKuomintang (KMT) government in developing
groundwater in Taiwan. In order to prevent
over-exploitation, KMT technocrats designed agroundwater regulation regime with the assistanceof international agency experts. The key to thisregulatory regime is to control the number of wells
and to encourage farmers to use public well dug
and monitored by the government. However, due
to economic development in rural Taiwan and the
local ironsmith's ability to mimic and produce welldrilling machines, farmers are gradually willing to
dig their own (illegal) wells to obtain undergroundwater. The low usage rate of groundwater made thegroundwater development agency (Groundwater
Engineering Bureau) could not return the loan
to international aid. The terrible cost-benefic
statement made both international agencies and thecentral government of KMT gradually unwillingto support the groundwater development project in
Taiwan. Consequently, Groundwater Engineering
Bureau was abolished, and groundwater regulation
work was ignored until severe land subsidence
occurred in the 1970s. By examining how theactors at different scales impacted the politics of theunderground world, this article tries to show how
the Cold War and developmentalist state could be
the key characters of the East Asia Anthropocene.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
Development and Environment (2)Development and Environment (2)ED2-11

ED2-11Agriculture, Fertilizer, and theIndustrial Landscapes of Taiwan andSouth Korea during the 1950-60s

From Thermal Pollution to Future
Energy: Local Environment andReimagining Cold Byproduct ofSoyang Multipurpose Dam in South
Korea

Juyoung Lee

Yeonsil Kang

Johns Hopkins University

National Science Museum of Korea

Over the 1950s and 60s, numerous fertilizer plants
were built across Taiwan and South Korea. Under
the goal of nation-building, the plants in bothcountries aimed to substitute fertilizer imports
and stabilize fertilizer supplies for agricultural
productivity. Also, the fertilizer plants served as
an early stage development of the heavy chemicalindustry, providing the two post-colonial countries
with a basis for their rapid economic development
after the 1960s. Thus, fertilizer plant constructions
not only physically shaped the industrial landscapeof Taiwan and South Korea by locating factories
in different sites but also formed the economic
infrastructure of the countries.
This presentation examines the controversies
and tensions behind fertilizer plant site and typeselections in Taiwan and South Korea during the1950s. It is easy to assume that the two countries'
industrial development processes were similar,
having shared the experience of the Japanesecolonial rule, the war against the communists, andthe influence of the US superpower. However,comparing the fertilizer planning in each country
tells us that the construction of industrial landscapes
could not be reduced to the discussions on industrial
development within the post-colonial Cold War
context. This presentation explores fertilizer plant
planning during the 1950s when agriculture was still
the primary pillar of the national economy before
the era of rapid economic development. By doingso, it rather argues that the industrial landscapes of
Taiwan and South Korea resulted from the mixed
influence of their environment, agricultural practice,and social structure that goes beyond the notion of
economic development.

Soyang Multipurpose Dam (1967-1973) has been
considered one of the most praised engineeringa c h i e v e m e n t s i n m o d e r n K o r e a n h i s t o r y.
Constructed as a part of the national developmental
plans for flood control, water supply, and electricity,
the dam’s technological, environmental, andhistorical meanings have been studied, focusing
on its contribution to economic and urban growth.
Moving away from the nation-centered view, thispaper examines the local environmental changes
and the local responses by paying attention to theunexpected by-product of the dam, cold water.
Government documents, petitions, and local
newspapers demonstrate how local officers, rice
farmers, and fishers were challenged by, andnegotiated with changing water temperature andmicroclimate. A recent effort to use cold water ashydro-thermal energy to attract computing industries
will be examined, highlighting how cold water, once
considered thermal pollution, was reimagined as
an economic opportunity for the region. By paying
attention to how the local continuously negotiateswith its envirotechnical landscape, this paper
sheds light on discrepancies between the national
discourses and local experiences with the largescale energy projects. This local environmental
history of the dam complicates the technocratic
history of energy development in East Asia.

38

EAEH 2023
Development and Environment (2)Environment and art (2)ED2-11

ED2-12

Dam as a Relational Artifact: A Caseof Environmental Impact Assessmentof the Peace Dam

The Catastrophic Coastlines Shaped
by Others - Relocation, War andShipwreck
Chang, Chihchung

Jungha Hwang

Indepdndent Researcher / Artist

Seoul National University

In this presentation, the author, a visual artist andcultural researcher, focuses on his research subjects
and related art practices from recent years. He
uses the waterfront environments around Taiwan
Strait as a metaphor to explore the organic yet
fluid processes of geopolitics, locality, and identity
construction.
The presentation will showcase two recent projectbased artworks, Marshal of the Sea (2020) andDarling (2022). These artworks respectively
explore the “Hongmaogang (Ginger-haired) Harbor
Relocation Program" and the "White History (local
reference of White Horror)“ of Matsu Archipelago,which was the frontiers of the civil war under the"Republic of China, Taiwan" framework.
Marshal of the Sea, the second chapter of the"Kaohsiung Harbor trilogy" Port of Fata Morgana,intertwines the themes of drifting corpse worship in
Chinese-speaking society, Japanese colonial history,
port expansion, and national planning in Taiwan. It
exposes the hidden costs, absurdities, and dark sides
of Port of Kaohsiung, which was once the thirdlargest container port in the world.
Darling is inspired by the decipherment andreconstruction of past political propaganda during
the cold war. It translates Matsu's consciousness ofmarginality between Taiwan and China, the drastic
ecological and social changes during the martial
law period, and the long-lasting tension between
maritime networks and the concept of nationalsovereignty.
By interweaving the complex geopolitics,
environmental textures, and societal patternsof the above-mentioned waterfronts, the author
attempts to initiate a de-nationalistic and deoriented imagination of subjectivity and identity
amid “Monsoon Asia”. He draws from his own
context of Taiwanese culture, which is fluid,
peripheral, decentralized, and diverse, which leads
to his current research and art project, Between
Submergence, which connects Taiwan, South
Korea, and the Netherlands under the name ofHendrick Hamel, the "Dutch Marco Polo".

Dam engineering is a powerful technology thatenables humans to utilize and transform the
Earth’s environment in the Anthropocene. In dam
projects, environmental issues are considered
important alongside technical ones. But what do we
specifically mean by environmental issues and how
are they addressed? The environmental impactsof dam construction are not limited to the direct
destruction of the surrounding ecosystem. The
environmental impact assessment for dam projects
also considers the contextual issues of the entire
water system – such as water resource management
and flood risk – in which the dam is located.
Therefore, this paper argues that when discussing
the environmental impacts of dam construction,
dams should be regarded as ‘relational beings’
that operate with multiple artifacts along the samewaterway, rather than as stand-alone objects that
only affect their nearby surroundings.
To illustrate this, my paper examines the debate
between the South Korean government andenvironmental groups over the extension of thePeace Dam in the early 2000s. The dam wasoriginally built in response to the inundation
threat posed by North Korea’s Imnam Dam in
the 1980s and was extended in the early 2000s.
At the time, environmental groups criticized thegovernment for exaggerating the danger of Imnam
Dam failure and downplaying the environmental
damage caused by the dam extension. On theother hand, the government emphasized that thebenefit of preventing flooding in downstream areasfrom the collapse of Imnam Dam outweighed theenvironmental losses. This paper analyzes how thedebate was eventually concluded in favor of theextension of the Peace Dam in the environmental
impact assessment. It will show that the difference
between the two positions on the dam extension
arose from the different interpretation of uncertain
risks of Imnam Dam failure, revealing an intriguing
aspect of the technopolitics of dam construction.

39

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History
Environment and art (2)Environment and art (2)ED2-12ED2-12National Science Museum and Natural
History Studies of Seok Ju-myeong

Two Shores - Seawall Construction
after the Great East Japan
Earthquake and Japan's Border
Restrictions during the Pandemic:
Some Thoughts from Artist's andInternational Family's Perspective

Manyong Moon
Jeonbuk National University

Takashi Arai

Currently, South Korea is considered the only
OECD country without a natural history museum.
After the liberation in 1945, however, the National
Science Museum, which succeeded the Science
Memorial Museum of King’s Grace in Japanesecolonial period, was strongly characterized asa natural history museum in terms of members
and research, and Seok Joo-myung, the chief ofthe department of zoology, was at the center ofsuch activities. So, why did the National Science
Museum switch to a science center despite thepossibility that it could be Korea's first natural
history museum? The presentation aims tounderstand why the Science Museum chose theway of a science center, tracking its organization,
personnel, and Seok’s activities. This is also one of
the reasons why Korea has so far fialied to have the
National Museum of Natural History.

Artist, Researcher at Tono Culture ResearchCenter
The term "mizugiwa" is unique to the island nationof Japan, as it means waterfront and implies aborder, a defense line, and a quarantine line. During
the pandemic, the Japanese government imposed
strict border restrictions called "mizugiwa-taisaku/
waterfront measures," effectively banning theentry of tens of thousands of foreigners, includinginternational families and couples, foreign students,
workers, technical interns, and refugees.
The year 2021 was the 10th anniversary of theGreat East Japan Earthquake; the 500-kilometerlong seawalls along the affected coastline became
near completion.
In this presentation, my personal experiences as
an artist and international family member in Japan
during the pandemic, along with my art project
regarding the seawalls and activism against border
restrictions, will be introduced.

40

EAEH 2023

Environment and art (2)ED2-12
Taxonomy of Vessels: its Fluctuation
in Relation to the Change in Maritime
Industry and Environment
Young June Lee
Kaywon University of Arts and Design
Just as various species live in various ecologicalenvironments, various ships are distributed invarious marine environments. Ships show different
distributions according to the natural environment,
geographical environment, industrial environment,
and cultural environment. I have investigated the
distribution of such ships by exploring various ports
and sea areas on various ships on various occasions.
Just as there is a taxonomy for species, I have theidea that a taxonomy of vessels should be possible.
Just as species in an ecosystem undergo fluctuation,
the distribution of ships also changes according
to changes in industry, geography, and historicalenvironment.
In the case of Denmark's Port of Esbjer, it used
to be a fishing port for catching shrimps in thepast, but with the development of oil fields in the
North Sea from the 1960s, the number of crude
oil mining facilities has increased. Now alongwith the change from black energy (oil) to green
energy (wind), Esbjer has turned to a home to windturbine construction and installation. As China has
become the world's factory, ports such as Ningbo
and Yangsan have become ports where super-large
container ships flock. On the other hand, in the caseof Hong Kong Port, ultra-small container barges
are to be seen, reflecting the subdivided cargotransportation pattern of Hong Kong.
The distribution of ships in ports around the worldshows dynamic changes over time. The first factor
is the increase in the volume of goods transported
due to the expansion of global capitalism. In
the world's oceans, you can see ships that are
getting bigger day by day, and in particular, thedevelopment of the shipping industry in China
and Korea has dramatically increased the size ofcontainer ships. The second factor in the changeof the marine environment is environmental
regulation according to climate change. Thisappears as a change that can be witnessed in Korean

shipyards. In Korean shipyards, ships fueled by
LNG, methanol, and ammonia, which claim to beenvironmentally friendly, are more often seen. And
as the installation of wind power generation facilities
increased, domestic shipyards were also able to see
the construction of platforms for installing windturbines.
However, it is impossible to survey and classify
the distribution of ships as a whole in the world's
oceans. Therefore, in 2022, the author conducted aninvestigation centering on the national trade ports inthe southeast region of the Korean Peninsula. The
several-day research study targeting Busan, Ulsan,
and Geoje was very limited in terms of area andtime, but it was sufficient to witness what changes
were taking place in the current maritime industry
and environment. This research study is expected togive birth to a new field of knowledge called ship
taxonomy. The survey research so far is very limited,
but it is expected that the transition pattern can be
grasped in the mid- to long-term by expanding to
14 state-managed trade ports in South Korea andcomparing the distribution of ships by accumulating
research every year. After all, this research will
lay one small brick to grasp changes in the marine
environment as a whole.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Anthropocene Estuaries and Deltas (1)Anthropocene Estuaries and Deltas (1)ED2-13

ED2-13Global distribution of altered estuaries

How do estuarine dams alter tide,river, and sedimentary processes?
Lessons learned from fieldobservations and numerical modeling

Guan-hong Lee

Steven M. Figueroa

Inha University

Inha University

Global-scale analyses of 2,396 estuaries found thatestuarine area has changed in response to recent
human impacts (e.g., land reclamation, estuarine
dam construction) and economic development
between 1984 and 2019, and that estuarine area
shrank by 5372 km2 whereas upland submergencecreated 5,015 km2 of estuarine area elsewhere.
Approximately 44% (n = 1,046) of today’s
estuaries have been directly altered through land
reclamation, estuarine dam construction, or a
combination of both, and ~250,000 acres (1,027
km2) of estuarine area have been directly converted
to urban or agricultural fields. Nearly 90% (923km2) of land reclamation occurred in Asia linked
to recent advances in the economic developmentof the middle-income stage. Additional historicalmapping and 5-year interval analyses revealed
that human alteration was insignificant in the lowincome stage, but estuaries were predominantely
altered during their middle-income stages, where
estuarine degradation is a common consequence ofeconomic growth. This study suggests that largescale estuarine loss can be avoided by preserving
estuaries in low- and mid-income countries in theearly stages of economic development.

Estuarine dams are dams constructed in estuaries tosecure freshwater and stabilize water levels.
While they can provide these benefits, they canalso alter estuarine tide, river, and sedimentary
processes. How this occurs is not wellunderstood. To address this, we review here
recent advances gained from modeling and fieldobservations.
Both models and observations show that estuarine
dams shorten estuaries and alter their processes.
Tidal processes are strongly affected byestuarine dams. This is due to reflection of thetidal wave and resonant processes. When theestuarine dam is located at the resonance length,tides are increased, whereas when it is located atless than the resonance length, the tides are
reduced. Reduction of tidal currents is importantin tide-dominated estuaries and can result in
landward transport of shelf sediment to theestuarine dam by the tides. River processes arealso affected, as the previously continuous
freshwater discharge is converted into
episodic discharge released by sluice gates. As
the interval between discharges increases, theestuary departs more from its pre-dam condition.
Shift to episodic discharge is important in riverdominated estuaries and can result in seaward
pulses of river sediment depositing in the estuary
and near its mouth.
Altogether, estuarine models and field observations
provide complimentary insights into how estuarine
dams affect estuaries. These insights will
be valuable to understand present and future
processes and products especially in East Asia,
such as China, Korea, and Japan, as these regions
have a relatively high density of estuarine dam
developments.

42

EAEH 2023

Anthropocene Estuaries and Deltas (1)Anthropocene Estuaries and Deltas (1)ED2-13

ED2-13

Asian deltas/estuaries and the
Anthropocene

Habitat alterations and geomorphic
response to estuarine dams and land
reclamation on the Korean Peninsula
Timothy Dellapenna

Yoshi Saito

Texas A&M University

Shimane University
As countries deal with accelerated sea level rise,
climate change and expanding coastal populations,a range of estuarine engineering solutions have been
applied. However, these alterations have associatedfeedbacks and impacts to the natural system. On
the Korean Peninsula, engineered solutions include
extensive tidal flat land reclamation, installation ofextensive seawalls and sea dikes and the building ofestuarine dams and barrages. Over the past century
these practices have considerably modified theshoreline and altered both net transport of sedimentand freshwater from these systems and modulated
the timing and intensity of the discharge. Of theSouth Korean estuaries with drainage basins >500
km2, 56% contain estuarine dams, and 71% withdrainage basins larger than 1000 km2. These
closures have resulted in conversion of significant
portions of the estuaries into freshwater lakes andthe significant loss of tidal flats. The micro-tidal
Nakdong and macro-tidal Yeongsan, and Geum
estuaries are prime examples. Detailed marine
geological and geophysical investigations revealthat the impacts of the modifications include a
substantial decrease in the tidal prism and tidal
flushing; dramatic reduction of accommodation
space for sediment within the intertidal zones;
orders of magnitude increases in sedimentaccumulation rates within the estuaries; redistribution of habitat by conversion of substrate
type; formation of barrier islands; and trapping ofsand atop former muddy substrates on the proximal
shelf. In the Geum estuary, preservation of totalorganic carbon in post-dam estuarine sedimentis half of what was found in pre-dam sediment,
potentially suggesting an associated decrease in
primary productivity. Conceptual estuarine facies
models have been developed that can be used to
predict changes in other estuaries where dams havebeen installed and for planning purposes to illustrate
the range of potential impacts in estuaries wheredams and other modifications are being considered.

The coastal areas of Asia are characterized bylarge deltas formed during the Holocene, which aredensely populated and are areas of many important
activities, including agriculture, industry, fisheries,
and transportation. Nine of the world's 16 largest
rivers in terms of sediment discharge are in Asia,and the region is characterized by large deltaic
plains relative to their catchments, resulting from
relatively stable sea levels over the past 6000
years, high sediment yield in their catchments,and high precipitation due to monsoon climate.
Human activities such as deforestation in thedrainage basins of these mega-deltas over the last
1000-2000 years have increased sediment delivery
and accelerated the growth of the deltas. Since
1950, however, many deltas have been threatenedby human activities such as dam construction,afforestation, and sediment extraction, (sand andgravel mining), resulting in a decrease in sediment
discharge. Rising sea levels due to global warming
and land subsidence due to excessive groundwater
pumping have increased vulnerability. Deltas thatdeveloped in the Holocene are collapsing in the
Anthropocene, and sustainable use and conservationof deltas are urgently needed.

43

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Rethinking human and nature

Rethinking human and nature

ED2-14

ED2-14

Formalising the Anthropocene:science, law and geo-forensicality

Philosophy of Decomposition: Waste,
Art and Ecology

Alexander Damianos

Tatsushi Fujihara

University of Kent

Kyoto University

The Anthropocene presents a compelling paradox:
it suggests that human activity is so intense as
to have fundamentally changed the material
constitution of the planet; a geological event on parwith the extinction of dinosaurs, or the end of thelast ice age. Yet it also confirms human finitude. It
implies that humanity is simply a passing event,and that one day the planet will go on without us,
albeit substantially altered by our lapsed presence.
In this paper, I provide an outline of how such a
premise is formalised as geo-scientific fact. I argue
that the effort to formalise the Anthropocene asa geological unit unfolds as a juridical exercise.
Geologists generate new categories of artefacts,
such as the technofossil, in order to illicit accountsof human finitude and planetary dynamics frommundane artefacts of every-day life (plastic bottles,
the bones of genetically engineered chickens, theconcrete foundations of buildings and transportation
networks). The Anthropocene Working Group draw
on the formalisation of previous geological units as
precedent, according to which they structure theiraccount of the Anthropocene, so as to encourageconsensus within the geo-scientific community.
They engage a formal decision making procedure,
submitting their proposal for an Anthropocene
unit to the judgement of their peers. What can welearn, therefore, from an account of geo-science
as a juridical affair? How does the narration of
the Anthropocene as a geological Epoch/Seriesof the International Chronostratigraphic Chart
unfold not simply as a geo-scientific fact but also
as a technique of legal, political and sociologicalarticulation as well? Although I may not fully answer
these questions, my account of the Anthropocene
Working Group’s ongoing formalisation effort seeks
to open a dialogue between disciplines in the faceof earthly finitude.

In this presentation, I would like to consider thenatural philosophy of the coming society based on
my book "Philosophy of Decomposition," publishedin Japanese in 2019 and translated into Korean in
2022, and subsequent conversations with readers.
I would like to focus on three main points here.
First, to clarify how "decomposers" have been
discussed in the history of ecology and to consider
their meaning in the ecosystem. We would like toexamine how microorganisms have been regarded
as a group of organisms. Second, to question theconcept of "environment" that we take for granted
by depicting the fertile world of decomposition
within humans, especially in our internal organs.
Third, to discuss the deep relationship between sucha worldview of decomposition and art. For example,
we would like to introduce some dialogues withartists who used this book for their works. Fromthese three points, I would like to challenge thephilosophy surrounding the deep dimension ofnature that we have stopped thinking about by using
the word "environment".

44

EAEH 2023

Rethinking human and nature

Rethinking human and nature

ED2-14

ED2-14Culture is emphasized in the pursuitof sustainability

The Matter and Meaning of Naturesin East Asia

Cheong-Ho Yi

Taewoo Kim

Korea University

Kyung Hee University

If a new perspective on humans, who have been
forming and conserving the environment andtechnology at all imaginable levels were to be
accepted as the premise, the sustainable ecologicaland technological management of a coupled systemof ecosystem and society (nature and humans)
could be formulated and elucidated under theconcept of cultural sustainability, one in which theforces of human culture exerted by new humans areemphasized in pursuing and achieving sustainability.
The interaction between humans and environment,or technology, should be maintained at a long-term
culturo-natural balance for at least many generations
with a resilience against possible ecological or
techno-social disturbances. And this imperative is to
be attained by a sustainable increase in the literacies
of ecosystem and technoscience on behalf ofhumanity, including East Asians and those living in
the other parts of the world. Objectives for the ecoliteracy include the care, not only for endangered
bio-species under the threats of extinction, butalso for cultural bio-species, which have playeda significant role in the shaping of human culture
and traditional knowledge. The technoscince
literacy in the Anthropocene, especially in the civic
epistemology, can be developed and appropriatedin the technology politics which pursue cultural
sustainability and the interaction between humans
and newly emerging technologies be balanced in a
culturally sustainable culture.

Nature has never been singular. The heightened
discussions on the turn to ontology and materiality
have critiqued one Nature that is separate from, yet
simultaneously deeply embedded in, the conceptof culture. Viveiros de Castro’s conceptualizationof multinaturalism and Descola’s elaboration ofplural ontologies exemplify the potential of morethan one nature. In East Asia, the plurality of“natures” has been exhibited spectacularly at thedawn of modernity when nature, referring to Tao Te
Ching (道德經), was translated as shizen (自然) inJapanese, that is followed by the dissemination of
the translated term throughout East Asia. This study
points to this historical moment of translation—
between an East-Asian-ontology laden concept[自然] and a modern dualistic notion [Nature]—as a crucial moment for the Asian Anthropocence.
This study argues that the translation of nature
was not just linguistic practice but a discursivematerial imposition of territory on which discourses
and practices of modern configuration have beenenacted. Referring to Karen Barad’s (2007) Meeting
the Universe Halfway and citing the inseparabilityof matter and meaning, this study delves into
natures enacted in East Asia since the translation of
the word. This study’s discussion of plural natures
will not only provide a new materialist perspective
for the history of nature, but also show thepossibility of alternative trajectories in practicing
nature and discussing the Anthropocence.
Barad, Karen (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway:
Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter andMeaning, Duke University Press.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

An Environmental History of the Asian
Monsoon: Linking Climate Change Science andClimate Adaptation Science (2)An Environmental History of the Asian
Monsoon: Linking Climate Change Science andClimate Adaptation Science (2)ED2-15

ED2-15

Post flood management and thehistory of the rice-based agriculture
development in Bangladesh

A relation between a river and local
residents: A study from the viewpointof environmental history

Haruhisa Asada

Hideyuki Kamimera

Nara Women's University

National Research Institute for Earth Scienceand Disaster Resilience

Bangladesh suffers from frequent floods due tothe low-lying deltaic topography formed by theGanges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers, aswell as the heavy monsoon rains. Partly due tothis unfavorable natural environment, Bangladesh
was one of the poorest countries in Asia until the
1990s, with a per capita GDP of less than USD
300. However, since the mid-2000s, the country
has experienced rapid economic development and
now has a per capita GDP of over USD 2,000. The
economic growth can be attributed to a significant
increase in the productivity of the staple food grain,rice cultivation, during the 1990s and 2000s. This
increase in rice productivity may have contributed
to the elimination of rural poverty and facilitatedindustrialization. Rice productivity increased
drastically during years with severe floods. While
the wet season Aman rice crop was directly
affected by the floods, the subsequent dry season
Boro rice cultivation greatly expanded the plantedarea, resulting in an overall increase in total riceproduction compared to pre-flood levels. This
study analyzed newspaper articles during the postflood seasons of four severe flood years (1988-89,
1998-99, 2004-05, 2007-08) to reveal the socioeconomic background behind the changes in rice
cropping systems. As a result, the followings were
found. 1) To address food shortages during theMonga season, seedlings of short-duration varieties
had to be replanted for Aman cultivation. The
new rice varieties were still planted after the flood
years. 2) For Boro cultivation, more seedlings weretransplanted on silted riverbeds and char lands tocompensate for the loss of Aman rice. The effortsof the government and farmers to address foodshortages during the post-flood seasons likely
influenced the cropping patterns and contributed tothe increased rice production levels in the country.

In this talk, we attempt to discuss a relation between
a river, as a part of nature, and local residents along
the river, as a human society, with a case study ina local community in Niigata Prefecture in Japan
from the viewpoint of environmental history.
I n t h e c o m m u n i t y, l o c a l r e s i d e n t s h a d agood relationship with the river with a goodunderstanding of the river, as a part of nature, sinceancient times.
Because the river sometimes provided too
much water to the community and submerged
the community, local residents had continued tobuild on their own local, traditional knowledge toharmonize their own rhythms in daily lives to therhythm of nature.
However, with the development of the modern
society and economy, splendid embankments wereconstructed along the river.
Because the river water rarely overflows after theconstruction of the embankments, local residents
have lost an interest in flooding; and the local,
traditional knowledge to live with the river floods isbeing lost in the community.
It may seem that disaster resilience in thecommunity has been enhanced by the constructionof the embankments, but in fact, it may be
deteriorating due to the lack of preparedness forfloods with the local, traditional knowledge.
We would like to deepen our discussion of such
issues from the viewpoint of environmental history.

46

EAEH 2023

An Environmental History of the Asian
Monsoon: Linking Climate Change Science andClimate Adaptation Science (2)ED2-15
Asian dust characteristics influenced
by surface conditions in thenorthern Gobi Desert, Mongolia:
natural environmental changes oranthropogenic influences?
Masahide Ishizuka
Kagawa University
Gantsetseg Batdelger
Information and Research Institute ofMeteorology Hydrology and Environment
Asian dust (KOSA) is a well-known natural
phenomenon that occurs in East Asia. KOSA
are soil particles those are a few micrometers indiameter and are generated by strong winds. The
amount of KOSA varies greatly depending on
differences in surface conditions such as vegetation,soil moisture, gravel, and soil crusts. Such groundsurface conditions fluctuate from year to year under
the influence of precipitation and air temperature,as they are affected by global environmental
changes. On the other hand, the ground surface
conditions are also affected by anthropogenic
influences such as grazing by sheep, goat, cow andcamels. In Mongolia, where rapid modernization
is progressing, various changes in the living
environment are occurring, and it is necessary tokeep a close eye on how the impact of changes
in the natural environment will affect the living
environment in the future.

47

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

An Environmental History of the Asian
Monsoon: Linking Climate Change Science andClimate Adaptation Science (2)ED2-15The Recent Change of Monsoonal Climate
And It's Impact on Environment, Society& Sustainability of Ukhiya, Cox's Bazar,
Bangladesh-A case Study

A. T. M .Shakhawat Hossain
Jahangirnagar University

Toru Terao
Kagawa University
Bangladesh is a Asian tropical monsoonal Country
and the recent precipitation pattern in the southeastern folded part of Bangladesh including
Ukhiya, Cox’s Bazar area is changing due to recentchange of climate and increasing the number ofmonsoonal slope failures and landslide hazards inthe Kutubpalong & Balukhali Rohingya camp area
and are threatening the livelihood, environment &society. More than one million Rohingya refugees
migrated from Myanmar constructed temporary
shelters on the loose unconsolidated sandy hills of
Ukhia-Teknaf region, Cox’s Bazar area, Bangladesh.
After entering Bangladesh they destroyed the green
eco forests of Ukhia Hills by cutting trees and hillslopes and destroying the eco system of Ukhia_
Teknaf region. These hills are mainly composedof loose to very loose unconsolidated sandy soils(SC, SM) with silty Clay (ML) or shales. Somesands are moderately dense clayey Sand (SP).
Sands are mainly uniformly graded and composedof more than 72% to 98 % sand. This research has
been carried out to assess the slope related risks
during monsoon in the camp area using factor ofsafety values. This paper will present the influenceof rain water, seasonal variation of ground waterlevel (GWL) fluctuations on the stability of the eco
hills and forests of Ukhiya Teknaf region. Ukhiya
hills are at great danger because of anthropogenic
activities, cutting trees from the hill slopes andit is well established that due to recent change ofclimate, short term rainfall for few consecutive
days during monsoon might show an influence on
the factor of safety (Fs) values of the camp hillslopes. A clear G.W.L. variation between dry andwet seasons has an influence on the stability (Fs))
values indicate that monsoonal rainfall has a strong

influence on the stability. A stable or marginallystable slope might be unstable during raining andshow a variation of ground water level (GWL). The
generation of pore water pressure (P.W.P.) is also
influenced by seasonal variation of ground waterlevel. During wet season negative P.W.P calledsuction plays an important role to occur slope
failures in the Ukhiya hills. Proper geo-engineering
measures must be taken by the concerned authorizes
to reduce P.W.P. during monsoon by installingrain water harvesting system, allowing sufficientdrainage & other geotechnical measures to reduce
the risk of slope failures in the Ukhia hills. Based on
the stability factor (Fs) at different slope locationsof the camp hills, a risk map of the Kutubpalong& Balukhali camp has been prepared for the local
community for their safety and motivate them toevacuate the site during monsoon. Adaptation &motivation campaign, mitigation measures, training
program have been introduced in the investigatedarea for community based societal & sustainable
development to reduce the climate related risks.
Keywords: Rohingyas, Stability, Climate, Sustainable
Development & Risk .

48

EAEH 2023

Disaster Track (3):Disastrous Futures in Uncertain Environments

Disaster Track (3):Disastrous Futures in Uncertain Environments

ED2-16

ED2-16

Indian Ocean Science:
From a “Vast Unknown” to Slow
Disaster

The Forest-Thinning Policy Caused
Wildfire Disasters?: Forestry in South
Korea 1998-2022

Vivian Choi

Hyeonbin Park

St. Olaf College

KAIST

According to the Fifth Assessment Report of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC), the earth is absorbing more heat than it isemitting back into space, 93% of which has beenabsorbed in the world’s oceans over the last 40
years. While this warming trend encapsulates all
oceans of the world, it has been observed that the
Indian Ocean, already the world’s warmest ocean
basin, has been warming at a rate faster than all
oceans. These changes in the Indian Ocean havepotentially grave consequences on life in the air,land, and sea. In response to these concerns andthe significant social impacts they will have, aninternationally supported and coordinated groupof scientists have been collaborating to examine
these still- understudied changes and dynamics
of the Indian Ocean. Prior to these contemporary
collaborative efforts of scientific investigation was
the first International Indian Ocean Expedition(IIOE) conducted between 1959-1965, and thefirst international effort of this kind. In scientificexploration, investigation, and discovery, theIndian Ocean has not been a uniform space,surface, or object. This paper traces some of theseheterogeneous articulations. How has the Indian
Ocean transformed from “a vast unknown,” into theobject of scientific knowledge, care, and concern
it is today? Rather than take the Indian Ocean as astatic object that connects territories, or is traversed
by people and ships, I stress that its changing forms
expressed in scientific investigations are worthyof examination and furthermore, provide anothermethod of revealing social and political tensions,connections, and movements.

Recently, South Korea, especially the northeasternpart of the territory, Gangwon Province andGyeongsang Province, has been undergoing largescale wildfires. Whenever large-scale wildfires
break out, innovations in technological means, suchas larger fire helicopters, monitoring systems, andeven firefighting drones, are recalled to cope withwildfires. Moreover, climate change, by increasing
atmospheric temperature and exacerbating the
drought, is considered a key factor in elevating
wildfire risks; hence more integrated wildfire
management strategies are required. However, in
2022, some scholars and wildfire policy experts inSouth Korea began to criticize the forest-thinning orforest-tending policy since 1998 as a root cause of
the amplified wildfires. The forest thinning practices
were originally initiated and operated to promote
public employment in response to the 1997 Asianfinancial crisis. The forest-thinning policy was
understood as a reasonable approach to managing
dense forests after more than twenty years ofnational afforestation projects for the purposeof developing forest industry, forest ecology,
water resource management, and also reductionof wildfires. Recent large-scale wildfires give an
opportunity to reflect on the history of forestry
science and policy in South Korea. Drawing thenotion of “slow disaster” and perspectives fromscience and technology studies (STS), this work
traces how the wildfire disasters are entangled with
political economics throughout history and how
the disasters opened the controversy of the forestthinning science and policy.

49

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Disaster Track (3):Disastrous Futures in Uncertain Environments

National Development, Transnational
Environment: Environmental History of theCold War in the Two Koreas

ED2-16

ED2-17

Health-Related Harm andVulnerability in Slow Disasters(Climate Crises):
A Conceptual Exploration

Securitising Fisheries in Cold War
Environmental Histories of the Sea of
Okhotsk

Choi Eun Kyung

Robert Winstanley-Chesters

Kyungpook National University

University of Edinburgh/ University of Leeds

Traditional health issues in disasters focus on theidentification of medical needs, emergency
response, and surveillance and follow-up of publichealth impacts following a sudden onset of an event.
The health impact of an event can also be measured
in terms of the cause, magnitude, and impact ofharm over a short time frame. However, in a slowonset disaster such as a climate crisis, the traditional
concept of health-related harm in disasters canbe challenged. For one thing, it is not always
clear who is causing the harm, and if the effects
are cumulative across subsequent generations, it
can be difficult to prove that someone has been
harmed. Furthermore, the scale of harm can bedifficult to predict, making it difficult to apply the
precautionary principle. Vulnerability is also an
emerging concept in climate justice. However, it
has only recently been reframed as a hazard-specificand socially contextualized concept, including
the distribution of harm, sensitivity to harm, andadaptive capacity. To understand disasters asprocesses, it is necessary to understand vulnerability
as a concept embedded in socio-natural harm. This
study conceptually explores health-related harm andvulnerability within the frame of 'slow disasters',
which focuses on disasters as processes, such as
climate crises. By conceptualizing health-related
harm and vulnerability in disasters, we explore howhealth and justice in disasters can be consideredalongside compensatory and restorative justice. Thisis the first step in an attempt to situate communities
and health in disasters within a long-term process ofadverse affect and recovery by examining relevant
concepts such as social determinants of health,historical justice, and health justice capabilities.

Environmental histories of North Korea are few,
but those available have focused mainly on war
and military matters, the chemicalization of its
agriculture and accompanying reduction in soil
health, the ecological aspects of the 38 th parallel
and then environmental and institutional collapsethat befell the nation in the 1990s. Such histories
have rarely focused on the sea, yet maritime space
has historically been vital to North Korean politicodevelopmental narratives.
This paper therefore considers North Koreanmaritime environmental history, interaction withinternational partners and competitors through thelens of what Jane Bennett has termed“vibrant” orlively matters. The paper also has in mind the workof Carmel Finley on the geo- politics of fishing in
the Pacific and Ryan Tucker Jones on environmental
histories around the nearby Commander Islands
and other efforts of Imperial Russia to extract value
from the sea.
Building on previous work by the author outlining
the institutional and political fishing histories ofPyongyang, the paper traces developments in North
Korean maritime environmental interactions with
the Soviet Union in the 1960’s and 1970s. Drawing
on archival material from the Russian State Archiveof the Economy and the Soviet Union’s Ministryof Fisheries Archive the paper considers thehistorical reality of such encounters. In particular
the paper analyses research exchanges focused on
environmental matters between North Korea andthe Soviet Union and the complexities and security
paradoxes created by them, as well as North Korean
and Soviet fishing encounters in the Sea of Okhotsk
and around the Commander Islands. Fish, Fisheries
Researchers and Fishing Technologies are certainly
vibrant, active, lively matters in the environmental
histories and landscapes of exchange between these
two nations and their complex relationships ofsocialist fraternity and competition.
50

EAEH 2023

National Development, Transnational
Environment: Environmental History of theCold War in the Two Koreas

National Development, Transnational
Environment: Environmental History of theCold War in the Two Koreas

ED2-17

ED2-17

From Model to Norm? – The Forest
Management Cooperatives in Uljugun, 1970-80s

Preservation as a Force ofDevelopment: Local, National, andCold War Dynamics in the Making ofSouth Korea’s First National Park

Max Altenhofen

Jaeyoung Ha

University of Tübingen

UC San Diego
From 1974 to 1984 the West German and South
Korean governments conducted a partner project
on forest management in Ulju county, South
Gyeongsan Province. The main objective was
the support of Korean afforestation efforts in thelight of the first ‘Ten-Year Forest Rehabilitation
Plan’ (1973–1982). Due to the high parcellation
rate of the forest land, the project aimed topromote the establishment of forest management
cooperatives (FMC) modelled after the forest
owner organizations (Waldbesitzervereinigung)in the West German province Hesse. Following
statistical surveys on the forest owner’s needs, thefirst FMCs were established in Ulju county in 1978.
As the FMCs gained great popularity amongst theforest owners, the model was subsequently adopted
by the Korean National Forestry Cooperative
Federation (NFCF) and transferred to other regions
all over the country throughout the 1980s. The
cooperatives contributed to the economic livelihoodof the rural population and enabled the transfer
of forest management skills and practices to theforest owners. Besides, the forest owners could
actively participate in decision-making processeson the local level, which constitutes a fundamental
difference to the mandatory membership insanlimkye. The project therefore provides analternative to the Korean government’s top-down
approach. While current Korean Studies andhistorical research on rural development mostly
focused on top-down movements like the Saemaul
Undong, this case study highlights different, more
inclusive and democratic approaches of ruraldevelopment. 45 years after the start of the FMC
project, in 2020, a new cooperative
under the name ‘Centennial Forest Project’ wasestablished by forest owners and civic groups in
Ulju county and Ulsan, which builds upon theachievements of the FMCs and is designed to deal
with the current challenges of climate change. Thisshows the attractiveness of cooperative models in
Korean forestry until today.

This paper investigates how South Korea’s local
elites, South Korea’s developmental regime, andU.S. preservationists contested but also cooperated
over South Korea’s first national park projectaround Mt. Jiri during the Park regime. In sodoing, this paper illuminates how Mt. Jiri’s local
communities capitalized on the U.S. and Park
regime’s what I call developmental preservationism
as a chance to prompt the modernization of theirhometown. The steep valleys around Mt. Jiri
remained underdeveloped in the aftermath ofbloody anti-communist partisan warfare that lasted
for a decade until 1955. Even after the end of thepartisan war, Mt. Jiri’s forest suffered deforestationand overlogging by garrisoned soldiers andswidden cultivators. To stop the deforestation,
local intellectuals sought assistance from the South
Korean government
and International Commission on National Parks(ICNP), a worldwide organization that offered anational park planning service in affiliation with
the U.S. government. First, this paper demonstrates
how the South Korean government and ICNP aimed
to establish the first national park around a wellpreserved alpine forest in South Korean highlands.
Next, this paper examines how this plan triggered
Mt. Jiri’s locals to organize a campaign to establish
the first national park around their hometown.
This paper also highlights the contestation among
localists, government officials, and ICNP planners
over how Mt. Jiri should be “developed” as an ideal
natural park. By doing so, this paper illustrates how
efforts to preserve the environment were interwoven
and contested to Park regime’s plan to develop the“nation’s land (gukto).”51

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

National Development, Transnational
Environment: Environmental History of theCold War in the Two Koreas

ED2-17
Green Utopia House: The
Transnational Entanglements of
Housing Development and EcoSocialism in Postwar North Korea
Sulim Kim
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
This article investigates how North Korea
standardized its socialist housing while theoreticallyinterpreting and practicing eco-socialism
during the early national plans (1954-1967). To
improve the housing shortage after the severe
destruction in the Korean War, postwar North
Korea conducted the socialist urban experiments
alongside fraternal socialist countries. German
Working Group reconstructed apartments in
Hamhung and Hungnam, Polish architects
supervised reconstruction in Ch’ongjin’s residential
districts, and North Korean housing engineers
shared construction experience internationallythrough architecture magazines and internationalarchitecture congresses led by the Soviet
Union. North Korea was involved in varioustransnational movements, including ecologicalsocialism. North Korea emphasized parks andgardens near residential complexes, considered air
pollution during housing planning, reconstructedhouses in Botong slum to improve sanitationand prevent diseases near the Botong river, anddebated deforestation related to domestic heating.
However, such environmental consciousness oftentranslated into industrialization, exploiting natural
resources, demonstrating that North Korea was also
troubled by the issues of all postwar socialist andcapitalist countries simultaneously implementing
environmental protection and industrialization.
Addressing state- led housing construction and thepromotion of juche ideology in North Korea, thisarticle avoids perpetuating perceptions that urban
planning was only a showcase dictated by thestate. North Korean engineers, foreign engineers,and residents in North Korea exchanged theirdifferent opinions on urban experiments, and theyalso played a critical role in determining the styleof modern socialist construction and ecologicalthinking in North Korea. This article mainly argues
that North Korea’s housing development should beviewed as beyond the simple Cold War dichotomy
and as the complicated result of a transnationaland multilateral history that cannot be reduced
to a single image of Koreanized socialist urban
planning. This research relies on a range of primarysources from North Korea, including architecture
magazines and journals, official documents,
newspapers, and literature, along with records fromother socialist countries.
Keywords: North Korean modernization, ecosocialism, housing development

52

EAEH 2023

Development and Environment (3)Development and Environment (3)ED2-18ED2-18The Transformation of Large SocioTechnological System with Chinese
Features: A Case Study of T Power
Plant'Localizing' Energy for Nation?: theNuclear Fuel Development Project inSouth Korea, 1976-1989
Yeseul Park

Rui LIU

Seoul National University

National Taiwan University

This paper examines a representative South Koreancase of technology transfer and its “localization(kuksanhwa)”—importing technology from foreign,developed countries, and then giving it a new
cultural identity as “domestic (kuksan)” technology.
The case in point is the Pressurized Heavy Water
Reactor (PHWR) and Pressurized Water Reactor(PWR) fuel development project from 1976 to 1989,
which aimed to secure core nuclear technology toestablish the nation’s nuclear power industry under
U.S. pressure to block nuclear proliferation sincethe 1970s. Particular emphasis will be placed on
showing how the path of nuclear technology transfer
to South Korea was set and then shifted, depending
significantly on ideological and political orientationsof the two institutions that competed with eachother for gaining the initiative in these projects: theKorea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI)
and the Korea Electric Power Company (KEPCO).
This paper argues that these two institutions’political and technological strategies of technology
transfer, or their “technopolitics” to use Gabrielle
Hecht’s term, were summed up by their diverging
ideas of “localization,” which led the engineers of
the two institutes to produce different designs of
PHWR and PWR. KAERI regarded “localization”
as an independent technology development bySouth Korean scientists without any involvementof foreign companies. This reflects their experienceof being devoted to developing nuclear weaponsconfidentially under U.S. surveillance during the1970s. In contrast, KEPCO understood it as the
production of fuel in South Korea, regardless offoreign companies’ participation. This shows theirsituation, which should import guaranteed nuclear
technology to supply electricity stably when aheavy and chemical industrialization policy was
implemented in the 1970s. In short, although
KAERI and KEPCO sought to “localize” nuclear
fuel technology, the way to realize this was different
based on their particular needs to consolidate theirposition.

Chih-hung WANG
National Taiwan University
This article explored the transformation of the T
power plant from the 1990s to today. The T power
plant was in Shaanxi province and was built during
the Third Front Movement in China. After theelectricity power system reform during the 1990s,
T Power Plant was ‘kicked out’ from the state gridand had to seek privatization. However, early inthe 2000s, when China launched the west-east
electricity transmission project, T Power Plant wasagain integrated into the state-owned enterprise, butwith a mode of the energy industry and investment.
Inspired by Thomas P. Hughes and Timothy
Moss' ideas, this article developed the theoreticalperspective of the large socio-technological system,
which focused much on the party-state system anduneven urban-rural relationship that was absorbed
and stretched through the birth and rebirth trajectoryof the T power plant. We put forward the following
arguments. (1) The coal power plant during
the early days was a system that was not only atechnological project but also a life-supporting
network that integrated (re)production with living
life. (2) Although the T was not in the city area, it
was part of the urban welfare system that contrasted
with the surrounding countryside. (3) The
transformation of the T power plant also revealed
the politics of scaling with the energy transit inChina. In sum, the T power plant is large sociotechnological system and impacts on the social andecological environment in a way different from thewestern context.

53

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Development and Environment (3)Development and Environment (3)ED2-18ED2-18

Grassroots activism meets thesustainability fix: Urban agriculture
policymaking and contested
governance in South Korea

Sacredness ThroughCommodification: Attempts toNormalize Invasive Species in The
Indonesian Ornamental Fish Trade

Ilana Herold

Michael Wollrath

KAIST

Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenber

Urban Agriculture (UA) is touted by governments
and civil groups around the world as a way for
urban citizens to connect with nature, battle foodinsecurity, and even lessen the anthropogenic
burden on the climate system through shortening
food supply chains. At the same time, agriculture
and urbanization are both drivers and recipients ofexpansive changes in ecological and socioeconomic
systems in the Anthropocene era. Despite Korea’s
extensive history as an agrarian society, formal UA
civil movements emerged only recently, and thehistory of official UA policies is even shorter still.
This paper traces the history of UA movements andpolicies in Korea, arguing that in several phases
what began as a citizen movement was subsequently
taken up by the government and re-shaped to meetrural-urban relations and sustainable development
policy goals. This process has led to both astandardization of UA practices and an ongoingre-negotiation between “green” policy goals andeveryday citizen visions for urban cultivation in
the Korean context. What began as an exodusof urbanites seeking to escape the increasingly
crowded and polluted capital area on the weekends
in the 1960s was molded into a program for citydwellers to understand the plight of farmers in
the 1990s. Taking off with new vigor in the early
2000s, a more formalized civil movement striving
for small-scale urban cultivation in tune to naturalprocesses and minimal disturbance of the land
was still in its infancy when a “low carbon, green
growth” policy agenda swooped in, leading to thecreation of a federal UA law in 2011. The ongoing
evolution of UA in Korea, now contending withthe application of “4th Industrial Revolution”
technology to agriculture, offers a potent exampleof how top-down sustainability policies, bottom-up
practices, and human-nature relations converge in aperiod of immense planetary change.

This presentation focuses on three invasivefish species, the arapaima (Arapaima gigas),
alligator gar (Atractosteus spatula), and snakehead(Channa striata), and their respective histories
in the Indonesian ornamental fish trade. The
results presented show that their introduction is
directly linked to the popularity of a native fish
species of high economic value (Asian Arowana)
and a perceived similarity to its morphologicalcharacteristics. Furthermore, the results show that
normalizations are (temporarily) accomplished byachieving some degree of "sacredness" throughcommodification. The tension between sacredness
and commodification is a common theme ingeography as it relates to the impact of humanactivities on natural and cultural landscapes.
Sacredness is traditionally associated with thecultural significance of a place, which often
excludes these spaces from "secular" activities
such as commercial use. Commercialization, on
the other hand, refers to the transformation of
objects, places, or cultural practices into marketableproducts or experiences. This tension is particularly
important at the species level as well, as it often
influences which species are accepted and which
are excluded. The collected findings suggest that
this tension is unraveling and reversing in an
increasingly integrative capitalism that seeks evernew pathways to generate profits. Overall, thisstudy highlights the importance of recognizing theornamental fish trade as a major pathway for species
introductionsespecially in relation to invasive
species and their impacts on native ecosystems.
Further, this research also sheds light on how
seemingly unrelated species are linked througheconomic processes.

54

EAEH 2023

Pollution and rehabilitation

Pollution and rehabilitation

ED2-19ED2-19Artistic perspectives on transitionsin post/extractive landscapes at the
rubicon of the post-anthropocene: thecase of Lusatia’s landscapes

Anthropocene Literacy: From a
National Industrial Complex in SouthKorea

Kat Austen

Seulgi Lee

UCL and Studio Austen

KAIST

Lusatia is a place of liminality, a region that
predates the German/Polish national borders that
dissect it. Alongside being the home to Sorbs, aminority Western-Slavic community, the region
is well known for its brown-coal mining industry.
Indeed, the dominance of the large opencast mineson the landscape is paralleled in their dominanceof the narrative of Lusatia's identity. The open castlignite mining, which involves scraping away theearth’s surface by driving a digger the size of ahouse, has given economic security with one hand
while taking away homes and historic sites withthe other. Hundreds of villages, mostly Sorbian,were destroyed in the process, adding to existing
challenges for maintaining Sorbian culture andheritage.
The relationship of the region with extractionof long carbon reserves (or, as they are morecommonly known, fossil fuels) is extremelycomplex and many entities hold a stake in theconsequences and future of the activity, including
humans, waterways, proand animals. However, thisindustry is set to end in just under 20 years, andwhile old mines are already filled with water acrossthe region, questions remain about what will fill theholes left by the mines in the future economy andindustry, and in society.
This paper reports on the outcomes of an artistic
research project, This Land is Not Mine, focussed
on human, non-human and more-than-humanidentity in the region of Lusatia. The researchlooked at and beyond the epic scale of open
cast mining activity. Using methods including
participatory sound studies and the use of adaptedscientific instruments alongside video and soundresearch, the project affords the development ofaesthetics of the region, both extractive and postextractive, that elaborate on transitions at the vergeof the post-anthropocene.

This paper suggests the concept of “Anthropocene
literacy” through a case study of a field site that is
exemplary of Anthropocene literacy and learningin South Korea. Due to the Anthropocene’s
comprehensiveness through human and non-humanhistory at the planetary level, it is hard to makea field and local case deal with this concept andmake sense of this concept to public audiences.
Adding on current quotidian Anthropocene andscience-related disaster literacy discourse, thispaper suggests Anthropocene literacy as a conceptthat can cover knowledge of Anthropocene and thesocial engagement in local history and nature.
The case examined in this paper based on the
Anthropocene literacy is a non-ferrous andpetrochemical industrial area named the Onsan
National Industrial Complex which is locatedin the southeast part of the Korean peninsula.
Similar to other industrial complexes in South
Korea, this complex was built in the 1970s basedon the economic development plan of the Korean
government. In particular, this place was thecenter of the 1980s South Korea’s environmental
movement due to pollution disease, and there wasalso a mass migration of residents to build thecomplex. Alongside this history, this paper attempts
to add non-human history focusing on an island,
named Mok-do, which is located 200m from thiscomplex and has been a designated natural heritagesite since the Japanese colonial era. The ecologicalchanges of this island ignite discussion on how tobest protect this island. By exploring the industrial
and ecological history of Mok-do and the industrial
complex area, this paper suggests a way to readcertain local situations through the lens of the
Anthropocene.

55

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Pollution and rehabilitation

Pollution and rehabilitation

ED2-19ED2-19Tracing the Local Government’s Idea
of Pollution Problem in XiangjiangRiver Basin, China

The Mantetsu-led Anti-Smoke
Campaign in 1930s DalianConrad Hirano

Jingyuan Wu

Northwestern University

University of Tokyo
Dalian, under Japanese rule from 1904 to 1945,
developed as an industrial center in Northeast China
and, as a result, suffered from intense coal smoke
pollution. Yamamoto Jotaro, the tenth president of
the South Manchuria Railway Company (Mantetsu),
took the situation seriously and, in 1928, ordered his
close associate Kaise Kingo to devise measures tocombat the city’s low air quality. The Mantetsu-led
anti-smoke campaign lasted for a decade and hosted
a variety of events from public lectures and exhibits
to on-site training for industrial workers (bothJapanese and Chinese). The Mantetsu Hygiene
Institute also conducted scientific measurements
and discovered that, by the mid-1930s, Dalian
received more soot fallout per square meter than
London, a city known for its lethal smog. Appalledby this result, in 1935, Kaise planned a visit by twoleading anti-smoke activists from Osaka, Japan’s
industrial metropolis with the longer history ofsmoke control movement, and further invigorated
Dalian’s campaign. Their zeal drew visitors from
Shinkyo, Fengtian, Fushun, and Jinzhou, andDalian’s activists toured these cities to help locals
launch their own movements. Facing more severe
weathers and depending more on coal-powered
heating devices, however, other Manchurian cities
did not support Dalian’s call for abatement throughthe reduction of coal consumption.
Dalian’s history of anti-smoke campaign
demonstrates how colonialism framed people’s
responses to environmental problems such as air
pollution. Because Japan maintained dense intraempire networks that Louise Young and others
have described, Dalian’s activists could build their
movement through collaboration with people fromother parts of the empire. Meanwhile, the colonialcondition inhibited Dalian’s campaigners fromseeking advice from their counterparts in London
where, like Dalian, a vast amount of airborne
pollutants also stemmed from houses. Colonialism
restrained human responses to air pollution andother types of environmental disasters and thus
accelerated the advent of Anthropocene.

The history of environmental policy has often been
portrayed as a linear process, from prioritizing
economic development to valuing the environment.
However, focusing on the changing priority of
economic development and the environment may
overlook the dynamic history of defining pollution
problems. To better understand the historicalpollution problems and make a reflet to current
environmental policy, examining the changing
of the nuanced policy ideas regarding pollution
problems at the local level is essential.
This study traces the local government's policy ideaof pollution problems in the Xiangjiang River basin,
Hunan province, China. I collected unpublishedgovernment archives from the Local Literature
Office in the Hunan Library, including pollution
reports, pollution prevention plans, and related
meeting minutes by the Hunan government sincethe 1970s. For government plans after the 2010s,
most of them are available online.
The study reveals how the Hunan government hasconstantly enriched the connotation of pollution
problems, triggered by the central government's
policy shift, international development cooperation,and local pollution events. The definition ofpollution in the Xiangjiang River basin has
expanded throughout history, from being perceived
as a problem that occurred inside enterprises to a
problem that affects the natural environment andsociety as a whole, from a technical problem to a
problem concerning people's need for safety anddevelopment, historical responsibility, and politicalresponsibility.
By narrating the expansion process of the definitionof the pollution problem, the paper highlights thatthe problem perception led to the corresponding
solution, while each period's problem perception
and solutions had limitations and sometimes
brought out unexpected new problems.

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EAEH 2023

Environment and Disease

Environment and DiseaseED2-21ED2-21The Clmate change and Epidemic in
the 8th Century of Silla

The introduction and transferof specialized knowledge in theprevention of Japanese encephalitis in
Korea in the 1950-60s

Hyunsook Lee

Miyoung Shin

Korean Institue for Ecological &Environmental History

Jeonbuk National University
Japanese encephalitis is one of the infectious
diseases that still occur today. In Korea, Japanese
encephalitis received attention in 1949 when amajor damage occurred nationwide, but the proper
method for prevention was not known. However, byunderstanding the ecology of mosquitoes that cause
encephalitis, Japanese encephalitis was prevented.
Until the 1950s, it was a priority to prevent
mosquito habitats by removing puddles of wateror spraying DDT. In the 1960s, in addition to theexisting method, it was emphasized that a certain
distance should be placed between the human spaceand livestock such as pigs. It can be seen that the
introduction of knowledge related to the preventionof encephalitis affected these changes. I’ll review
the process of Japanese encephalitis prevention,
focusing on Chun Chong-hwee's activities, which
played an important role in the introduction anddelivery of specialized knowledge to the public.

Smallpox became very popular in the 8-9th century
in East Asia. It seemed like to bring the collapses ofTang China, Silla Korea, Ritsryo state Japan. This
article will examin the beginning of smallpox inSilla. It seemded that smallpox broke out seriously
in the era of King Sungduck(rg:702-737) andKing Kyungduck(rg:742-765). The smallpox virus
was introduced while various East Asian tribes
were at unification war of Silla(600-676) on the
Korean Peninsula. However, there was no clear
explanation why epidemic became so popular in the
8th and 9th centuries. However, recently, naturalscientific research on the ancient climate has been
accumulated, revealing that the proxy data for the
climate of the 8th and 9th centuries was cold anddry. Given the nature of the virus' preference forcold and dry environments, it becomes clearer
why East Asian countries suffered from various
epidemics, including smallpox. In other words,
the cold and dry climate that the virus liked was in
the background of epidemic era. In 735, smallpox
epidemic broke out in Japan via Korea from China
and its population was plunged by half. The sharp
decline in the population led to a recession, and thevicious cycle of poverty was repeated. This seemed
to have happened first in Silla. In the 8th and 9th
centuries, as the cold and dry climate continued,
crop production was not smooth, and famine
frequently occurred, resulting in a mass productionof an immune-free population. At this time, theinfluence of the epidemic was greater. Silla fell intoa vicious cycle of poverty, cold and dry climate.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Environment and Disease

Environment and DiseaseED2-21ED2-21The Cold War and Influenza
pandemic in 1960's Hongkong

The Little Ice Age and the Epidemicsof Hubei Province in late Ming and
Eraly Qing

Min-Suh Kim

Hyun-Sun Kim

Yonsei University

Myonji University

Asian flu of 1957 and Hong Kong flu of 1968 are
also known as pandemics which, ten-year apart,swept the whole globe due to the antigenic shiftof Influenza A viruses. The first outbreak of both
flu cases is considered to be started in mainland
China, however, unfortunately this information did
not reach the rest of the world until the epidemic
had spread over several countries; and Hong Kong
has been the first place where the outbreak was
detected. Because of Hong Kong’s special position
to the PRC and the UK, it played a crucial rolein not only spreading these new viruses to thefree world but also making Influenza surveillance
more systemic at both global and regional levels.
I will discusse political and economic functions ofcolonial Hong Kong in the Cold War, which played
a role in exporting not only the flu virus but also theepidemic intelligence from HK to the world. I will
examine how flu surveillance system developed
and operated in ‘Far East’ during the Cold War,focusing on Asian flu and Hong Kong Flu, in 1957
and 1968 respectively. The networks of WHO in
East Asia provided a central role in adopting andimplementing the global surveillance system. The
relationship between two flu epidemics reinforced
colonial Hong kong as a sentinel post for Influenza.

Hubei Province is located in the middle
YangziRiver area where the epidemics andendemics were very frequentlyoccurred in MingQing period. I will discuss the epidemics andendemics in relation with social,geo-environmental,
demographic context and climatic changes of
HubeiProvince in late Ming and Early Qing period.
As for the eastern Hubei region, an unprecedented
explosion of seriousepidemics was rife across theboundary especially in 1641 and in 1832. Since theclimate of the year of 1641, belonged to the Little
Ice Age, wasvery cold and dry, there were frequent
natural disasters. Then occurred inShanxi(山西)and Henan(河南), an epidemic spread to the south,
whichtouched the Hubei Province. Researchersat that time called the ragingepidemic the Black
Death. Considering factors such as peasant
uprisings, the flow of migrants in the end of the
Ming and mass death of rats, where theepidemic
had started, cold and dry climates, it is supposedthat the ragingepidemic of the Hubei Province in1641 was the black death. Comparingepidemics
occurred in the eastern region of Ming Period withthat of Qingperiod, the epidemic in 1641 was dueto the influence of the cold, dryclimate in Ming
period which had brought drought. In contrast, there
werefrequent deluges in Qing period because of thedevelopment of polders(垸田)in Jianghan Plain(江漢平原), the soil erosion caused by the exploitation
ofmountainous areas. After the flood, the epidemics
frequently occurred in Qing times.

58

EAEH 2023

Anthropocene Commons

Anthropocene Commons

ED3-01

ED3-01

Networks as aggregators of sharedspacesConceptual identification of the ACthemes: Shared Spaces, Pedagogies of
Action, and Resourceful ResearchJohn Kim

Megan Black

Macalester College

AC Delegate

As part of the panel on the Anthropocene Commons(AC), I propose speaking to the conceptual
identification of three distinctive themes defined inits statement of purpose: Shared Spaces, Pedagogies
of Action, and Resourceful Research. I will focus
my comments on the ways in which these themes
cross paths with an AC partner project on which I
am a principal investigator, the Mississippi River
Open School (2022-2024). This presentation will
illustrate the ways in which the AC themes resonate
with partner activities and have been put into
practice in local contexts.
The Open School project itself emerged in partfrom the Anthropocene Curriculum-initiatedMississippi. An Anthropocene River project (20182019), Whereas the Anthropocene River project
researched the river as a site for the investigationof the local conditions of the Anthropocene, theOpen School seeks a more focused approach:the intersection of race, resource extraction,and environmental change as they relate to theconditions that have produced the Anthropocene inthis particular riverine context. This is consistent
with cultural critiques that have argued that the
Anthropocene does not properly account for specificcontexts in which the Anthropocene emerged (I.e.
Colonial Anthropocene, Black Anthropocene,
Plantationocene, etc.). In our preparatory workon the Open School we identified four working
themes: Welcoming, Crossing, Repairing and theOpen School, which share conceptual framing with
the Anthropocene Commons. My comments willaddress how we have defined these themes in theOpen School project and sought to implement
them in our ongoing work. I will also discuss how
the Open School’s themes cross paths with the
Anthropocene Commons’, and the challenges ofpedagogy and research in a time of crisis.

The paper proposes an examination of networks as
facilitators and aggregators, which function as an
overarching shared space that constellates multiple
interlinked shared spaces of individual projects andinitiatives: a network of networks. The proposed
paper aims to contribute to the ongoing
discourse around the role of networks in shaping
our social, intellectual and physical landscapes, andto highlight the importance of relationships andcollaborations as key drivers of knowledge creationand dissemination. Using the AC network as a casestudy, the paper will explore how relationships areplaced at the fore to emphasise the potential forcollaborations and sharing, rather than creatingor storing knowledge. The proposed paper willconclude with a reflection on how we can harness
the power of networks to generate transformativechange and foster sustainable and just futures,emphasising the need for collective action andcollaboration to address complex challenges in a
rapidly changing world. Ultimately, the proposal
seeks to explore the transformative potentialof networks, highlighting the importance ofrelationships, collaborations, and shared spaces inshaping collective futures.

Links
Anthropocene Commons “Statement of Purpose”: www.
anthropocene-commons.org
Mississippi River Open School: www.mississippi.school

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Anthropocene Commons

Anthropocene Commons

ED3-01

ED3-01

Harm reduction for the soft
Anthropocene

Challenges of a Brazilian
Anthropocene: education, research,and citizenshipSarah Lewison

Fernando Silva e SilvaSouthern Illinois University Carbondale

APPH

Although some believe global warming can be
mitigated through technocratic solutions, there’s agrowing acknowledgement that climate engineering
poses terrible risks and does nothing to address
the profligate way humans consume and waste theplanet. A wholesale reworking of the built
environment that harmonizes and rescales human
lives, habits and infrastructures to fit earthly
parameters is needed, but this vision can’t berealized in a fractious social climate. With no
dialogue, collective response is immobilized. The
anthropocene is a globalized agent of trauma:
situated and historic violences of colonization,
caste, racism, systematic subjugation, and thenormalized temporal routine of fossil fueled
productivity produces wide scale disassociationfrom environment and blocks collectivizedplanning. This presentation surveys social
movements and creative experiments in building
long term consent and trust among groups ofpeople. Mississippi: An Anthropocene River, an
Anthropocene Curriculum project which brought
people in the river basin together to share researchand creative work has evolved into an experimental
river-long ‘open school.' Other situated anecdotes
will be drawn from Mauritius, Argentina, as wellas the Bioregional Movement and various artistic
experiments, in order to speculate on methods andpractices that, in the words of Latour, bring people
down to earth.

Since 2022, the project The Earth and us:
education, research and citizenship in the
Anthropocene, led by the authors of this paper, has
aimed to connect existing initiatives – scientific,
artistic, educational, philosophical, and beyond –into a Brazilian network of Anthropocene research,experience, and creation. This paper aims to present
and assess the challenges of various natures inestablishing the concept of the Anthropocene in
Brazil, as well as how our engagement with the AC,
especially with the Campus format, has enabled us
to begin working through these challenges.
Firstly, we will present a general overview of issues
concerning ecology and climate change in Brazil,
both in a scientific and political sense. Secondly,
we will indicate how these issues relate to different
challenges on the fronts of research, education, andcitizenship. Work on the Anthropocene in Brazil isstill in its early stages and fragmented, changing
drastically in depth and variety depending on
institutions or disciplines. At the same time, there
is a great deal of innovation and creativity, as thethemes of the Anthropocene find connections with
Brazil’s rich history of socio-ecological struggles
and creations. Lastly, we will offer an account andan analysis of our experience in the Anthropocene
Campus Brazil, that took place in 2022.

60

EAEH 2023

Environment and industrialization in Asia (1):Japan

Environment and industrialization in Asia (1):Japan

ED3-02ED3-02Modeling Human and Insect
Populations: COVID-19, Malaria, andthe Ecological Approach to Infectious
Diseases“To Bag Wild Ducks with a Net”:
Japanese Royal Hunting and the (Re)invention of Tradition
Aaron Skabelund

Akihisa Setoguchi

Brigham Young University

Kyoto University

In 1922, when Edward, the Prince of Wales visited
Japan, Crown Prince Hirohito hosted a wild duckhunt at the Hama Detached Palace. A Japan Times
reporter exclaimed that the outing “will doubtless
be a novelty to the Prince, who has bagged tigers
with his gun, wild pigs with his spear, elephantswith strategy and foxes with his hounds. It is to be
doubted, however, if he ever … had the opportunity
to bag wild ducks with a net.”
Like royalty around the world during this era,
the Japanese Imperial Family deployed hunting
as a means of (geo)political entertainment. For
modern Japanese monarchs, hunting was a
departure from the recent past. Although hunts had
been an important activity for early emperors, by
the medieval period hunting was dominated bywarriors. By the nineteenth century, emperors had
not participated in hunts for many centuries. In
1881, this history was reversed when Emperor Meiji
observed a rabbit hunt. Soon, like other Japaneseelites who had come to emulate Western modes ofhunting, he began to hunt. The Imperial Household
Ministry established game preserves, or more
aptly hunting grounds, in locales like Nikkō. Andemperors from Meiji to Hirohito hosted hunting
parties for overseas visitors, foreign legations, anddomestic powerbrokers, even as other Japanesehunted throughout their growing empire.
The hunts not only involved the shooting of birds,
boar, and deer, but came to include the netting ofwild fowl, a practice hailed as unique to Japanand a restoration of a traditional hunting practice.
By hosting shooting events that were analogous
to those of royalty abroad and netting events thatwere celebrated as ancient, native, and patrician, themonarchy portrayed itself as both modern monarchs
and timeless emperors, the custodians of classicaltradition.
This research is part of a book project on hunting—a multispecies entanglement—in the Japanese
empire, writ large, from the mid-nineteenth to the
mid-twentieth century.

One of the most striking measures against
COVID-19 was restricting human movement tocontrol this infectious disease. Although there
were various restrictions, from strict lockdowns torather loose ones, most countries tried to control
the disease by limiting the movement of their
populations. COVID-19 was the first disease thathumans tried to control based on the predictions ofmathematical models. However, modeling humandiseases has a long history. In 1911, Ronald Ross,a doctor at the Indian Medical Service, built amathematical model of malaria epidemics that
included three parameters: populations of humans,
malaria parasites, and mosquitoes. In the 1920s,
the ecological approach to the control of diseases
and insects arose in medicine and entomology. In
this approach, scientists try to control the wholeenvironment rather than focusing on eradicating
microbes or insect pests. However, the ecologicalapproach to the control of diseases was not a
standard public health policy until recently, when
the COVID-19 pandemic threatened the world. On
the other hand, ecological control of insect pests
became quite common in the mid-twentieth century,
especially after the 1960s, when Rachel Carson
criticized the overuse of chemical pesticides. This
presentation provides an overview of the history of
the ecological control of insect populations, mainly
in Japan, and discusses its implications for recent
human disease control.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Environment and industrialization in Asia (1):Japan

Environment and industrialization in Asia (1):Japan

ED3-02ED3-02

Japan’s Paper Industry in the 1930s:
Where Did All the Wood Come From?

How Japan Became a Have-Not
Nation: Copper Resources in theModern Era

M. William Steele

Patricia Sippel

International Christian University

Toyo Eiwa University

Japan’s paper industry began with the establishmentof the Oji Paper Company in 1875. Its founder,
the entrepreneur and later economic moralist
Shibusawa Eiichi (1840-1931), held that a modern
paper industry was essential to the advance of Japanas a civilized country. The industry prospered and,by the 1930s, Japan was a global leader in wood
pulp, paper, and paper products. Prewar production
peaked in 1940 at 1.5 billion tons.
Where did all the wood come from? And of Japan’srich forestry resources, which trees were harvested?
Until the end of the nineteenth century, the Japanese
paper industry relied primarily on cotton rags andrice straw pulp. However, with the development of
new technologies in mechanical and sulfite wood
pulp in the early 1900s, core operations moved
from central Japan to the vast coniferous forests ofJapan’s far north. Pulp mills were first establishedin Hokkaido but, by the end of the 1930s, some 70
percent of Japan’s pulp and paper were produced instate-of-the art factories in the southern half of theisland of Sakhalin, territory acquired as a result ofvictory against Russia in 1905.
This presentation examines Japan’s use of its forest
resources by focusing on the operations of Oji Paper
Company in Hokkaido and Sakhalin in the opening
decades of the twentieth century. It argues that,
despite increasing civilian and military demand forforest products in the 19030s unrestricted access to
Sakhalin’s primeval forests allowed imperial Japan
could maintain its status as a timber rich nation.

Japan entered the modern era as a country richin mineral and other resources. In 1893, Wada
Tsunashirō, head of the government’s Bureau of
Mining, declared the country’s mineral resources
to be “almost inexhaustible.” Following impressive
increases, Japan became the world’s number two
producer of copper in 1915. In 1917, output reacheda peak of more than 108,000 tonnes, with exports
also at an all-time peak of 81,000 tonnes.
After the First World War, however, the Japanese
copper industry changed abruptly. Japan’s mining
companies lost their export markets to more
efficient foreign competition. In the 1920s, early
assertions of abundance gave way to doubts about
the adequacy of the country’s mineral resources. In
1927, University of Tokyo professor Katsura Benzōdescribed Japan as a country “poor in mineral
resources.” In the mid-1930s, Japan prepared for
war as an importer of copper and other metals andwith a growing sense of its vulnerability in natural
resources.
How to explain Japan’s swift transition to thestatus of “have-not” nation? Were Japan’s mineral
resources simply exhausted? This presentation
draws on the records of Journal of the Mining
Institute of Japan to trace changes in the supply
and consumption of copper in early twentiethcentury. It suggests that technological and business
shifts abroad placed Japan at a disadvantage, while
military buildup and the growth of heavy industries
placed demands on resources, including copper, thatJapan – even with its colonies – could not meet.
Following its defeat in war, Japan adopted a policyof liberalization that largely ended the domestic
extraction of mineral resources and replaced it withoverseas exploration and production.

62

EAEH 2023

Korean Modern Environmental History,
1960s-1990s

Korean Modern Environmental History,
1960s-1990s

ED3-03ED3-03The construction of Uiam
Hydroelectric Power Plant and the
problem of land

Development for the Environment:
Environmental Crisis and Urban
Planning in South

Daehoon Jeong

Chuyoung Won

National Institute of Korean History

Catholic University of Korea

This article focuses on the construction of theUiam Hydroelectric Power Plant ( 의암수력발전소 ) in the early 1960s and the issue of landcompensation for the submerged area. The Uiam
Plant's land compensation problem was the firstsocial conflict related to hydro power generation
in South Korea since the liberation, along with the
air pollution problem at the Masan Thermal Power
Plant( 마산화력발전소 ), which was constructed
several years earlier. Private capital's entry into
the electric power industry, which began in 1960,
continued even after the May 16 coup. Hwa-il
Industry's Uiam Plant project was the largest among
them. After the coup, Hwa-il Industry obtained abusiness license and began construction on March
16, 1962. However, the Uiam Plant's construction
was sluggish due to difficulties in obtaining loans
from Japan. Initially, Hwa-il Industry lacked capitaland planned to introduce most of the costs throughloans, so construction was delayed as the loan
process was delayed. Construction began in March
1962 and was suspended in the summer of 1962.
Local residents protested strongly because they had
not received compensation for the submerged area.
The government took measures such as inspecting
the construction site and instructing immediate
compensation, but it was difficult to solve theproblem unless Hwa-il Industry's funding issue
was resolved. Finally, the compensation could only
be realized after KEPCO( 한국전력 ) recovered
the license from Hwa-il Industry. Along with the
Chuncheon Hydroelectric Power Plant( 춘천수력발전소 ), the construction of the Uiam Plant
was the first large-scale hydroelectric power plant
promoted by the government of Republic of Korea
after the liberation. However, unlike the Chuncheon
Plant, which was led by the government, the Uiam
Plant was plagued with uncertainties from the
beginning because it was led by private capitallacking financial power. In the 1960s, large-scalehydroelectric power plant construction projects werestructurally fragile, contrary to the government's
desire to secure electricity for industrialization.

This paper examines how environmental anxiety
emerged in tandem with the establishment ofenvironmental management in 1970s South Korea.
Environmental historians have paid attention to
the rise of global environmentalism in the 1970s
by focusing on the cases of diplomatic policies orsocial movements in developed countries. On thecontrary, the environmental crisis and its handlingin developing countries have remained relatively
unexplored. This presentation will show how
environmental experts of a developing country
during the 1970s regarded achieving “development”
as being compatible with the environment. They
tried to seek a way of ‘sustainable development’
without environmental pollution by devisingand implementing reasonable urban plans. For
example, Ro Jung Hyun, an environmental expert
participating in the UN Conference on the Human
Environment of 1972 and director of the Institute for
Urban Studies and Development, Yonsei University,
claimed that “development” (kaebal) could
conceptually be compatible with the conservationist
idea of “environment” (hwan'gyŏng). In addition,
he argued that developmentalism would be goodfor developing countries’ environment because
it can reduce the uneven development of urban
areas. Coincidently, urban planning, as a scientificdiscipline, was institutionalized in universities,
and new “environmental” experts from the fields
of architecture and regional development played acrucial role in environmental policy.
C o n s e q u e n t l y, u r b a n p l a n n i n g i n S o u t h
Korea started to contain concepts for resource
conservation during the 1970s. By focusing on
urban planning, this paper will show how South
Korean environmental experts tried to make acompatible way to handle matters between national
development and environmental degradation.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Korean Modern Environmental History,
1960s-1990s

Korean Modern Environmental History,
1960s-1990s

ED3-03ED3-03

Scientization of Nature and theConstruction of Environmental
Subjects : A Creation of the National
Environmental Research Institute ofSouth Korea, 1978-1981

Whose Garbage? Whose
Environment?: Building a National
System of Municipal

June Jeon

Seoul National University

Sanghee BaeChungnam National University

South Korea is one of the highest-ranking nations
on global indexes concerning municipal waste
disposal and recycling. Enforcement of the VolumeBased Waste Fee (Jongnyangje) Policy in 1995 andthe following enthusiastic response of the citizens
have been counted as the main factors driving thewaste management in South Korea. This paper
seeks to examine another dynamic that came intoplay in the early 1990s: the introduction of waste
incinerators in Seoul and the citizen resistanceit garnered. Nearby residents of incinerator sites
mobilized against the government’s plan to shift
the center of waste management from landfillingto incineration. To win their fight against the
government, the residents of Seoul needed to
win the approval of the nearby residents of the
Sudokwon Landfill where most of Seoul’s waste
would end up instead. In their coucil meetings,
recycling came to figure as the only alternativetechnology to rechannel the waste flow. By tracing
the transformation of Comprehensive National
Waste Management Plans (NWMP) spanning the
1990s together with the progress of citizen activism
against incinerators and landfills, this paper argues
that the South Korean national waste management
system centering on recycling policies was shapedby the alternative environmental framework ofSeoul residents. Building a national system ofmunicipal solid waste management was, therefore,a project of settling the hierarchy between different
technologies of waste management against the
backdrop of uneven relationship between the
megacity Seoul and its suburban area Sudokwon.

Despite the extensive historical research on theearly institutionalization of environmental policies
in South Korea, little attention has been paid to therole of scientific organizationsduring this process.
This paper aims to fill this gap by examining
the early history of the National Environmental
Research Institute (NERI). Based on archival
studies of governmental reports, media coverage,
and public magazines, I argue that the early
history of the NERI explains the role of sciencein environmental policies in contexts of the rapid
industrialization and authoritative governmental
regime. The NERI was created before the legislationof the Environmental Preservation Act of 1978
and was negotiating its role and responsibility. It
succeeded a small department of the Korea National
Institute of Health, while it was assumed to carryout scientific studies of Korean environmental
problems, especially for the execution of theEnvironmental Preservation Act of 1978. The
NERI’s changes of organizational structure andcollaborative relationship with civil organizations,politicians, and scientists show that the earlyinstitutionalization of Korean environmental
policies was accompanied by the construction ofvarious new environmental subjects—scientized,
while mobilized. This paper not only contributes
to the regional history of Korean environmental
policies but also offers insights into the global
studies of the role of science in environmental
policies.

64

EAEH 2023

Tension and crisis in East Asian environment

Tension and crisis in East Asian environment

ED3-05

ED3-05

The Darkness of the Great
Acceleration: Did the History of
Korea Advance in the 20th Century?

A Survey of Environmental Social
Movements in Democratic East Asia:
An Historical Perspective

Tae-woo Ko

Bulkhia U. Panalondong

Seoul National University

Central Mindanao University

The current climate and ecological crisis is a
“great disaster” pushing human and nonhumancreatures to the limits of survival. To overcome
the “modern civilization” itself that led to sucha marginal situation, I would like to criticallylook back on the history of Korea in the 20th
century. First, I introduce the discussion of Dipesh
Chakrabarty, who has presented a new historicaland philosophical outlook in the face of crisis. Next,
I show the indicators of Great acceleration while
grafting the perspectives of the Anthropocene andCapitalocene to Korea's modern and contemporary
history. And I would like to raise the need to
improve historical awareness by pointing out thelimitations of major opening books of Korean
modern and contemporary history. Finally, I suggest
studying ecological and environmental history asa method of “negative universal history” based onenhancing historical awareness.

Citizens in East Asia are governed by a wide rangeof political systems—Japan has been democraticsince the end of World War II, South Korea, andTaiwan democratized in the late 1980s, whilemainland of China is governed by a "democratic
dictatorship" according to its constitution. Becauseof this political diversity across the region, it
has been difficult for single books to cover civilsociety in the whole region. The history of social
movements is deeply connected with the struggle
for social change. Forming a heterogeneouscompound of collective actors with a variety
of demands and strategies, social movements
essentially represent the “conscious, concerted, andsustained efforts by ordinary people to change some
aspect of their society by using extra-institutional
means” (Goodwin & Jasper, 2009, p. 3). Guha
and Gadgil (1989) demarcated the environmental
movements as 'organized social activity consciously
directed towards promoting sustainable use ofnatural resources halting environmental degradationor bringing about environmental restoration'. The
study also reveals that democracies should adopt
policies that efficiently and effectively counterthe spread of antidemocratic practices on its
environmental challenges, and should hold eachother accountable for living up to democratic ideals.
The concluding part of this research discussed
its findings and what it means for the study ofenvironmental politics, comparative politics, and
Democratic East Asia.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

New approaches to environmental history

New approaches to environmental history

ED3-06

ED3-06

Changes in Natural System of the
Brijuni/Brioni Islands (Adriatic Sea,
Northern Mediterranean)
Hrvoje PetricCharacteristics of Precipitation
Distribution and River Flood Using
Historical Precipitation Datasets: A
Study for the Northern Kyoto Region,
Japan

University of Zagreb

Ishizuka Masahide
Kagawa University

The paper is about transformation of the Brijuni
islands from a malaria-ridden and depopulated areasin the popular tourist destination and finally to thenational park. At the end of the 19th century Brijuni
Island was bought by industrialist Paul Kupelwieser
and turned into an exclusive resort. In 1900
Kupelwieser was invited to Brijuni the scientist
Robert Koch, to combat malaria. He followed theprocess of draining the swamp. This resulted in
the disappearance of malaria. Afforestation of theislands and drinking water were also carried out.
Fields, pastures, vineyards and landscaped lawns
have been restored. Exotic plants and trees (fromJapan, China and the Middle East) have beenplanted. Game (deer, roe deer, mouflon, pheasantsand rabbits) was also introduced to the archipelago.
These activities have changed the environment,
but also created the preconditions for the beginningof elite tourism in the archipelago. In 1912, theZoo on the largest island began work, where thetropical animals from Asia and Africa acclimatized
and were subsequently sent to many European
Zoos. Since Kupelwieser was an industrialist in
the era of intensive industrial pollution, at the endof the chapter the author will try to ask whether
Kupelwieser's idea of investing in the environmentof the researched archipelago reflects the beginningsof early ecological sensitivity. After WW 2
Brijuni Islands 1947 become a summer Yugoslav
presidential residence. At the time of Josip BrozTito on the islands were limited tourist activities.
Although there was no tourism islands are visitedby many foreign politicians, particularly from nonaligned countries, because the Brijuni islands wasa function of the the state protocol. At the meeting,Tito, Nehru and Nasser (1956) on Brijuni outlined
based Non-Aligned Movement. A few years after
the death of President Tito, in 1983 the Brijuni
Islands were declared a national park.

As we live in a changing global environment, wehave paid attention to possible future changes in
the natural environment and have conducted manystudies using numerical simulations. As a result,
we have predicted possible future environmental
changes and their effects, and have studied
adaptation measures to these changes. However,the problem is that there is no data to verify theprediction results.
On the other hand, for past natural phenomena
we have experienced (this study focuses on
extreme natural disasters, especially floods), we
have observational data, records, and information
on human behavior and its effects on the social
environment. However, it is difficult to say whether
the results of numerical simulations are correct for
the reproduction of such past natural phenomena,
and whether there is sufficient understanding of how
we have behaved during contingencies. Reasonsfor this include: 1) lack of historical observation
data, 2) even if data is available, it is not systematic(lack of unified definition of terms), 3) low spatial
resolution of data, 4) scattered data, 5) written inold characters, 6) paper-based data (not digitized),and so on.
In recent years, however, efforts to restore
historical hydro-meteorological data haveprogressed, and a foundation for understanding
past natural phenomena is being developed.
Therefore, in this study, an archive set of historicalprecipitation data and climate model outputs aiming
to reconstruct past climate changes are used for thenorthern Kyoto Prefecture area and the Yura Riverbasin (1,880 km2) that flows through the area.
Then, characteristics of precipitation distribution,
reproduction results of river flood, and issues related
to the past precipitation data set are presented.

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EAEH 2023

New approaches to environmental history

Rethinking Hydraulic Societies

ED3-06

ED3-07

Mother Russia’s forests and China’s
recent anti-desertification campaigns

Boundary Perceptions of Wells
and Ponds as Sources of Water for
Domestic Use in Rural Communities
in Northern China from the eighteenth
to the twentieth Centuries

Thomas Hahn

Shinobu Iguro

UC Berkeley

Otani University
Josef Stalin may not be the first name on anyone’s
mind when it comes to enacting progressive
environmental policies. And yet, in 1948, theSoviet leader inaugurated the so-called Great StalinPlan for the Transformation of Nature, “conceived
as a grand attempt to reverse anthropogenic
regional climate change in deforested areas, with
an emphasis on the promotion of watersheds.”
According to Bellamy Foster (2015), the Plan
constituted “the world’s first explicit attempt toreverse human-induced climate change.” It was
scrapped after Stalin’s death in 1953, with graveconsequences. Meanwhile, China’s forestry
administration, under Deng Xiaoping, established a
program eventually called the Three North Shelter
System (TNSS). The TNSS, continuing into thepresent and well into the future in fact, “is thelargest unified design project the world has everseen” (Elkin 2022, 171). In my presentation, I will
look at the precursors to the TNSS, such as Russianefforts to rehabilitate and strengthen its stressedwatersheds in the 1940s to the 1980s or the postDust Bowl Prairie States Forestry Project in theUS, and discuss the wider social and economic
implications of geoengineering projects of such
unprecedented scales.

This presentation focuses on the use andmanagement of wells and ponds, which havebeen used as sources of water for domestic use,and clarifies how the line between individualand collective action over domestic water was
drawn in rural society in northern China from theeighteenth to the twentieth Centuries. It is generally
understood that the larger the size of the water bodysubject to the governance, the greater the necessity
for collective action in the use and managementof water resources. Based on this understanding,
Wittfogel found its extreme phase in the creationof despotic power associated with large-scalewater conservancy projects. On the other hand,the smallest-scale use of water for humans is theingestion of water into the body through eating anddrinking, and in a broader sense, its use as domestic
water for cooking, washing clothes, cleaning,
is equivalent to this. Between these two polar
opposites in terms of the scale, water conservancy
projects and domestic water use, collective actions
at various levels have been established, which havegenerated a various types of social bonds. Recent
progress in the investigation and collection ofstone inscriptions and the accompanying research
has shed light on the micro-level issue of social
cohesion in rural society. In this presentation, I use
these steles as the main resource to examine therelationship between individuals and groups overdomestic water in rural society from a historicalperspective.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Rethinking Hydraulic Societies

Rethinking Hydraulic Societies

ED3-07

ED3-07

Oriental Despotism or Bottomup Approach? A Discussion on the
Irrigation Maintenance System of the
Nile in Ottoman Egypt

A Study of the Local Governance ofWater Transportation on the Deccan
Plateau in Western India fromthe Late Eighteenth to the Early
Nineteenth Century

Wakako Kumakura

Michihiro Ogawa

Tokyo University of Foreign Studies

University of Tokyo
In recent years, it has been pointed out that theirrigation maintenance system in Ottoman Egypt
was a bottom-up approach, with the peasants as themain actors. Such arguments are designed to raiseawareness of Karl Wittfogel’s ‘Oriental Despotism’
theory and to modify it. Certainly, the bottom-up
approach argument is important in that it points
out the autonomy of peasants, which has not beenadequately dealt with in the previous studies, but
it preserves the framework of various dichotomies
such as government and peasants, tyranny andautonomy, which were set up in the ‘Oriental
Despotism’ theory. On the other hand, it can beassumed that it was not only people belonging to
the government and peasants who played a role in
the irrigation maintenance and management system
but rather those in between them who played an
important role as coordinators between the various
clusters of people.
This study discusses their role, relying on sharī‘acourt registers and water distribution registers, andpresents a better model of the irrigation maintenancesystem in Ottoman Egypt, while being aware of thepresence of people between the government andpeasants.

This paper studies how use of water transportationin the rainy season affected the formation of
the local socio-economic bonds on the Deccan
plateau. In the seventeenth century, major cities andmarketing places in the Indian subcontinent wereconnected to one another by maintenance of the
major roads under the Mughal rule, many of whichwere kept even after the Mughal Empire started
to decline in the eighteenth century. Except theseimperial roads, however, most of land roads in
the Indian subcontinent were not maintained well.
Therefore, people relied on pack bullocks or camels
for conveying goods, the carrying capacity of which
was quite limited. In this situation, river-borne
traffic, which enabled larger scale of transportation,
was significant for commerce and social life in theinland areas of the subcontinent. However, riverborne traffic was not always useful on the Deccan
Plateau in a semi-arid region. Water flow of riverson the plateau was so low except the rainy or
monsoon season (June to September) that ferries
were unnavigable in many rivers there during thedry season (October to May).
The Maratha Government, which ruled this region
in the eighteenth century, maintained the landing
places on banks of rivers (ghāṭ) and collected transit
duties (zakat) there. It is found from the records ofthis tax collection that various people were engaged
in river-borne trade in the monsoon season forming
the socio-economic bonds. This paper considers
how use of water transportation in the limited
period viz., the monsoon season affected theformation of the local socio-economic bonds. Even
after the British rule started in this region in 1818,the traffic situation did not change before openingof the railways in 1853. This paper tries to show
how the colonial rule gave an impact on these bondsin the early nineteenth century.

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EAEH 2023

Global perspectives to the Anthropocene

Global perspectives to the Anthropocene

ED3-08

ED3-08Planetary Explorations of
Anthropocene River Futurities:
Fluvial Networks of Creative
Resistance

The Floating Dakimakura: notes on afound photography

Joseph Underhill

Ana Matilde Sousa
CIEBA – Artistic Studies Research Center &University of Lisbon

Augsburg University
The terraforming and destruction of landscapes,
climates, and human communities manifest in
multiple forms and dysfunctions in river systems
around the globe. These Anthropocene watersheds
provide a particularly rich set of opportunities forunderstanding the impacts of extractive technologies
and environmental injustices associated withpetrochemical industry, dam construction, flood
control, hydropower, channelization, waste
disposal. At the same time, liminal fluvial spaces
provide rich ground for imagining ways of staying
with and living through these troubles. Drawing
on experiences with extended travel, teaching,activism, and research on the Mississippi River,this paper imagines a set of river-based educationaland research programs and expeditions as sites ofresistance and pedagogical experimentation.
There is an emerging community of practice in the
newly forming Anthropocene Commons project,
as well as a newly formed River Field Studies
Network, which already include a rich array of riverstudies curricula. With a collective of researchers,
teachers, artists, and activists engaging in various
forms of immersive and extended investigations onrivers such as the Amazon, Nile, Danube, Ganga,
Mekong, Yangtze, Huang He, and others, what can
we create in the riparian ruins and what signs ofhope do we see in these muddied waters?

An image found on Tumblr in 2013 serves as
starting point to explore the local, global, andtemporal entanglements of the Anthropocene—
specifically, an author- and context-less photographyof a dakimakura (“love pillow”) floating on turbid
waters, stranded on a pile of soaked reeds anddomestic debris. Using phenomeno-poetic analysis,
I connect the floating dakimakura’s culturalecological obscenity with Jussi Parikka’s conceptof “Anthrobscene,”a wordplay indexing what is
obscene about techno-optimistic narratives ofhumankind rising to planetary power. There are
multiple references embedded in this image, fromthe floating dakimakura’s possible situatedness
as remnant of the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami
to its ubiquitous dissemination as product of
globalized J-pop. From seventeenth-century damesde voyage (fornicatory dolls used by colonial
sailors, purportedly based on Asian bamboo wives,or chikufujin in Japanese) to the evocation ofTwin Peaks’s Laura Palmer in a body bag. Froma phantasmatic boat-grave to Internet memes
comparing the floating dakimakura to Millais’s
painting of the Shakespearean Ophelia in her“muddy death,” appearing on the Reddit board r/
AccidentalRenaissance. As the floating dakimakura
becomes an unprocessed, and morally nprocessable,
debris, our “trashy” desires disturb the proper flowof time, just like the dakimakura’s polyester coverthat won’t decompose for the next 100 years.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Global perspectives to the Anthropocene

Global perspectives to the Anthropocene

ED3-08

ED3-08The impossibility of a planet

Snapshots of a global/Italian
Anthropocene: strategies ofrepresentation in Amitav
Ghosh and Wu Ming 1

Jamie Allen
Critical Media Lab

Lucio De Capitani

Jeremy Bolen

Ca’ Foscari University of VeniceGeorgia State University
This paper juxtaposes two texts that take up thechallenge of representing the multi-scale unfoldingof the Anthropocene by exploring the specificities
and the global connections of two Italianlandscapes. Gun Island (2019), a novel by the Indian
writer Amitav Ghosh, depicts Venice as populatedby environmental migrants of various kinds:from Bengali refugees to nonhuman presences,both seemingly ‘out of place’ within the Venetiancityscape and Lagoon ecosystem, thus framing
the historical/climate predicament of the city as
shaped by multiple scales of socioenvironmental
breakdown. The 2016 literary reportage Un viaggio
che non promettiamo breve [We can’t promise
this will be a short journey], by the Italian writer
Wu Ming 1, instead, focuses on the constructionof the Turin–Lyon high-speed railway in the Susa
Valley (Piedmont). While detailing the decades-old
history of this project, its devastating environmental
impact, and the ongoing struggle against it, thereportage posits the valley as an observatory for thepolitics of monumental public infrastructure within
the international context of neoliberal governance. I
argue that, by exploring different narrative strategies
and highlighting different historical-environmental
dynamics, both writers provide valuable snapshotsof a global/Italian Anthropocene, turning local
environmental history into planetary matters.

As earthlings, we are increasingly called tounderstand ourselves as part of a planetarycommons. There are modes of thought, experience,and media that provide registers of access to thematerial fact of kinds of ‘planetarity’ (Spivak).
Prime examples include those much- discussed
photographs of the “whole Earth”—1968's“Earthrise” and 1972’s “Blue Marble” images—that were thought to have the potential to precipitatea worldwide, common planetary consciousness.
Some people and practices are acutely aware of
the common planet on which we all live; they
are compelled or choose planetary magnitudes
as their main frame of reference. In the naturalsciences, researchers sample and interpolate datafrom all over the globe and those who derive
large-scale models of planet-wide systems. In
macroeconomics and geopolitics, there are those
who template and influence things like currencies
and markets, international conflict and policies.
In the humanities and social sciences, studies oftransnational cultures, globalization and migration
hold perspectives that include the entirety ofplanet Earth as a research subject or context. “TheAnthropocene,” “technosphere,” and “planetarity”
are characterizations attempting to name suchglobal knowledge practices and orientations.
“The Impossibility of a Planet” is a textual andmultimedia artistic research project and multipartfilm that intertwines discussions with people whohave taken active roles in researching planetarity
commons. It socializes the active processes that are
now helping to reform the imaginaries and realities
that come along with the continually resurgent
idea of a planet-wide commons. We propose apresentation of the ongoing project, as well asinterviews and an activated discussion session withmedia prompts for participants at the conference.

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EAEH 2023

Global perspectives to the Anthropocene

Environment and industrialization in Asia (2):Southeast Asia

ED3-08

ED3-09Comic book “persons of mass
destruction” and the reimagining of
humankind in the Anthropocene

Passages that Tell the Time: Mapping
the Anthropogenic Markers ofMuaragembong Estuary

Hugo Ricardo Noronha de Almeida

Kamil Muhammad

NOVA University of Lisbon

Floating Tech-Lab

This communication will address an essay comicbook work-in-progress called “Napalm Life,”
which analyzes comic book super-powered
beings—in particular, from Japanese“fighting”
manga and Usonian superheroes—as visual culture
symptoms of a general form of relating to oneself
and the environment. The idea of an Anthropocene— a geological epoch caused by the sustainedintervention of human actors and organizations in
the environment — justifies a reappraisal of what“being human” is. Not only has it contributed tothe academic proliferation of critical posthumanist
frameworks, which reposition humankind as
dependent of a mesh of ecological and technologicalrelationships, it has also led, inversely, to thecelebration of humankind’s newfound geologicalpowers, as these seemingly validate Humanism’s
program of nature’s domination.
This project connects Mark Millar’s concept of“persons of mass destruction,” originally applied tosuperheroes as metaphors for the military-industrial
complex, with the Anthropocene’s premise of ahumankind capable of interfering with planetarysystems. Echoing nuclear traumas, images oftrans- and posthuman beings levelling cities andmountains are defining for series such as Akira or
Dragon Ball. “Napalm Life” looks at pop culture’s
appetite for mass destruction as the dramatization ofan accelerationist drive preventing the curtailmentof capitalism’s effects on the Earth, a fantasy of
empowerment in dialectic articulation with theexhilarating sensation of total loss of control.

This essay seeks to understand the changing
landscape of Muaragembong estuary in the Northof Java, Indonesia, particularly focusing on its
chronological narrative and the assemblage ofthe linear passages in and around the estuary: theriver, the road, and the mangrove. This estuary, likemany in the country, is a site of anthropocentriccontestation that manifests itself in the form ofconcrete river embankment, growing development,
and the ever expanding aquafarms, to name a few.
The passages act as host to human activities thathave become both the witness and the body thatbear the mark of anthropocentric accretion.
It is through the lens of architecture andbioinfrastructure that we seek to map theanthropogenic markers of Muaragembong estuary.
Through these markers, we wish to reveal thebioinfrastructural relationalities of the passages andthe ways in which developmental engineering, thelives of fishing communities, and climate change
may have contoured the estuary. This reverse
engineering of the estuary will at the same time
highlight, if anything, the engineering tendency ofdefending against water flow and to rearticulate thatwithin the spatiality of mangrove.

71The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Environment and industrialization in Asia (2):Southeast Asia

Environment and industrialization in Asia (2):Southeast Asia

ED3-09ED3-09Damming of Mekong Rivers in theAge of the Anthropocene: Feral
Frontier in Northern Thailand froman Ecofeminism Perspective

Mangrove Aesthetics from the Inside:
Time Traveling in and against theLandscape Change

Maya Dania

Endira F. Julianda (et al.)Chiang Mai University

Floating Tech-Lab

The Anthropocene is a new geological period inwhich human activity has significantly influenced
the Earth's temperature, land, oceans, and biosphere;that humanity must now be considered a distinct
geological force. Adopting the Anthropocene as a
new era would formally proclaim that humankind
is not just "passive observers" on Earth. Humans as
individuals, collectivities, institutions, and nations
have changed the entire climate system of the planet.
The control of the river system by human-related
forces under global hydropower development
is now a major feature of the Anthropocene era.
As extensive human megaprojects have altered
Earth ecosystems, this research situates the Lower
Mekong Basin in the Anthropocene and articulates
emblematic conditions of multispecies dimensionsof environmental crisis. It also highlights the socioecological disturbances in the Mekong multispecies
lifeworld from the industrial infrastructural frontier
expansion under China-backed projects. The LMB
inhabitants rely on fish and riverine biodiversity
for their protein intake. The decline of fish andthe disappearance of local green Algae (Kai) in
Chiang Khong in the northern part of Thailand isan obvious indicator of a transformed river that
also alters the socioeconomics of the local women.
According to Anna L. Tsing, an American professorof anthropology at the University of California,
with the arrival of the ideal of the Anthropocene,
there is an urgency to reconsider how human andnonhuman agency is inextricably intertwined.
However, intra-relational impacts (Barad, 2007) of
development projects on Mekong livelihood have
not received sufficient recognition as research often
assesses them separately. This research focuses on
one significant aspect of the Anthropocene: "feral
effects," defined as "unintended consequences ofundesigned more-than-human responses to humaninfrastructures" (Tsing et al., 2020). It aims toprovide an academic analysis to show the missing
link in international development and cooperation
toward sustainable development.

This essay presents how inhabitants of a NorthernJava estuary view and experience the aesthetics
of mangroves surrounding them and how it could
simultaneously take us on a journey to the past andthe future. Aesthetics, in this regard, is less about
the idea of beauty than the everyday melancholic
relations of living in a damaged landscape. This
specific concept of mangal aesthetics is based on
an artistic research action project in which we
document the oral accounts of estuary dwellers
and their interaction with mangroves using themost intimate contemporary media: cell phones.
We then present two opposite directions fromthis documentary: speculating about the past andremembering the future. The first direction refers
to a speculative exercise of reconstructing a deep
history of human migrations, changing relations
with mangrove forests and the island. They open
up a possibility of time traveling in and against the
Anthropocene, as it also prompts us to imagine an
anticipatory critique of the geological epoch.

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EAEH 2023

Environment and industrialization in Asia (2):Southeast Asia

Human-Nature Interactions in Public Policy:
Korean and Japanese Experiences in the
Anthropocene

ED3-09ED3-10Spectral Storytelling

The Landscape Entanglement ofDevelopment and Preservation: The
Case of Nodeul Island in the Han
River

Novita Anggraini

Yongjoo Han

Floating Tech-Lab

Seoul National University

In this essay, we aim to explore the possibilities ofprototyping chromatography as a tool to translate
a substance into a different spectrum of colors andto make our “chemical regimes of living“ visible,
perceptible, articulable, and thus discussable.
The pilot site is Muaragembong, an estuary inthe suburb of Jakarta, a site of confluence where
the sea and the river meet and a mangrove forest
and fishermen’s housing intersect. Together withlocal residents, we will use the technique of paper
chromatography and test the following materials:(i) mangrove apple (pidada); (ii) river water arounda toilet; and (iii) mudskippers meat. The results ofthis experiment serve as material for problematising
the troubled relations between human settlementsin the littoral zone, aquatic pollution and local foodproduction/consumption, and the extent to which
the pollutant concentration might have exceeded
the threshold limit, albeit it is beyond the horizon of
our perceptibility. We thus wish to develop 'spectral
storytelling', a form of narration that we will craftfrom our engagement with residents who havebeen enduring and surrounded by aquatic pollution
beyond the horizon of our bare eye perceptibility.
By spectral, we refer to the chromatography
experiment of testing different materials (e.g.
mud and mudskipper) with the residents and theghostly, haunting stories of coastal urbanities in the
Anthropocene.

This presentation seeks to examine how public
policy changes as ecological interest grows. Nodeul
Island is an artificial island built by the Japanese
Government-General of Korea in 1917 by pilingstone walls on the sandy beach along the riverside
to build the first footbridge in the Han River. Fora while, the island, named Jungjido (中之島) by
Japan, was considered an undeveloped space.
This study deals with the history from the purchaseof Nodeul Island by the Seoul government in 2005
to the opening of Nodeul Island in 2019. Thenmayor of Seoul, a former construction company
president, began promoting the construction of an
opera house at the end of his term in office andahead of his presidential run. Several environmentalgroups and cultural and artistic organizations
opposed it.There were three major reasons for
opposition: the lack of democratic procedures, thequestion of economic feasibility, and the importanceof preserving the ecosystem of Nodeul Island. The
geological and geographical characteristics of beinga small sand island raised concerns that it would
cost a lot of money to build large buildings andmaintain the surrounding traffic. The ecologicalstatus of Nodeul Island was emphasized through an
endangered species Kaloula borealis.
The current landscape of Nodeul Island wascreated through three design competitions under
three mayors of Seoul. An ecological park called'Maengkkongi Forest (Forest of Kaloula borealis)'
was built on the eastern side of the Hangang
Bridge and upstream of the Han River, and a smallscale cultural complex was built on the westernside. Even in the center of the city, the behaviorof non-humans could be detected which confirms
the hybridity created by humans and non-humans
together.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Human-Nature Interactions in Public Policy:
Korean and Japanese Experiences in the
Anthropocene

Human-Nature Interactions in Public Policy:
Korean and Japanese Experiences in the
Anthropocene

ED3-10ED3-10Community Cat Activities in Japan: A
Cognitive Reform Leading toChange in Human-Nature
Relationship

Politics of Rice Paddy Knowledge:
Survey Sciences and Human-Land
Relations in Cheonsu Bay

Tatsuya Miyazoe
Kiyoka Kondo
Hiroki Oikawa

Hanah Sung
KAISTThis presentation explores the human-land relations
in South Korea focusing on policy-relevant survey
sciences that represent and construct reclaimed
paddy fields of Cheonsu Bay, a region of South
Korea. Cheonsu Bay’s reclaimed fields were createdby the gigantic- scale reclamation projects in the
1980s along the western coastal lines in South
Korea and have been cultivated mostly for riceproduction.
Drawing on STS works of literature on theperformativity of knowledge in policy regimes, thisresearch analyzes how two survey sciences identify
two different human roles in paddy cultivation.
First, in the agriculture policy sector, salinity
measurement has been conducted to signal salt
damage to the paddies. Measuring and regulating
the salinity of rice fields could indicate that the
paddy fields should be managed for rice production.
However, bird census offers an alternate way toconsider human and rice field relations. The Korean
government commenced the first winter bird
census in the early 1990s and discovered that therice paddies of Cheonsu Bay served an invaluable
habitat for wild birds. Following this finding,some parts of the Cheonsu Bay rice paddies havebeen reserved for wildlife to feed the migratory
birds. The reclaimed rice fields in Cheonsu Bay
are now faced with a crisis to disappear as they areviewed as an optimal place for solar power panels.
Interestingly, the current vulnerability Cheonsu Bay
paddies faced is based on salinity measurement,
reflecting the devaluation of rice in the food market.
The counter argument is mainly based on the othersurvey science -bird monitoring sciences, which
regard the paddies as the land for birds as well
as for farmers. By contrasting the two different
survey sciences and their implications for humanintervention in rice paddies, this presentationsuggests that survey science occupies a significant
place for exploring shifting human‒land relations inSouth Korea.

Yokohama National University
Nature provides many blessings to human society.
Food, medicine, purification of sewage, andmitigation of climate change, to name a few. These
are generally referred to as ecosystem services.
However, nature does not only provide blessingsto humans. Nature also provides various harmful
effects, such as allergy (e.g., pollen allergy), natural
disasters (e.g., typhoon), diseases (e.g., COVID19),and so forth. This can be called ecosystem disservices.
The problem of stray cats is one such dis-service.
Their meowing tends to be regarded as noise,and their feces and urine as sanitation problems.
Cats might use gardens as a source of food andplayground. And those circumstances have often
led to disputes between local residents, particularly
when some feed those cats and others complain.
How can we solve or, at least, mitigate such disservices arising from stray cats? In recent years,
community cat activities have been attracting
attention in Japan as a way to manage the problem
of stray cats. The community cat activity began in
Isogo Ward of Yokohama City in 1999 in order totake care of cats in the community without owningthem. Since then, similar activities have spreadto other areas in Japan, and more than 250 local
governments have now subsidized them.
In this presentation, we indicate that, by changing
the perception of local residents, how the disservice of the stray cat has been transformed into
the ecosystem service of community cats. The
decisive factor in reforming their perception was
the way of thinking stray cat problem consists not
only of animal welfare issues but also local living
environment issues. The experience of community
cat activitie in Japan suggests that the relationshipbetween people and creatures is one that can be
carefully and craftly institutionalized by making fulluse of the concept of ecosystem services.
74

EAEH 2023

Human-Nature Interactions in Public Policy:
Korean and Japanese Experiences in the
Anthropocene

Imperial forestry in the territorial expansion ofJapan: Foresters, science, and management

ED3-10ED3-11

Ecosystem Services in the
Anthropocene: What Should We Add
to the MA (Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment) Diagram?

Formation and development of
tropical forestry in modern Japan
Koji Nakashima
Kanazawa University

Daichi Kato
Kiyoka Kondo
Hiroki Oikawa

This paper traces a history of formation anddevelopment of tropical forestry in modern
Japan and attempts to elucidate relationships ofscientific knowledge and politics over tropicalforest. Tropical forestry in modern Japan was firstlaunched in colonial Taiwan. Since the 1900s, theexperimental research on the tropical resource
became a significant matter of concern for theGovernment-General of Taiwan. The Forest
Experiment Station had conducted various researchon forest management methods in subtropicalclimates, plantation experiments of the tropical tree,
and utilization of the tropical forest products during
the 1910s-1940s. Along with the development of
tropical forestry in Taiwan, tropical forestry had
become gaining academic ground at Tokyo Imperial
University in the 1940s: Tropical Forestry ResearchInstitute (1940), Southern Resource ResearchGroup (1941), Southern Science Research Group(1942), Tropical Arboricultural Research Institute(1943), Southern Natural Science Research Institute(1944) were rapidly established in the early 1940s.
The establishment of these tropical forestry-related
research facilities and groups was in line with thegeopolitical strategy of the Japanese empire topromote its expansion southward. After Japan’s
defeat in the Asia-Pacific War, most tropical forestry
related research organizations and groups in Tokyo
Imperial University were dissolved or reorganized.
It was not until the mid 1960s that tropical forestry
became institutionalized again. In 1966, the Tropical
Forestry Association mainly consisting of general
trading companies and timber companies wasestablished. It aimed at promoting development of
tropical forestry and timber trade. Its official journal
was “The Tropical Forestry” that mainly focused on
tropical forestry development and forest productsin the late 1960. This association was, however
dissolved in 1984 in response to growing worldwide
criticism of the disappearance of tropical forests.
Although the journal itself has been published until
2007 by other organizations, the topics covered by
the journal gradually shifted to ecological issues.
In conclusion, it can be said that the significance oftropical forestry in modern Japan has changed inclose association with the political and economic
context.

Yokohama National University
The concept of ecosystem services was introducedin the 1970s and became popular through the reportof the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment that was conducted in the early 2000s.
The report included a diagram of ecosystemservices (hereafter referred to as the &quot;MAdiagram&quot;), in which, by making full use ofarrows, the delivery of those services to humansociety was shown to maintain our wellbeing.
In this presentation, we argue that the MA diagram
does not adequately capture reality. Specifically, we
point out that (1) nature also brings harm to humans(i.e., dis-services), (2) the benefits we receive fromnature should not be excessive, (3) there are manycases where the increase in one service causes a
decrease in the other, and (4) the diagram does nottake into account the factors of time and distance.
After pointing out these problems, we would like topropose what kind of arrows should be added to thediagram.
Furthermore, this presentation will argue that it isimportant not only to increase the number of typesof arrows from nature to human society, but also
to draw arrows in the opposite direction. In theera of the Anthropocene, nature is not only quiet
and vulnerable. It works on humans aggressively.
If we are to build a sustainable society under suchcircumstances, it is not enough to simply protect
nature. It is necessary to tame nature which has
been ever-changing and works on us more and moreaggressively. Adding the arrows in the opposite
direction in the MA diagram will be the first step tobuild a sustainable society.

75

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Imperial forestry in the territorial expansion ofJapan: Foresters, science, and management

Imperial forestry in the territorial expansion ofJapan: Foresters, science, and management

ED3-11

ED3-11

Quantitative aspects of forest
management and timber trade in theJapanese Empire

Between the exclusion and promotionof swidden agriculture in imperial
Japan: How did scientific foresters
rediscover indigenous agroforestry?

Taro Takemoto

Taisaku Komeie

Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology

Kyoto University
This paper examined statistical trends in forest
management and timber trade in the Japanese
empire, focusing on the forest area, ownership,
and conservation forests of different regions.
In addition, the trends in demand for timber byregion and the amount of timber imported into andexported out of the region were confirmed. The
forest and wildland areas in Japan proper decreased
gradually, while the forest area increased up to
1.5 million hectares in 1933. In Hokkaido, theforest and wildland areas remained stable, while in
Taiwan, the forest area slowly decreased. The areaof forest cover rate over 30% increased graduallyin the Korean peninsula, but deforestation occurred
obviously in Sakhalin. Ownership was divided
into state, public, and private categories. In Japan
proper, the private-owned forest area increased
gradually, while the state-owned forest area wasmore than 4 million hectares. In Taiwan, the stateowned forest area rate was larger than Hokkaido,
while public-owned forest rarely existed. In the
Korean peninsula, the proportion of ownershipwas similar to that of Japan proper after 1930. In
Sakhalin, all forest and wildland areas were ownedby the state. Conservation forests were divided into
water conservation, landslide prevention, landscape,and other categories. In Japan proper, water
conservation area hardly changed, while the area oflandslide prevention doubled. In Hokkaido, mostconservation forests were for water conservation.
In Taiwan, 10% of forest and wildland areas was
designated as conservation forest eventually, whilein the Korean peninsula, the rate remained 3%. Few
conservation forests were designated in Sakhalin.
In analyzing timber trade, it was found that thedemand in Japan proper was more than double
the total demand of all colonies. While the totalexport from the colonies to Japan exceeded imports,
Hokkaido and Sakhalin had constant export
surpluses, whereas Taiwan and Korea had constantimport surpluses.

In the development of scientific forestry inJapan, shifting cultivation and artificial fires weretreated with ambivalence. This paper examines
the relationship between the introduction ofmodern forestry science and indigenous forest
use with special reference to swidden agriculture
in early 20 th century Japan. Modern Japanese
forestry scientists and bureaucrats condemned the“destruction” of land cover by shifting cultivation
both in their home country and in colonial Taiwan
and Korea in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries.
However, they also understood that indigenous
private forestry was established as agroforestry
in early modern Japan on the basis of swidden
agriculture. They could not eliminate swidden
burning because it was an essential part of forestry
practices in mountainous regions. Seiroku Honda,
one of the founders of modern forestry science inJapan, “rediscovered” swidden forestry in the early
20 th century, evaluating Japan’s existing private
forestry and, simultaneously, criticizing shifting
cultivation without tree plantation. This interestin swidden forestry led to the first national reporton swidden agriculture in 1936, which divided
shifting cultivation into two categories: with andwithout forestry. Although swidden agriculture waspositioned as an effective way to promote forestry,swidden forestry did not spread throughout theJapanese empire as expected because of the initialcosts for tree plantation, prolonged fallow period,
and reduction in the amount of land available forcultivation. However, it gradually led to a criticalshift in vegetation from diverse forests created byartificial disturbances into simple coniferous forests,
thus simplifying livelihoods in mountainous areas.

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EAEH 2023

Imperial forestry in the territorial expansion ofJapan: Foresters, science, and management

Variegated State-Nature Relationships in EastAsia

ED3-11

ED3-12

Settler Colonialism of Foresters in
Karafuto, a Subarctic Territory of theJapanese Empire
Taisho Nakayama

Bridging Over the Troubled Waters:
Geopolitics of Transnational
Cooperation in East Asian
Oceanography, 1985-2005

Kushiro Public University of Economics

Sungeun Kim
KAIST

Karafuto, the southern part of Sakhalin Island
was a subarctic territory of the Japanese empire
and one of the trophies of the Russo-Japanesewar. Though Japanese people had advanced
into the island since early modern period, they
had developed forestry resources only along thecoasts because their economic concern had been
limited to fishery. Japanese launched their largescale forestry development, especially for pulp
industry and paper manufacturing, since aroundten years after the possession. The whole of theforest of Karafuto was national forest and thecolonial government provided the right of forestry
development to companies such Ōji Seishi and theincome had the important position of the finance ofthe colonial government. The management of thenational forest was one of the important issues foreach of the colonial elites including the educators,
the journalists as well as the officers.“Settler
colonialism” in the society of Karafuto has been
already pointed out. The colonial elites attempted
to justify the mission “kaitaku (agriculturaldevelopment accomplished by Japanese migrants)”
as the construction of the base creating Subarctic
culture for more expansion of the nation into thenorthern area. Can we find a similar phenomenon in
the foresters and their community in Karafuto? Thatis the research concern of this paper. As mentioned
above, the forestry development had an importantfinancial role, therefore, a dilemma, development
or protection, emerged because a rapid forestry
development would result in an exhaustion of theresource and it was clear that it meant the failureof the colonial government, on the other hand, an
extreme restriction of forestry development would
result in the failure the colonial economy. Whatkind of opinions and disciplines did they have? Did
the settler colonialism motivate them? This paper
discusses these research questions mainly with
their statements in their academic papers and theirarticles on the public media such as newspapers andmagazines publishes in Karafuto.

How does it become possible to study a sea filledwith intense territorial conflicts? This presentation
explores the challenges of producing transboundary
maritime knowledge through the case study on the
East Sea oceanography. The East Sea is a marginal
sea surrounded by four historically conflictednations: South Korea, North Korea, Russia, andJapan. Despite vast oceanographic interests in thisregion, a scientific survey of the East Sea has beenpractically impossible due to prolonged geopoliticaltensions throughout the late 20th century. In the
1990s, however, the collapse of the Soviet Union
created a small window of opportunity for theinternational oceanographic community to attempta border-crossing science on this region. This paper
follows an international team of Korean, Japanese,
Russian, and US scientists who sailed across theoceanic boundaries of the East Sea. It examines
the material, political, and rhetorical tactics thatthe team employed to make their cruise feasible.
The international team designed their cruise routes
in a way that they could circumvent the complex
territorial conflicts of the East Sea. To gain financial
support from governments, the team aligned theirsurvey with various national motives to study thebasin, such as nuclear waste dumping incidents.
At the same time, the team actively framed theirresearch as an apolitical science to understand theimpact of climate change on oceans. Analyzing thechallenges of international cooperation in troubled
waters, this presentation shows how geopoliticalconflicts critically shaped the scientific practice andknowledge of oceanic spaces. It further suggeststhat investigating transnational scientific projects
can be a novel method to narrate the changing
geopolitics in conflicted regions.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Variegated State-Nature Relationships in EastAsia

Variegated State-Nature Relationships in EastAsia

ED3-12

ED3-12The Intertwined Politics of‘Development’ and the ‘Environment’in Korea during the 1970s

Putting the more-than-human state
in its place
Jihoon Park

Jihye Yang

Chung-Ang University

Northeast Asian History Foundation

Jin-Tae Hwang
Korea Institute for National Unification

Containers loaded with hazardous waste aresailing to underdeveloped countries even today.
Historically, international trade in pollution has
been used not only as a means for developed
countries to shift the costs of their development tounderdeveloped countries but also as a means forunderdeveloped countries to quickly access financial
resources for development even at the expenseof the environment. Korea was not an exception.
During the period of rapid economic growth sincethe 1960s, Korea imported many polluting industrial
facilities from abroad, resulting in the generationof huge amounts of hazardous waste. While theproblems of environmental degradation such asthese were an integral part of Korea’s development
process, they have received only scant attention
in the official history of the country’s economic
development, often being dismissed as peripheral
issues. The present paper aims to go beyond thistendency by examining the intertwined politics of‘development’ and the ‘environment’ that underlay
the disputes caused by the importation of polluting
industries from Japan in the 1970s.

The more-than-human state is a concept thatcriticizes the anthropocentrism inherent in politicalsociologist Bob Jessop's strategic-relational
state theory (SRST) while paying attention to
the possibility of modifying the human-centric
SRST from the perspective of more-than-humangeographies. However, in order to establish an
SRST that more effectively responds to the morethan-human turn, we would like to remind you that
it is necessary to discuss the strategic-relational
approach (SRA) as a social theory that is the basisof Jessop’s state theory. This is because the SRA
primarily deals with social structure, agency, andsocial change, while the SRST is a political theory
based on such a social theory. Previous studies
focusing on the state bypassed social structure andagency discussed in the SRA. Our presentation
seeks to deepen the understanding of the social in
the more-than-human state by examining the SRA
from blood transfusions such as more-than-humangeographies, critical realism, new materialism, etc.

78

EAEH 2023

Human and Nonhuman Animals

Human and Nonhuman Animals

ED3-13ED3-13

The Big Cat in the Western Regions: A
Restudy of the Species and Extinction
Causes of Xinjiang Tiger in Historical
Era

Big Cats in Korea:
A journey through time and culture

Hao Zheng

Jeong Eun Lim
National Institute of Ecology

Minzu University / UC Berkeley

The coexistence of big cats and humans in Korea
is a fascinating journey through time and culture,
particularly in the case of tigers. Initially, during theprehistoric age (B.C. 700,000 ~ B.C. 2333), tigers
held a dominant position over humans, and humans
lacked the means to hunt them effectively. However,as time passed, humans began worshipping andactively hunting tigers. Over several thousand
years, the relationship between humans and tigers
became more balanced until the establishment of
the Chosun dynasty (1392-1910), when the nation
systematically eradicated tigers, leading to their
extirpation from the Korean peninsula by the 20th
century. Despite their disappearance, the spiritof the tiger continues to affect the lives of 21st
century Koreans. The possibility of tigers returning
to the Korean peninsula within the next 100 years
raises questions about the potential for a renewed
relationship between humans and these majestic
creatures.

This paper will re-examines the species andextinction causes of the Xinjiang tiger in historicalera. Three types of documents on the Xinjiang
tiger show that there are tigers in the history of
Xinjiang, but most of the descriptions are toobrief and lacking in detail, making it difficult todistinguish between species. The Xinjiang tiger is
not a distinct subspecies. Due to the wide rangeof variation in body length, fur color and stripe
pattern, the morphological characteristics recorded
in documents cannot be used as evidence forsubspecies identification. The difference in the
shape of the tiger should be the change in characterto adapt to the local ecological environment in
the north and south of Xinjiang. Palaeontologicalstudies show that the ancient Chinese tiger
and leopard are more closely related. From theperspective of the origin and spread of the tiger,
and the ancient geographical changes in theenvironment, the Xinjiang tiger and the Caspiantiger have a closer relationship. The name of thetiger in Xiyu Tuzhi includes “巴尔” (Dzungaria)
and “约 勒巴尔斯 ” (Kashgaria), but the former
comes from Mongolian and the latter comes from
Uighur, which is the name of the same species
in different languages, and does not show thedifference of tiger in the north and south. The main
reason for the extinction of the Xinjiang tiger isthought to be the radical environmental changes
caused by human activities. The Lop people’s viewthat ants kill tigers is a kind of historical memoryin civil society, and is not one of the reasons forthe extinction of the Xinjiang tiger. The prevalenceof it reflects Lop people’s views on environmental
change, and also reflects the relationship between
humans and animals in the Anthropocene.

79The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Human and Nonhuman Animals

Human and Nonhuman Animals

ED3-13ED3-13Elegy for Elephants: The end of theimperial elephant performances andthe change of the human-elephantrelationship in the late Qing Dynasty

Increase in Exports of Otter Skinand Its Ecological Environmental
Consequences in the Joseon Dynasty

Pei Xiaoshan
Nankai University
Since the 19th century, with the sharp decreasein the number of imperial elephants, the imperial
elephant performances had been impacted, but the
court still strived to maintain its operation. It was
not until around 20 years after Guangxu, whenthe elephant stable was empty, that the institution
was wholly terminated. The disappearance of theimperial elephant performance institutions is related
to the sudden drop in the number of domestic
elephants, which is embodied in the meager
birth rate, extremely high mortality rate, and low
replenishment frequency of trained elephants.
With the demise of the ceremonial system, therelationship between people and elephants haschanged in people's lives, concepts, and cognition.
Specifically, since the late Qing Dynasty, with theintroduction of private elephant purchases andcircuses, elephant taming is no longer mysterious;
the interaction between elephant taming and people
has surpassed the ritual system and has become
increasingly close. With the deepening of therelationship between elephant taming and people,
the cultural symbols that people give to taming
elephants have also changed: on the one hand, theimage of national prosperity symbolized by elephanttaming is deepening; Civilian image features. It canbe seen that the construction of animal images isclosely related to the degree of interaction between
humans and animals.

Misung Kim
Yonsei University
The otter is designated as an endangered species
both on the Korean Peninsula and globally. The
causes of extinction are river pollution, damconstruction, and poaching that occurred after
industrialization. However, this article will talkabout the possibility that the crisis of the otter
species on the Korean Peninsula occurred even
before modern industrialization.
After the relationship between Joseon and Qing
was established, a massive amount of animal skins
were required, and otter skins accounted for a large
portion of them. For example, when the envoy of
the Qing Dynasty came to Joseon in 1647, he took
1,363 sheets of otter skins. This amount was added
to the regular tribute that Joseon envoys gave to the
Qing Dynasty and this demand persisted for a longtime.
As the demand for otter skins increased in the Qing,
the number of traffickers also increased. Although
there was an official organization purveying otter
skin in Joseon, unofficial merchants such as Kaeseong merchants and Ui-ju merchants started topreoccupy the products ahead of the official route.
They colluded with otter hunters and Beijing trade
brokers to monopolize trade.
As a result of this increase in otter skin exports, it
seems that the population and habitat of otters on
the Korean Peninsula also changed. Although thegeography book of the early part of Joseon recordedthat the otters inhabited all over the country, theofficial otter skin purveyors in the late 18th century
said that otters could only be obtained in thevicinity of the East Coast. In the early 19th century,
otters were reported to be 'extinct' in Jeju Island.
In previous studies, Joseon merchants’ otter skintrade was only mentioned as an example of ‘thegrowth of monopoly capital power’, but it is also
necessary to look at it as a problem of overhuntingof certain animal species from the perspective of
ecological and environmental history.

80

EAEH 2023

Water Control in Anthropocene East Asia: (Post)
Colonial River Engineering and its Multiple
Impacts

Water Control in Anthropocene East Asia: (Post)
Colonial River Engineering and its Multiple
Impacts

ED3-14

ED3-14

Witnessing an Ecological Debacle:
Sun Moon Lake Hydroelectric
Plant and Colonial Environmental
Management

The Yongding River Water
Conservancy Projects in the Republicof China

Lisa Yoshikawa

Miwa Shimada

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Keio University

Taiwan’s Sun Moon Lake (Riyuetan) hydroelectric
plant, at its 1934 completion, was the largest of
its kind in Asia and could supply all of colonial
Taiwan’s electricity demands. Due to thisimportance to the island’s energy needs, and thecomplex construction efforts that took fifteen years,
many studies exist that examine the relationshipbetween this plant and humans. Less has been
discussed about how the building and running of
this hydroelectric plant also impacted non-humananimals, as concerned contemporary zoologists
followed the changes to the environment in andsurrounding Riyuetan. The plant’s construction
process began in 1919, almost exactly whenscientists in Taiwan started to lobby for animaland plant protection and conservation amidst
increasing environmental destruction caused by
Japanese resource extraction. The conservation
movement dragged on as well precisely due to thecontradiction with colonial goals and culminatedin the passage of a preservation law in 1930 andthe first two animal protection designations madein 1933. The potential harm that the hydroelectric
plant would cause in Riyuetan region was hence
not lost on Japanese scientists, who tried at the very
least to document the impacts through limnologicaland other surveys. My paper looks at this interwar
process to shed light on colonial scientists’ roles inenvironmental management.

This study examines the Yongding River water
conservancy projects in the Republic of China.
I particularly focus on the construction of the
Guangting Reservoir in North China, during theRepublic of China period, to clarify Sino-Japaneserelations on Chinese water conservancy projects
and the influence of the global knowledge network.
The Yongding River originates in Shanxi Provinceand Inner Mongolia, passing through Beijing,
China’s capital, and Tianjin, before reaching theBohai Sea. Water conservancy projects in the
Yongding River basin enable the examination of therelationship between central and local governments,
international relations surrounding the Tianjin
concession, and the construction of Beijing. The
introduction of modern flood control technology
for the Yongding River was discussed during the
Beijing government period. In this period, Japan
became involved because of its interest in watertransportation for its military advance into China.
The North China Water Conservancy Committee
was established during the Nanjing Nationalist
Government period and planned the constructionof the Guangting Reservoir on the upper reaches of
the Yongding River. Many of the Chinese engineers
on this committee had studied civil engineeringin Europe and the United States, showing theformation of a global knowledge network. However,after the outbreak of the Manchurian Incident,
the Guangting Reservoir construction continued
with the technical cooperation of the League of
Nations due to the conflict between Japan and
China. Japan’s expansion into North China also
affected China’s international relations regarding
dam construction, and international involvement in
China’s water conservancy projects was significant.

81

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Water Control in Anthropocene East Asia: (Post)
Colonial River Engineering and its Multiple
Impacts

Water Control in Anthropocene East Asia: (Post)
Colonial River Engineering and its Multiple
Impacts

ED3-14

ED3-14

Reshaping the Landscape: The
Construction and Impact of the
Shihmen Reservoir

The Inundated City: Dam-Fetishismand the Failure of Flood Control in
Seoul during the
1960s and Thereafter

Ya-wen Ku

Seohyun Park

Academia Sinica

National University of Singapore

The Shihmen Reservoir is perhaps the most wellknown reservoir in Taiwan. The idea of constructing
a dam in Shihmen originated during the Japanesecolonial period in the 1900s, but its basic designand construction did not begin until after the war,in 1955, when the Republic of China government
obtained funding and technical assistance from theUnited States. During the construction period, theShihmen Reservoir was listed as a must-visit site forforeign dignitaries visiting Taiwan, as it was seen
as a symbol of demonstrating the country’s power
and prosperity. When discussing the reasons for its
construction, previous studies focus on the benefitsof the Reservoir for irrigation and power generationfrom a local perspective. In fact, if taking a broader
view, the Shihmen Reservoir was once viewed asa small-scale replica of the YVA (Yangtze Valley
Authority, a “TVA for the Yangtze Valley”) projectin Taiwan Province in the early post-war period.
After the government of the Republic of China
moved to Taiwan in 1949, it became a substitute for
the YVA project in “Free China”, and therefore wasimbued with high political significance.
This article will use newly unearthed archives of
the Shihmen Reservoir to re- examine the neglectedwater history, and explore how this important
construction project, driven by the highest principleof “pursuing efficiency” led to the rapid changeof the landscape by facilitating cross-settlement
migration of people.

The flooding of Seoul in the summer of 2022
shocked the public as it paralyzed Gangnam,
the nation’s wealthiest district. While dominantnarratives blamed record-breaking rainfall, thelow-lying terrain, or the underprepared mayor
for the deadly flood, this paper sheds light on thelong-standing failure of Seoul’s drainage system.
Paying close attention to the postwar expansion ofSeoul, I argue that the overreliance on large damsin flood control made city planners implement
land development without well-designed flood
prevention measures. From the late 1960s alongside
rapid population growth, the government developed
lowland riverside areas of Seoul to secure more
residential areas. National developmentalists
believed that building large dams on the upstream
Han River—the nation’s iconic river, which
passes through Seoul—would prevent the cityfrom flooding. This idea was epitomized by theestablishment of the Han River Flood Control
Office in 1974. Having technical assistance fromJapan, the control office viewed flooding not merely
as a local incident but as a matter of manipulating
the water level of the entire Han River. Within thisperspective, containing water with large artificial
reservoirs in the upstream river constituted the
major strategy of flood control for downstream
Seoul. This technical hubris led to the promotionof riverside reclamation plans, including Yeouido,
Jamsil, and Gangnam development projects. Yet,chronic deluges, such as the great floods in 1984,
demonstrated that damming failed to save the cityfrom floods, exposing larger sections of the city
to the risk of disasters without proper measures inplace.

82

EAEH 2023

Environment and industrialization in Asia (3):South Asia

Environment and industrialization in Asia (3):South Asia

ED3-16

ED3-16The Shaping of Crisis for Developing
Home in the Eastern Himalayas

Anthropocene's Carbon

Ru-Yu Lin

Jahnavi Phalkey

University of Sussex

Science Gallery Bengaluru

Mountain areas are pron-disasters such as
landslides, flash floods and heavy snowfall, fromthe view of sedentary, mainly agriculture-based,
natural resource-dependent agents. Arunachal
Pradesh is a Himalayan borderland currently under
the control of India, the militarisation and periodic
border conflicts greatly limit the ancient trade routes
with the trans-Himalayan area. Most development
funds of this place go to road and urbanisation; yetsuch development, along with the booming interestin hydro energy and carbon sink, do not holisticallyenhance the safety and integrity of the mountaineco-society. As global warming has significantly
brought a warmer winter and less snow in the
Eastern Himalayas, the water crisis is a looming
issue that contests the long-term dwelling of thelocal indigenous communities. However, it is rather
rare to perceive the problematization including the
local point of view and integrate their understanding
and adaptation logic to the environmental change
for making development plans. Oral history,
folklore, and narratives become useful in this regard
for they reflect the human-nature relationship at thatplace, and people’s senses about danger and safety.
This article thus takes the interest in the definitionof crisis from a pastoralist, mobile, scattered yetwell-connected hill community, the Monpa people,
who live between China and India. Waving the folkstories, testimonies of interacting with nature spirits,
and personal views about extractions, the Tawang
Monpa’s vernaculars and narratives show how theidea of the environmental crisis goes through a
re-identification of the power relations, Self, andhome, which ultimately affects their responses andresilience towards hazards. The confluence may
also inform the need to reverse a plain-over-hill,
nationality-over-border policy thinking, the innerpolitics about sistainability.

Carbon is essential to life and humanity, argues thehistorian and philosopher of science, Bernadette
Bensaud-Vincent. Carbon fundamental to life onearth and yet today occupies an overwhelmingly
negative space in the debate on climate change. In
my presentation, I will examine the outcomes ofprojects conducted as part of the research festival
on Carbon at Science Gallery Bengaluru to explore
one question: where is carbon in the day-to-day
life of the city, and what do efforts to surface thisfacet of the element contribute to the understandingof climate change? I am teaching a research andpractice based course on Tracing Carbon to design
students where we will recover the histories ofcarbon based craft and livelihoods - from smithery
to precision industrial work – in Bengaluru. Aspart of the course, we will document the historiesof the craft but also record oral histories with its
practitioners. My presentation will draw uponthese findings and their implications for the larger
question suggested above.

83

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Environment and industrialization in Asia (3):South Asia

Environment and industrialization in Asia (3):South Asia

ED3-16

ED3-16

Floristic dynamics and Vegetational
analysis of plant community in temple
city Bhubaneswar

State, business, and the local
environment: the history of a post1949 paper mill in China

Sanjeeb Kumar Das

Juanjuan Peng

Regional Institute of Education (NCERT)

Georgia Southern University
In 1950 when Hanyang Paper Mill was planned
as one of the first large-scale industrial projectsof the young People’s Republic of China, thepolicymakers, with neither knowledge nor concern
about environmental pollution related to paper
production, chose a lot lies five kilometers upstream
from the metropolitan Wuhan along the Yangtze
River. Ever since the paper mill started its operation,
its wastewater continuously flowed into the river,posting a threat to the ecological systems of boththe local fishing villages and the large metropolitan
area of Wuhan. In the 1970s, the deteriorating water
quality and the rising environmental awarenessurged the Chinese government to regulate the water
waste of this important state-owned enterprise thatranked top five among Wuhan factories in both
the revenue income it generated and the pollution
it created. The introduction of environmental
protection policies, together with a changing
economic environment following China’s economic
reform, had later put the business on the verge ofbankruptcy by the 1990s. In 1997, the enterprise
was privatized, becoming a member factory ofChenming Group. The business’s rapid growth
after the privatization improved its financial
health whereas worsened its pollution problem.
Eventually, in 2012, the new private owner wasforced to close the factory due to the government’s
further environmental protection regulations.
By tracing the history of this paper factory, theproject will unveil how the business growth of anindustrial firm has impacted its local ecologicalsystem, with a particular focus on the economic,
and social, environmental consequences of thewater pollution it created. The paper will also reveal
how the worsening water quality and subsequentenvironmental degradation triggered the protests oflocal people and the regulation of local government,
which in turn led to the decline of the business. In
short, the project blends environmental and businesshistory and hopes to understand the development of
an industrial firm in its ecological system.

Globalization and Industrialization have brought
rapid urbanization and fast growth of cities thatare considered as engines of economic growth.
Bhubaneswar, the capital of Odisha is widely known
as the temple city of the East. Recently, it has
been declared as the smart city by government ofIndia. The present study is to analysis vegetation in
Bhubaneswar in terms of qualitative disappearance/
appearance of the species and quantitative analysis
of vegetation patches. With exhaustic analysis
of vegetation, a total of 442 plant species wererecorded sessonally in both Central and Transition
Zones belong to 304 genera and 97 families.
This collection embraces as many as 138 herbs,
36 shrubs, 100 trees, 35 climbers, 93 grasses, 16hydrophytes, 2 epiphytes, 3 parasites, 2 bryobhytes
and 18 pteridophytes. Among families Fabaceae,
Asteraceae and Euphorbiaceae are dominant fami;yamong dicotyledons where as in Monocotyledons,
Poaceae and Cyperaceae were dominant families.
From the study area 10 species were found to be
Vulnerable, endangered and threatened and 60 plant
species were identified as invasive species. 110
plants were recorded as medicinal plants. vegetation
data’s were analysed by their synthetic characterslike abundance(A), frequency( F), Density( D),
Relative frequency( RF), Relative Density( RD),
Relative Dominance( RnD), Basal Area, Importantvalue Index( IVI),Family Importance Value(
FIV). Different indices like Shannon- Weiner
Index, Concentration of Dominance (CD), Species
Richness (SR) and Species Evenness (SR) were
calculated. In the Central Zone Delonix regia( Boj.
ex.Hook) has the highest no. of population where asin Mangifera indica L. had the highest populationin Transition zone. A total no. of 5 new species
were recorded in the Bhubaneswar city which wereneither recorded by previous workers.
Key Words: Floristic dynamics, Vegetation analysis,
Diversity Indices,84

EAEH 2023

Human and Forest

Human and Forest

ED3-18ED3-18Sustainable forest management:
Biodiversity conservation by sacredgroves, sacred landscape & sacredplant species & Traditional Ecologicalknowledge in India
Baisakhi Bandyopadhyay

Forests and Frontiers: A Study ofForestry Rights in the Yalu River
Basin on the Eve of the RussoJapanese War
Wu QifangNortheast Normal University

The Asiatic Society Kolkata India

During the Qing dynasty, northeastern China was
the most wooded region in the world. The Yalu
River basin was even more forested and richly
stocked. Since the implementation of the Russianpolicy of expansion in the Far East, Russia hasrepeatedly investigated the forest resources of the
Yalu River basin in the name of building roads,
planting expeditions and establishing "barriers",
with the intention of using "Manchuria" as the basic"sphere of influence" and the Yalu River basin as
the basic "sphere of influence". "The Yalu Riverbasin was used as a buffer zone and the Yalu River
Forestry Rights Company as a base to prevent Japan
from entering Manchuria, thus conflicting withJapanese interests. As a buffer zone, the forested
borderlands attracted both Japanese and Russianforces to develop forestry on both sides of the Yalu
River basin. In the three subsequent JapaneseRussian negotiations centred on the " ManchuKorean Exchange Theory", the issue of forestry
rights in the Yalu River became an important meansof fomenting war sentiment by the Japanese war
masters. The outbreak of the war was caused bymultiple factors, but the Yalu River was one of the
major contributing factors.

The association of people with forests began inIndia at a very early period. Some of the pre-Aryancommunities had their hamlets built inside theforests. All of them used to depend on forests andplants for their sustenance and relief in diseases
1)Forest management and conservation and useof plant .Muslim invaders were all keen hunters
and needed patches of forests; hence they ensured
that these forests were protected, the trees in theseareas were not felled, and the forest ecology was
not tampered with. The Mughals showed interestin development of gardens, though the history of
botanic gardens in India dates back as- far as 1000800 BC. As mentioned in the Charaka Samhita—the
Materia Medica of ancient India—medicinal herbs
were cultivated in tapovans (medicinal gardens)
near the ashrams of rishi-munis (sages). 2)Groves
dedicated to Gods: The practice of dedicating
Groves to deities is common in India. while they
provide a haven for birds and animals, they alsopreserve many species of plants, which would
otherwise have become extinct. We are nature
worshippers par excellence, and extend protection
to more forms of living nature than any otherculture in the world. Not content with caring forindividual species, we also have our sacred ponds
and sacred groves, ancient nature sanctuaries where
all forms of living creatures are afforded protection
through the grace of any one deity..3)Sacred Fruits
offered to Gods for their nutritive values andHistory and diversity of Fruit Crops in India: The
ancient Indian civilization was primarily dependent
upon and intimately related with forests and flora.
In several Sanskrit writings like, epics, Puranas,
scriptures, (like “Vrikshayurveda”, “Upavana
Vinoda”, “Brihat Samhita” etc.) the science ofplant life has been described and three indigenous
fruits viz. mango, banana and jackfruit extensively
mentioned.
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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Relationship between scientific and publicawareness of environment

Relationship between scientific and publicawareness of environment

ED3-19ED3-19Science, technology and politics: thebirth of an ecologicalawareness in Italy

Technology, Territoriality andenvironment development ofmountain agriculture in Taiwan,
1960’s-1980’s
ChiaHsing Ho (James Hou)

Federico Paolini
Università di Macerata

National Chung Hsing University

The aim of this paper is to present the results of anational research project (funded by the Ministry of
Universities and Research) aimed at investigating
how the interactions between science, technology
and politics have influenced the affirmation ofa growing environmental awareness in Italian
institutions and public opinion. The main focus of
the analysis is the role of "experts" - in particular ofsome scientists who held leading positions withinscientific research institutions - in the developmentof environmental policies and the dynamics oftheir relations with Italian governments. The roleof scientists began to be relevant in the late 1950s
when a Consultative Commission on Ecology
created within the National Research Council wasappointed to provide continuous advice used by
the institutions involved in initiating a discussion
on ecological issues. The debate on the ecologicalproblems of development has taken on a very broad
dimension since the publication of the report 'Limits
to Growth' (1972), widely discussed also in Italy.
The new element is the presence in the public spaceof organized environmentalism that contributes tothe visibility of environmental issues. Technology
is becoming increasingly important in the debate,both on the various pollution issues (the Seveso
industrial accident in 1976) and on nuclear energy.
In the second half of the 1980s the role of scientists
and experts reached its peak: In 1986, the Ministryof the Environment was created, recognising apolitical dimension to environmental problems. In
1987, some scientists and 'experts' at the heart of the
public space were nominated for the parliamentaryelections of the in a context that saw for the firsttime the presence of a green party. The researchtries to reflect on some issues: the role of scientists,
who are not neutral subjects but bearers of politicaland economic interests; the role of technology
experts working within state-owned companies thatwere much more influential than scientists. The
emergence of environmental awareness seems tofollow much more concrete interests than the resultsof research produced by scientists.

This proposal will discuss the relationship between
technology introduction, territorial development
and environment management of mountainagriculture in Taiwan during 1960’s-1980’s byinvestigating the construction of the Central CrossIsland Highway and the establishment of the threestate-owned farms: Fushoushan Farm(1957),
Qingjing Farm(1961) and Wuling Farm(1963). At
the beginning, three mountain farms grew mostly
vegetables, about 1965, they had successfully
imported deciduous fruit seedlings and introduced
cultivating technology to become a fruit planting
demonstration farm. Thereafter those farms becamea major production center for temperate fruits andvegetables, these agricultural products not only
supplied to the domestic market, but also exported,
earning profits for the government and Improved useof the high mountain territory. The development ofmountain agriculture was deeply influenced by theadvancement of agricultural science and technology.
In order to change soil quality, stimulate growth andprevent pests and diseases, farmers were extensive
use of fertilizers and pesticides in mountainous
areas for growing fruits and vegetables. Not only
government officials encouraged farmers to use
more pesticides and fertilizers in those farms,
agricultural experts also believed that using thesetechnologies in mountainous areas can increase
production and bring higher profits. However,the chemical products in mountain agriculture
had caused serious water pollution in Dajia River(One of the major rivers in central Taiwan) since
1980s, and the over-exploited hillside has also
attracted social attention. The environmental impact
caused by the development of mountain farms
has gradually become the focus of discussions invarious circles of society since 1980s, and it has
also prompted the transformation of the farms
into tourist attractions. Through this study of themountain agriculture in Taiwan will present thefocus of people's concern shifts from the economy
to the environment, from technological progressand environmental utilization to public governanceand sustainable management.
86

EAEH 2023

Relationship between scientific and publicawareness of environment

Relationship between scientific and publicawareness of environment

ED3-19ED3-19The Invisible Crisis:Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity(EHS) of public health perspective

Knowing “nature” in late 19th century
East Asia

Wan-Chun Cheng

Michael Shiyung Liu

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG)

University of Pittsburgh

This proposal discusses how electromagnetic
fields (EMFs) affect health problems and theenvironment, especially concerning people withelectromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS). The
effect of electromagnetic fields on human healthand the environment has been controversial since
the origins of modern epidemiology. Over 25
years ago, Mitchell and Cambrosio mentioned thephenomenon: “Some prominent scientists regard
the EMF question as a very serious issue; someothers regard it as ‘an imaginary problem’, on apar with believing in black magic or UFOs.” On
the one hand, scientists believe that EMF exposure
may contribute to health problems. Many experts,scientists, and doctors warn us that EMF exposureand 5G technology will harm human beings andthe ecological environment. Because EMF isinvisible or hardly perceptible, most people thinkthat this fear is not justified, or that it only posesa low risk to human health. However, millions ofpeople with electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS)
could prove that EMFs are indeed hurtful to humanhealth, both physically and mentally. Tragically,
when society faces important truths which areinconvenient (especially to vested interests) andrequire courageous action and leadership, there
is a great tendency to denial on many levels, anda great temptation to “shoot the messenger” by
pretending that the issue is either psychological,
a placebo or nocebo response, a media-driven
psychosis, by discrediting the patients’ honest
stories, or by threatening legal or other action. In
fact, EMF pollution and the development of 5G
network technology are afflicting millions of EHS
people. In the face of the government, industry,
vested interests, a large number of Internet addicts,
and experts who believe in [scientism] and arenaive and optimistic about EMF pollution and
5G technology, they are enthusiastically andcontinuously promoting 5G policies without any
security protection. How should EHS people live
and work in peace?

The translation of “nature” varied when the
Chinese and Japanese attempted to translated
the new word in western linguistic contexts.
For a long period, nature in western language
was synonymous to “surrounding” or “naturalneighborhood” in Japanese and Chinese context.
However, around early 20th century, the translationof “Shizen” has been officially recognized by
Japanese government and was eventually copied
by Chinese society through the introduction ofChinese abroad students in Japan. This paper will
discuss how the word “nature” was first introduced
to East Asian societies and how early translators
understand the complicated meanings of this wordfrom their traditional linguistic heritages. The study
will possibly reveal how different western andeastern cultures “gazes” the natural environment
and the artificial neighborhood, the later constently
penetrated and used natural environment. By
studying the conceptual history of translating nature
in Japanese and Chinese societies, the author hopes
to further explore some contemporary issues ofutilizing nature to meet the criteria of ecologicalprotection. This last part of discussion will touch
issues like governmental policies, socio-economic
conflicts, and norms of popular ecologicalcivilization.

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Human and Wildlife

Human and Wildlife

ED3-20ED3-20“Little Cattle with Wings”:
Industrialization of Farming and
Cooking of Ducks in Modern South
Korea

Struggles in a shell: socio-ecologicaltransformation of freshwater pearl
cultivation in Lake Biwa, Japan

Tae-Ho Kim

Hsin-Hua Chiang

Jeonbuk National University

University of Tokyo

This manuscript examines the history of modern
duck farming in South Korea and seeks for ahistorical explanation of why duck recipes in South
Korea have not been as diversified as in other Asian
countries.
Various kinds of ducks have been native in the
Korean Peninsula, and Koreans have a long
history of taming and raising ducks in households.
However, it was not until the mid-1980s that duckfarming was industrialized, and the supply of duckmeat was increased enough to push the producers
to seek for new recipes to popularize it. One
obstacle against the industrialized duck farming
was that ducks always needed water to paddle
around, and thus cannot be contained in a cage likechickens. Ducks were raised in a small scale inrural households and consumed for special purpose(specifically invigorating in summer) rather than foreveryday meals. In the mid-1980s, however, newstains of ducks were imported from Europe (the UK
and France). The breeders tried to commercialize
these new strains under the product name “mountainducks [san-ori]” to highlight that the ducks did notneed a pond and could be raised in a dry cage.
Still, another problem was that cooking recipes
for duck were not diversified enough to promote
it for everyday meals. Traditionally, most of duckmeat was consumed in the form of stew [tang] as aninvigorating food, but its demand was concentrated
in summer. Juwon Farm, one of the breeders,advertised their new ducks as “Little Cattle with
Wings,” and sold duck meat sliced for on-tablebarbecue, to convince consumers that duck meat
could be enjoyed just like beef or pork.
As South Korean economy grew much fasterthan expectation, however, consumer’s demandrapidly shifted toward beef and pork, and duckmeat could only occupy a mediocre position.
Today, the majority of duck meat is processed into
“smoked slices,” which have never been a part of
Korean cuisine before. This article traces back thishistory, from rather the perspectives of history oftechnology than that of culinary history.

Mussel farming has been a widely commercializedpractice for producing foods and gems. On theother hand, its benefits in nutrient mitigation also
attract attention in the fields of water environment
management. Taking the freshwater pearl mussel
cultivation in Japan as an example, the study
aims to reveal the intertwining dynamics between
market, government, society, and multispecies
entanglements mediated by the policies, practices,and narratives. The study applies documental
analysis to establish a historical overview ofthe socio-ecological transformation. The data iscollected from governmental reports, newspaper
articles, and other materials provided by the public
or private sectors. Resembling the techniqueof implanting tissues into a host mussel toproduce pearls, the research indicates the diverse,interweaving, and sometimes competing discourses
in the practices. Japan is one of the oldest countries
to develop the techniques of freshwater pearl
cultivation. In Lake Biwa, the local government,
collaborating with a pearl business, launched its
first attempt at growing freshwater pearls using thenative pearly mussels since the early 20th century.
The production has once succeeded in the global
market. However, due to the rapid growth of pearl
farming in China, as well as unintended impactsof water pollution, disasters, and crossbreeding,domestic freshwater pearl almost lost people’s
recognition. In recent years, governments start
to adopt pearl farming in lakes and rivers as atool for water quality improvement. Therefore,bringing back freshwater pearl cultivation becomesan alternative to revitalizing the local industry.
Meanwhile, the efforts still face problems withsocio-ecological struggles and uncertainties,
particularly between the species, production, and theenvironment. Through a comprehensive historicalanalysis of freshwater pearl cultivation, the research
portrays the untold, complicated struggles inside theshell.
88

EAEH 2023

Human and Wildlife

Human and Wildlife

ED3-20ED3-20Born-in-America in the Kingdom ofPlants: Tobacco and the Psychoactive
Revolution in Early Modern Korea

The post-disaster transformationof interspecies dependencies: From
talkative buffalo to desemiotised cows
on the slope of Mt. Merapi, Indonesia

Sang-ho Ro

Muzayin Nazaruddin

Ewha Womans University

Universitas Islam Indonesia

Riin Magnus

The arrival of new mind-altering substances fromthe Americas to East Asia was asrevolutionary as that of many of the new crops that
also arrived in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Tobacco plants (Nicotiana tabacum)
found their new habitat in the Korean Peninsula
after the Hideyoshi Invasions of 1592–97, whilesmoking tobacco leaves dramaticallytransformed how people consumed vegetation. As acash crop, Nicotiana tabacum received awarm welcome from farmers and disrupted the old
substance-oriented agriculture. This paper
analyses how tobacco created a new populardemand for plant life through pleasure andaddiction. Tobacco–popularly known as “SpiritualWeeds from the South” (Namryŏngch’o 南靈草 )–caused a variety of responses in elite andpopular societies. Therefore, smoking tobacco cangive us a rare opportunity to better understand thecontested relations between humans andplants. Chosŏn Korea did not yet open trade with
European trading empires, but it could not stay
astray from the psychoactive revolution in the ageof globalization. This paper will revisit tobacco
history in Korea with a question: How did one planttransform the kingdom of plants inearly modern Korea and East Asia?

University of Tartu
This paper suggests how natural disasters may
serve as the final propulsion for changes alreadytaking place within a society. While focusing on
shifts in human–non-human animal relations, thistext also discusses their embedding in broadertransformations of human–environment relations
and the underlying economic and cultural change. It
carves out interspecific dependencies that constitutean agro-ecosystem and follows their demise as
the agricultural species are switched to market
economic production in a post-disaster context. It
thereby suggests that the human-facilitated semiotic
fitting of the agricultural species is replacedby human-imposed fitting, where the species
composition is largely determined by the market
prices. At the same time, the paper draws attention
to the cessation and transformation of human–nonhuman communication as a marker, but also anexperiential corollary, of modernization and market
economy. As a case study, it focuses on the 2010
Mt. Merapi eruption in Indonesia and its aftermath
in the villages on its slope. The study analyses how
the shift from using plough buffalo to utilizing
market economic cattle farming reflects not just an
economic, but also an affective and semiotic change
stemming from a shift in the intensity and kind of
human–animal relations.
Keywords: human–non-human animal relations;post-disaster social change; modernization; political
ecology; anthropological zoosemiotics; semiotic
fitting.

89

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

The Water in Northwest China

The Water in Northwest China

ED3-21

ED3-21

The Wrtting of Landscape in Hexi
Corridor from the Perspective of theAggregation Reclamation: Mainly
Based on the Period of Qing Dynasty

Water landscape construction of
Jiuquan Oasis from Qing Dynasty to
Republic of China period
Wang Ruixue

Chen Zhiwei, Zhang Jingping

Yunnan University

Lanzhou University
Landscape, refers to the scene or scenery ofa place. Whether natural landscape or culturallandscape, it can reflect the content of humanland relationship and social relationship, which
has been paid attention to. As a pattern of land
utilization, the aggregation reclamation greatly
shapes the local landscape (especially in frontierareas) in the interaction between human and nature.
Since the Western Han Dynasty, the Hexi Corridor
had become an important region of aggregation
reclamation. However, it showed different
characteristics in the Qing Dynasty, because there
existed extensive civilian reclamation in the Hexi
area at this time, which required a large number of
local workers and created a considerable numberof civilian facilities. Therefore, with the help ofrelatively abundant literature of the Qing Dynasty,
we can from the local perspective and the nonmilitarized social management, discuss how thegovernment's operation activities in frontier areas
with the main line of aggregation reclamation
shaped and changed the landscape of the Hexi
Corridor -- its "shanshui" (mountains and rivers),
villages, fields, military facilities -- and people's
cognition of them.

Landscape is formed by the joint action of man
and nature. As one of the most important natural
conditions of Jiuquan oasis, water plays an
extremely important role in the formation of Jiuquan
urban landscape. The construction of Jiuquanwater landscape began in the Qing Dynasty, whichmainly included three aspects: water conservancy
project, water culture and water conservancy
politics. Water conservancy project construction
is a necessary condition for urban and agriculturaldevelopment in arid areas. The belief of water god
and water landscape garden in water culture reflect
the feelings of water culture of people in arid areas.
Water conservancy political construction guarantees
the rational utilization of water resources and social
equity in arid areas. This paper mainly discusses theformation process of Jiuquan oasis water landscapein the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China
period and the relationship between man and landand society reflected behind it.

Keywords: The Hexi Corridor, Aggregation Reclamation,
Landscape, Frontier

90

EAEH 2023

The Water in Northwest China

ED3-21The "Marginal Population" in theabsence of the State: A study on the
problem of "moving-hills households"
in Minqin, Gansu Province from 1900
to 1950
Pan WeiYunnan University
In the interaction between environment and society,the role played by "marginal areas" and "marginal
people" is often ignored. This paper examines thewater conservancy modernization process of Hexi
Corridor in the 20th century from the perspectiveof a group of "marginal people". Minqin, Gansu
Province is located in the northeast of Hexi
Corridor. Under the infiltration of the lower reachesof Shiyang River, it has become a narrow oasis
between Tengger Desert and Badain Jaran Desert.
Moving-hills households refer to the farmers
who migrated from outside the Shiyang Riverbasin to the oasis during the Qing Dynasty. These
farmers were labeled with this identity by the Qing
government for generations and had no right toopen canals to divert water locally. Irrigation ranked
at the bottom of the county and was in a marginal
position of social economy. After the disintegrationof the Qing Dynasty, this group of people began
to try to break their "marginal status", requiring
the re-arrangement of irrigation order in Minqin
County, leading to several "hegemonizing watercases" in the early years of the Republic of China,
and the traditional water conservancy order of the
Qing Dynasty gradually collapsed. In the 1930s,
as the climate of Hexi Corridor turned to warmand dry, the impact of moving-hills households onthe current system became more and more intense,and large-scale fighting continued. At this time, theNational Government of Nanjing began to directly
manage the irrigation and water conservancy in
Hexi, and modern irrigation facilities, rules andprojects were formulated or constructed one after
another. The " moving-hills households " believedthat the time had come to get rid of their marginal
status and resolutely sided with the government.
In order to maintain the vested interests, theordinary farmers strengthened the traditional water
conservancy order in the Qing Dynasty. The war
between "moving hill households" and ordinary
people for water continued until the end of the
1950s, which became the main obstacle to themodernization of water conservancy in Minqin.
During the "March to the Desert" movement
and the construction of "Three Cases Canal" in
the 1950s, the identity problem of " moving hillhouseholds" was really solved, and the equality ofwater conservancy rights of households in Minqin
area was realized, and the traditional society ofcanal and dam was truly transformed into a modern
irrigation area.

91

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The Water in Northwest China

ED3-21Case study on water conservancy
dispute and administrative district
adjustment of Tianshan South Road
in late Qing Dynasty
Wu Yi-qun
Xinjiang University
In 1898, the 24th year of Guangxu's reign (1898),
the government of Xinjiang Province made someadjustments to the Wushi Zhili Hall and Wensu
Zhili Prefecture under Aksu Road, mainly driven
by the better distribution of water resources andthe convenience of taxation. In the 28th year of
Guangxu's reign (1902), Mala Bashi Zhili Office
was changed to Bachu Prefecture, which was
also influenced by water conservancy disputes.
On the basis of consulting relevant archives,
this paper makes a case study of the two casesof administrative district adjustment under the
motivation of water conservancy disputes, andcompares the restrictive relationship between water
conservancy factors and administrative district
adjustment, in order to sum up the historicalexperience of frontier governance in northwest
China.
Key words: Tianshan South Road in late Qing Dynasty;
Water conservancy disputes; Adjustment of government
districts; Frontier governance

92

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Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Study on
Environmental History of the Northeast China(1)

Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Study on
Environmental History of the Northeast China(1)

ED4-01

ED4-01Nature and Frontier -- The Dimension
and Paradigm of the Study ofEnvironmental History in Northeast
China
Teng Haijian

Environment, Immigration and Diet:
The changes of Dietetic Culture in
Northeast China in Modern Times

Liaoning University

Jilin Normal University

Fan Lijun

As the frontier of China, Northeast China has its
uniqueness in terms of history, culture, naturalgeographical environment and their mutual
relations. This uniqueness is embodied in many
aspects: the first is the relationship between“nationality” and natural geographical environment.
Historically, Northeast China is the ethnic groups
habitat of the “North” or “Northeast” that are “nonHan”. The formation of the lives and livelihoods,
beliefs and customs of these northern ethnic groups
is related to the unique natural and geographicalenvironment of Northeast China. The generation,
spatial distribution and development of the threemajor economic cultures in Northeast China farming culture, nomadic culture and fishing andhunting culture can also be interpreted from thenatural geographical environment and its historicalchanges. The second is the relationship between
human and nature in the history of Northeast
China as a "frontier". The northeast frontier has
the convergence and diversity in culture andecology, which also determines the diversity andcomplexity of the relationship between human andnature. In modern times, with the developmentof trans-regional and even international trade,the northeast frontier has become a region withfrequent trans-regional species communicate andexchange, which has also caused serious ecologicalconsequences. The third is the relationship between
the invasion of modern colonialism and the naturalgeographical environment of the northeast frontier,so it is necessary to introduce the international
perspective of the study of environmental history
in Northeast China. The uniqueness of natural
resources endowment in Northeast China not only
attracted domestic immigrants, but also became oneof the main reasons for the invasion of international
imperialist forces. The study of environmental
history in Northeast China needs to break throughtraditional concepts and paradigms, introduce
new concepts such as nationality, frontier andcolonialism, and realize the transformation ofresearch paradigms.

Modern northeast food culture is the productof specific natural environment and social
environment. The unique natural environment
in Northeast China has given birth to the soil offood culture. The social environment created byimmigrants has created important conditions forthe formation and development of food culture.
Since modern times, a large number of immigrants
inside shanhaiguan pass have entered the northeast,
which has led to the changes of the food culture in
the northeast. The immigrants have a great impact
on changing the traditional dietary structure in
Northeast China, including improving cooking
techniques, changing dietary behavior and concepts,
and so on. The arrival of immigrants has promoted
the diversified development of the northeast foodculture, forming a characteristic diet culture that isneither completely equal to that in the northeast, norconsistent with that in Central Plains. As a result,the food culture in Northeast China shows regional
characteristics such as adaptability, initiative,
inclusiveness and so on.

93

The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Study on
Environmental History of the Northeast China(1)

Environmental Challenges in China and Korea,
Past and Present

ED4-01

ED4-02A Discussion on the Influence of
Climate, Landform and Other
Environmental Factors in the War of
the Jin Dynasty

A Climate of Crisis: The Confluenceof Mongol Imperialism and Climate
Transition in Late Goryeo (1258-1392)

Li Yujun & Guo Xin

Aaron Molnar

Liaoning Normal University

University of British Columbia

In the war of ancient China, due to theunderdevelopment of productivity and the low levelof science and technology, the success or failureof military activities is more vulnerable to various
environmental factors. Bad weather, complex
climate, precipitous landform and inefficienttraffic conditions will more or less affect theoutcome of the war. Climate, topography and otherenvironmental factors also played a key role in the
military activities of the Jin Dynasty to defeat Liaoand Song and to resist Mongolia. First, in the warof the Jin Dynasty, bad weather such as a shower ofheavy rain, a heavy snowfall and a sudden reducingof temperature might have a significant impact
on the war process and the victory of both sides.
Secondly, the characteristics of characters createdunder long-term stable climate conditions andtheir adaptability to different climates would affectthe formulation of strategic plans by the generals
of both sides of the war. For example, Jurchenswere accustomed to the cold and dry climate in the
Northeast and were not adapt to the humid and hot
climate in the South. Therefore, when fighting with
the Song Dynasty army, they often choose to marchin the cold autumn. Thirdly, as a fishing and hunting
nation living in the inland areas of the Northeast,
the Jurchen nationality was good at land fighting(especially fighting on horse), but was greatly
inferior in water fighting.

The Mongol period in Goryeo is often interpreted
as both a moment of crisis followed by a momentof opportunity as the peninsula was first invaded,
exploited and then beneficially incorporated into thelarger political and economic system of the Mongol
Yuan. That crisis, though couched in politicaland economic terms has largely overlooked any
important ecological or environmental consequencesfrom Mongol invasion and exploitation. Moreover,the narrative is anthropocentric, leaving climatechange as an operative factor in that moment ofcrisis outside the focus of the historian’s lens. Yet,in terms of climate history Goryeo was uniquely
positioned between the Medieval Climate Anomaly
and the Little Ice Age(mid-13th to late-14th
centuries). Bruce Campbell has elucidated how thatclimate transition globally was experienced as aperiod of climate destabilization that brought with itsocio-economic and political dislocation. This paper
seeks to understand that moment of crisis as boththe combination of Mongol imperialism and climatetransition from MCA to LIA. Mongol invasionand exploitation led to ecological dislocation inagricultural and sylvan ecologies. Burgeoning
evidence from paleoclimatology suggests thepeninsula received less precipitation and became
cooler overall. Evidence from paleoclimatology andland-use patterns after incorporation into Mongol
Eurasia indicate less productivity that compoundedattempts at recovery. Documentary proxies also
point to fluctuations between unseasonal andextreme weather events (drought, flooding, locustsetc.) combined first with Mongol invasion and thesubsequent destabilization of the demise of Mongol
hegemony to contribute to the fall of the Choe
autocracy in 1258 and ultimately the end of Goryeo
in 1392. Last, this approach seeks to bring medieval
Korea into global narratives of the impact both of
the Mongol Empire and climate transition on humansocieties and their ecologies.
94

EAEH 2023

Environmental Challenges in China and Korea,
Past and Present

Environmental Challenges in China and Korea,
Past and Present

ED4-02

ED4-02The Eruption of Mount Tambora
and The Agricultural Productionin Taiwan and China from 1815 to1815: Perspectives from Adaptation
Measures
Yu-Chien Jen

Reeds, Snails, and Parasites: Bilharzia
Disease and Riverine Ecology inChina’s Lower Yangzi Delta during
the Nineteenth and TwentiethCenturies
Yu-Cheng Shih

University of Carlos III

Brown University

This paper aims at focusing on the agricultural
production conditions in Taiwan and Yunnan
province of China when encountering theanomalous weather pattern caused by the eruptionof Mount Tambora in Indonesia from 1815 to 1816.
Primary narrative sources and second-hand researchdata demonstrate will perform the research.
Although suffering from unprecedented snow
and frost disasters, Taiwan’s agricultural sector
experienced stable rice production, which could
contribute to the proper adaptation measures
adopted by the residents and governments. Relevant
approaches included the intensive labor forcesfrom mainland China aggregated with the natural
evolution of various rice forms and advanced
growing methods brought by the immigrants from
China.
The root causes were the long-term unstable living
and political turmoils along the eastern coastal areasof China from the earliest of the 15th to the 19th
centuries, forcing many citizens to move to Taiwan
for better living qualities such as occupying thelands and focusing on rice production.
The immigrants became intensive labor forces forrice production and brought different rice forms
and growing methods, which adapted to specificareas’ geographical patterns. These factors became
indispensable in sustaining rice growth when
unfavorable weather happened from 1815 to 1816.
In contrast to Taiwan’s case study, Yunnan
province in China also encountered unusually low
temperatures and snow issues during the same
period. Nevertheless, neither citizens nor authorities
tried to enforce related adaptation methods to ensure
the production growth of the crops. Afterward, thearea experienced severe harvest failure, and famine
prevailed among the residents.
The conclusion suggests that the proper and intime adaptation approaches were indispensable
for countries’ agricultural sectors facing
disadvantageous climatic shocks. Moreover, thesemethods relied on the long-term development
evolving from historical backgrounds.

This paper articulates the necessity of historicizing
the wetland ecosystem and its interaction withhuman factors for understanding the spread of
epidemics through China’s riverine societies.
The Lower Yangzi Delta, known as Jiangnan
in Chinese, was one of the most economicallydeveloped regions in both China and the world
for centuries, and has therefore been the topic
of substantial historical research. Based on theprevious scholarship on social and agriculturaldevelopments, my study foregrounds the bilharzia
disease—Schistosoma japonicum, also called“snail fever” or the “blood-sucking worm disease,”
one of the most devastating parasitic diseases in
the world only second to malaria—by tracing theenvironmental changes of the low-lying ecosystems
on which Jiangnan’s prosperity relied. By studying
areas adjacent to Lake Tai such as Suzhou andKunshan—the bottom basin of the Lower Yangzi
Delta with the most intensive systems of farms
and ditches, I examine why and how the riverine
systems and shoreline dynamics eventually turned
the acres through swampy areas into devastatedzones of bilharzia infection. With an effort to bridge
aspects of social, environmental, and medical
history, the essay sheds lights on how the changing
wetland flora and fauna, featuring species likereeds and snails, exposed human bodies to pest
threats and reveals the extent to which riverside
management reshaped the anthropogenic landscapeof modern China.

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Environmental challenges in China and Korea,
past and present

The Human-Environment-Climate Nexus:
Exploring Disaster Responses and Water Related
Hazards in East and Southeast Asia

ED4-02

ED4-03

Sanitation, Disease and Drinking
Water in Kashgar City from the Late
Qing Dynasty to the Early Republic ofChina Period

Future Scenario or Historic Fact?:
Making it Rain in Hong Kong c. 18901930

Limin Wang

Fiona Williamson

ShaanXi Normal University

Singapore Management University

From the late Qing Dynasty to the early Republicof China period, Kashgar was the core city in thesouthern Xinjiang and an important treaty port
for foreign officials, merchants, missionaries andexplorers. Due to the influences of areal geology,
temperature variation and residents’ hygiene, thedrinking water from pools and wells in the urban
district were brackish and dirty, which provided
required environmental conditions for prevalenceof water-borne infection disease, such as goiter,
dysentery and typhoid fever. The natives mixed
the water for personal drinking with the water forphysical hygiene as well as livestock, and they
lacked of the scientific doctor that made diseases
difficult to cure. Chinese officers and soldiers drunk
boiled tea, dug out the deeper wells with setting up
the doors and fences to keep dogs and cats away.
And westerners adopted to filter, sediment and boil
the drinking water in sequence, and visited thepatients, opened up the clinic and hospital, which
maintained the better relationship with the natives
and Chinese officials to get admission to dwell in
Kashgar and carry out missionary work. Comparedwith the three groups, this research examined how
the differences in drinking water quality, animal
management and hygiene practices among urban
residents had a bearing on the different immunityof the water-borne infection disease. Furthermore,this article illustrates the environmental changes
between drinking water and water-borne infectiondisease in Kashgar city from mid-nineteenth century
to early twentieth century, and reveals the adaptive
process of clearing drinking water, managing
animals and treating disease among diverse urban
residents, which implies the relations of culture
and power in the introduction of western sanitary
knowledge and medical facilities after treaty port
opened.

The early-twentieth century saw a small, but
dedicated investment by the US, Russia andEuropean imperial powers such as France andBritain in weather modification, especiallyrainmaking. The scientific optimism of the latenineteenth century had brought this potential into
the public domain, the ability to control nature
rapidly becoming less a question of fiction but oneof tangible near-future scientific reality. A seriesof disastrous droughts affecting large areas of
the globe, especially in the 1870s, 1890s, 1920s
and 1930s, provided additional incentive fortransforming theory into practice. ‘Rain-making’could render the social and economic ramificationsof major droughts null. This paper explores thefirst ‘peak’ of rain-making activities from around1890 to the early 1930s from the little- known
perspective of experiments being undertaken in
Hong Kong. It explores the particular circumstancesof Hong Kong government’s increased interest;
links to the global story and, the reception of rainmaking in governmental, meteorological, and publicarenas, adding to a small but growing literatureon atmospheric knowledge making and unstable
atmospheres.

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The Human-Environment-Climate Nexus:
Exploring Disaster Responses and Water
Related Hazards in East and Southeast Asia

The Human-Environment-Climate Nexus:
Exploring Disaster Responses and Water Related
Hazards in East and Southeast Asia

ED4-03

ED4-03Rainfall and agriculture in Java in the
1900s

A tale of three storm surges, and,three towns, under three flags

Atsushi Ota

James F. Warren

Keio University

Murdoch University

Crop failures in colonial Java have attracted
scholarly attention, but the climate has not been
discussed seriously as an important cause ofpoor crops, because climate data has not beenreadily available. However, the rainfall data ofcolonial Java is now accessible as result of therecent joint collaboration between the Dutch andIndonesian meteorological offices (KMNI andBMKG respectively) to recover and reconstructclimate data from the 1860s to the 1990s for the
Netherlands East Indies. Combining this rainfall
data with descriptive narrative contained in reports
such as the 1908 Dutch survey Onderzoek naar
de Mindere Welvaart der Inlandsche bevolking
op Java en Madoera (survey of the worsening
welfare of indigenous people in Java and Madura),
this presentation argues how extreme climaticconditions, such as drought and excessive rain,created particular plant diseases, which, often in
combination with poorly thought-out government
policy, caused crop failures in some parts of Java.

In the Visayan Islands of Samar and Leyte storm
surges associated with typhoons historically makesea-to-land crossings. On October 12, 1897,
November 24-26, 1912, and November 3-11, 2013,
the exposed coastal towns of Hernani and Guiuan
on Samar and Tacloban on Leyte were destroyed bystorm surges. The recurrent damage and destructionthat resulted from these storm surges and cyclonicstorms has increased as the cascade chain of
the hazard changed through time, shifting fromthousands to millions of people displaced and theirlivelihoods and communities destroyed between
October 1897 and November 2013.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Environment in the Making

Environment in the Making

ED4-04ED4-04

Dialectics of Future Forest Cities in
East Asia

Multispecies Storytelling in
Restoration and Consevation of Jeju
Hanon Crater

Duskin Drum

Halla Jeeae Ko

New York University

Ewha Womans University
Anthropocene urban development has beencharacterized by continuous and accelerating
deforestation. This presentation clarifies andreinforces the inevitability of cities growing into
forests in the Anthropocene. And more tentatively
argues this is an incipient and latent consensus.
Examining images of ecotopias and vegetatedruins in East Asian urban projects and postapocalyptic popular media, I will present aspectsof a larger project diagnosing the inevitability ofcities growing into forests. I borrow from Walter
Benjamin dialectic method of studying the changing
city in Europe from the 18th to 19th century and
May Ee Wong’s work tracing the ideologies of the
global sustainable city in developing Singapore. My
dialectical examination of forest cities goes between
examples of images of recent green developments
and popular media depictions of future cities as
overgrown ruins. I will examine both the poetics
and aesthetics of the forested city, and present asummery of analytical evidence of their necessity.
The poetics of forest cities connects fantasy,
yearning for communal life and less alienation,and notions of quality of life, but also aesthetics
of property and control. The analytical evidence
includes current urban planning, a summary of
the effects of increased CO2 and more energetichydrological system, and paleo-climate evidence.
My green development examples include images
and rhetoric from Incheon City’s Green New Deal,
Singapore’s ecocity efforts, and architecture like
Urban Forest designed by Koichi Takada Architects.
My examples of images from post-apocalyptic
and solarpunk forest cities include art from Tokyo
Genso, and @Munashichi, and anime such as
Coppelion and Shangri-la. I will also share Anuj
Vaidja’s ethnographic description of latent forests in
Mumbai.
I end with a survey and complimentary zine
introducing the larger project, PhloemPhloem, andinviting contributions and alliances.

The purpose of this study is to examine troubles
around restoration and conservation policies for
Hanon crater on Jeju Island, in the Republic ofKorea, in aspect of multispecies storytelling.
Paying attention to Donna Haraway’s suggestionof making companion species in the Chthulucene,
I will propose Citrus Unshiu as the nonhumankin that characterize the complicated situation indesignation of Hanon wetland as conservation area.
Therefore, I will rewrite multispecies storytelling at
Hanon Crater on the perspective of Citrus Unshiu.
I suggest that the reason of troubles insiderestoration and conservation narrative of Hanon
crater and its wetland is absence of multispecies
storytelling. Since Hanon comes from Jeju dialects
meaning that big rice paddy, Hanon crater has been
one of important farmland on Jeju Island over five
hundred years. However, previous studies often
villainize the agricultures, especially citrus farmer,
and require its restriction for environmental reason.
Noting the historical fact that the only period when
Hanon crater was evicted during Jeju April 3rd
Uprising, this approach could neglect the complex
situation around Hanon crater.
To reconstruct multiple voices, this study will
focus on Hanon Halla farm at Hanon crater. Hanon
Halla farm has been farming Citrus Unshiu forfour generations, and its location is close to Hanon
Catholic church, known as Father Emile Taquet who
brought Citrus Unshiu from the Empire of Japanfor the first time in Jeju. I will analyze the narrative
between environmental policies of Hanon from2003 to 2022, and the interviews from third andfourth generation citrus farmers from Halla Hanon
farm, who were often eliminated from the official
records. Through narrative analysis, Citrus Unshiu
will show the relationships of agriculture, policy,
and ecosystem at Hanon crater. In conclusion,understanding Citrus Unshiu as significant otherwill reconstruct multispecies storytelling around thetroubles of Hanon crater.

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EAEH 2023

Environment in the Making

Politics, Cold War and environment in East Asia

ED4-04ED4-05“Overcome the Wetlands and Educate
the Youth”: State Farm Construction
and the Sent Down Youth Movementfrom the 1960s to the 1970s

Soilless agriculture and War, focusing
on the role of hydroponic farms inJapan as supply bases for Korean War

Bingru Yue

Kaihei Koshio

Queen's University

Tokyo University of Agriculture

From the 1960s to the 1970s, a new wave of massmobilization, the “Sent-Down Youth Movement”,
was initiated by the Chinese Communist Partyled government. In Shanghai, thousands of urban
youth were sent to work on draining wetlands andcultivating the land at the state farms of Chongming
Island, located in the north of the city. This paper
discusses the radical expansion of the state farms
featured the sent-down youth movement during thisperiod. By analyzing sent-down youth memories,
the history of mobilizing the urban youth andreshaping the landscape of Chongming Island isreconstructed. Urban youth re-education, wetland
drainage, and land cultivation were intertwined
as a response to social crisis during Mao’s era. To
deal with the demands to improve food supply,
relief urban unemployment, and cultivate a newgeneration of revolution, the farms and wetlands
were treated as an experimental site to fulfill thegoals. This paper examines how the top-downsocialist campaign promoted misguided views on
the human-environment relationship leading to
the destruction and abuse of the materials world,
including the ecology and humans. The sent-down
youth was required to implement certain methods
and techniques to drain more wetlands and improvesoil fertility, exacerbating human encroachment
on the wetland ecosystem. However, it is proved
to be ineffective and inappropriate as the farming
ideas and practices ignored the environmental andgeological conditions of Chongming Island. The
food production was not ideal, resulting in the lossof ecological diversity and wetlands. In addition to
the destruction of the environment, the sent-down
youth experienced abuse and exploitation as they
were asked to comply with the radical plans andcontribute their manual labour.

In ancient history, there recorded some protoaquaculture, like “Hanging Gardens in Babylon”,“Chinampa Floating Gardens in Aztec”, or “Soilless
culture in Nail ”, but the scientific soilless culture
could be rooted back to the research of British
scientist, John Woodward, who investigated theeffect of water source and treatment on fresh weightincrease and transpiration loss from spearmint
cultures and their ratio in 1699, though this paper
was long been neglected. At experimental level,
German botanist Julius von Sachs and Wilhelm
Knop established solution culture systems, but it
could be said that W.F. Gericke was the first man
who established the practical hydroponic system toprovide large amount of vegetables.
In his book “The complete Guide to Soilless
Gardening” published in 1940, he expressed his
gratitude for some companies. Among those, Pan
American Air was the most important partner who
supported his research and strongly proceeded theirbusiness in the Pacific to provide fresh vegetables insmall barren islands like Wake, and Io-jima island.
Their hydroponic system finally contributed greatly
to the Allied Forces in the Pacific War.
Based on such successful experiences in the PacificWar, Allied Forces established two big hydroponic
farms in Japan in 1946. One was in Chofu, Tokyoand the other was in Otsu, Shiga prefecture, both ofwhich supported US soldiers at the front of Korean
War supplying fresh vegetables.
In case of Chofu hydroponic farm, many BC class
war criminals were assigned to work for harvest. A
convoy of trucks were engaged to carry them from
Sugamo prison to Chofu hydroponic farm, counting
as many as 300 prisoners just after Korean War
initiation.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Politics, Cold War and environment in East Asia

Politics, Cold War and environment in East Asia

ED4-05

ED4-05Making of "Pristine Vegetables" :Construction and Shifting Concepts
of Environmental Contaminants in
Korea, 1960~1990s

Environmental Civil Society
Organizations and the State in China:
Institutional Analysis of the Dynamics,
1980s-2010s

JUNG Junho

Kyoung Shin

Jeonbuk National University

National Tsing Hua University

The "Pristine Vegetables( 청정채소 , 淸淨菜蔬)” referred as organic products without use ofpesticides and chemical fertilizers in 21st century
Korea, the meaning of “Pristine” was radicallydifferent until 1970s. After Korean War, infection
rate of intestinal parasite reached almost 100% in
Korean population. Disruption in manufacture ofchemical fertilizers pressured farmers to use nightsoil, which was contaminated with parasite eggs,
causing the vicious cycle of infection. At the sametime, rapid urbanization increased the demands offresh vegetables in the city, drawing large amountof semi-urban agricultural practices. This was
closely linked with national economy, as most of
Korean vegetable products were contaminatedwith parasites, it was deemed unsuitable forexportation. In 1957, US Army stationed in Seoul
issued a guideline for producing local vegetables
acceptable for US troop consumption. This give riseto the concept of "Pristine Vegetables” that were
free of any infectious materials. However, thesepractices continued well into the 1970s, as withlack of sewage treatment system, faeces of urban
population provided necessary fertilizer for thesefarmers without much cost. For securing publichealth, Korean government actively encouraged
use of chemical fertilizer, naming the vegetables“Pristine”. This effort included ban of night-soil
in urban and semi-urban farms and establishmentof Pristine Vegetable Shops. However, with rapid
decline of parasitic diseases in the population,with rising concerns of environmental pollutions
reshaped Pristine Vegetables from chemical toorganic in the 1980s. Thus, Pristine Vegetable in
Korea during late 20th century exemplifies rapidtransformation of urban environment, showing
shifted concept of cleanness and contaminants
among the public and policymakers, as well as
acceptable risk of urban environment in Korea.

The answer to the oft-asked question of statecivil society relations and the latter’s role inenvironmental governance in China seems to be “inthe eyes of the beholder.” Relying on a snapshotof a given space and time, a number of discrepant
accounts, narratives, and theories continue tobe offered by China scholars and experts. This
paper takes a different approach. Based on a morenuanced longitudinal analysis, this article shows that
there have been at least three kinds of relationshipbetween the Chinese state and environmental civilsociety in the last four decades, each defined by adistinct institutional field. The dynamics of these
institutional changes have been anything but linear
or predetermined. This paper contributes to theexisting debate by offering a more systematic andanalytical account of the nature of state-society
relations in China’s environmental governance.
They also point to the need for more dynamic andevolutionary, rather than static, analyses in futurescholarship.

100

EAEH 2023

Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Study on
Environmental History of the Northeast China(2)

Politics, Cold War and environment in East Asia

ED4-05

ED4-06

Remaking North Korea Nature at theWest Sea Barrage

The Statute and Ordinance andEnvironment: The interaction between
Qing Dynasty rulers and environment
before the Qing entered the pass in
1644 from “The Statute andOrdinance in Manchu Archives ofShengjing

Joseph Seeley
University of Virginia
In the 1980s, at a time where global
environmentalists sought to protect “nature” andsequester it from human influence, the leaders of
the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea sought
to transform and “remake” it instead. In 1981 theDPRK regime announced the beginning of “fourmajor nature re-making tasks.” These were major
infrastructure projects designed to transform theNorth Korean landscape in agriculturally productive
ways. The symbolic cornerstone of all these
efforts was the 8-kilometer long concrete seawall
and assemblage of dams, locks, and sluice gatesvariously called the West Sea Barrage or Nampo
Dam. Located just 40 kilometers from the North
Korean capital where the Taedong River met the
Yellow Sea, the West Sea Barrage was designed
to decrease the salinity of the river’s drinking andirrigation water and improve transportation accessby blocking the region’s high sea tides. But thecauseway was also important, ideologically, as amanifestation of the socialist state’s ability to beatback the sea and “remake” nature in a triumph ofhuman will and engineering. The use of soldiers
as the project’s primary labor force also reinforced
the increasingly militarized nature of North Korean
development. This paper analyzes the West Sea
Barrage as a critical case study in the history ofNorth Korea’s Anthropocene. By examining how
the seawall was constructed, we can understand not
only the ideological and material underpinnings of
the North Korean state’s drive to “remake nature” inthe face of considerable economic and engineering
challenges, but also the practical consequences ofthe dam for the local coastal environment.

Wan wenjie
Liaoning University
It is one of the ways to build a bridge between
legal history and environmental history to study
environment from the perspective of the statuteand ordinance. Many environmental laws andregulations can be found in &quot;The Statuteand Ordinance in Manchu Archives of Shengjing
which can also provide a basis for discussing
the environmental thoughts of Qing Dynasty
rulers before the Qing entered the pass in 1644.
Through the interpretation of the statute andordinance, it can be found that Nurhaci ,Hong Taiji
and Manchurians had active interaction with theecological environment of Northeast China andclose relationship between them.They realized theprotection and utilization of the environment bymaking strict decrees, mainly involving products,
land, agriculture, fishing and hunting, resources andother aspects. It constructs a magnificent pictureof the interaction between the Qing Dynasty rulers
and the ecological environment in Northeast China
before they entered the pass in 1644.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Study on
Environmental History of the Northeast China(2)

Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Study on
Environmental History of the Northeast China(2)

ED4-06

ED4-06

Flood in Northeast China in Modern
Times and its Countermeasures
under the Evolution of Regional
Environment

Feeding Revolution: The Enterpriseof Corn in North China, 1938-1950

Tan Yuxiu

Lei ZhangNortheast Normal University

Lingnan University

From 1840 to the outbreak of the September 18th
incident, the rich forest resources in Northeast
China were artificially cut down, the original
ecological environment being destroyed, and thus
the climate became more and more abnormal.
Furthermore, the government was negligent inprevention, which eventually led to many floods inthe region and brought great disasters to the people.
In order to deal with the flood, the government andpeople from all walks of life have taken a variety ofmeasures, such as allocating relief funds, collecting
charity funds, reclaiming wasteland, planting trees,building water conservancy, donating money andmaterials, organizing relief and so on, so that thevictims have been resettled to a certain extent.
However, at that time, the situation in Northeast
China was turbulent; the funds for flood control
were insufficient, and the quality of officials was
mixed, and what’s worse, officials did not do theirbest to perform their duties, so that the disastersituation could not be effectively alleviated. To sum
up, there is a considerable correlation between thechanges of the regional environment in Northeast
China and the occurrence and response of floods.
Under the evolution of the regional environment,
the state and society not only actively carry out theaftermath of relief, but also focus on prevention andcure from the environmental dimension, from which
it is not difficult to see the two-way game between
man and nature.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War a folksong
spread throughout the anti-Japanese base of North
China. Its lyrics included these words: “The Golden
Queen is yellow, the sister is busy with harvestingyou; the glittering maize are full of hills, hey!
Soldiers and civilians unite together against thefamine.” The “Golden Queen” here refers to an
American corn variety characterized by high yields
and good adaptability. The Chinese Communists
popularized it throughout the anti-Japanese basesin Shanxi, Shandong, Henan, Hebei, and Liaoning.
By 1949 the Golden Queen was being cultivatedin seven provinces of North China, with acreage of
10 million mu. As a consequence, the communists
established a corn-based agriculture that not onlychanged the planting system in North China but,
more importantly, was crucial to the state-makingof the CCP.
Unlike previous research that focuses on
production means such as land reform, cooperative
organization, and land reclamation in the revolution
history of Chinese communists, this paper will
examine the establishment of communist rule inNorth China through the cultivation of corn fromthe perspective of environmental history and foodhistory based on primary sources housed in China,
Japan and United States. Utilizing the concept ofenvironmental colonialism, this paper argue that
Chinese communists used corn as a colonial crop
to attach peasants to the land and produce the grain
needed to feed the revolution. Corn was employed
not only to supply food, but to establish the politicaland economic integration of the communist regime,
which persisted into the post-1949 period andprofoundly shaped the agricultural campaign of theearly People’s Republic of China (PRC).

102

EAEH 2023

Kichi (機智), Resourceful Eco-Techne with
Material

Kichi (機智), Resourceful Eco-Techne with
Material

ED4-07

ED4-07

Disconnected Network: A HumanNature Assemblage Reformatted
through the Techno-natural Disaster
Narratives of Undersea Cable in South
Korea from the 1990s to the 2000s

Crossing Boundaries with Tak trees:
Transmission of eco-techne by moving
with material

Yeon-Kyoung LIM

Ewha Womans University

Jung Lee

Ewha Womans University

Crossing Boundaries with Tak trees follows slashand-burn farmers and monk-cum-artisans who
moved with the papermaking material of tak trees,
crossing various social and ecological boundaries
together with their resourceful attachment with tak
trees transmitting their sociomaterial techniques in
the reshaping world. With the above cases, it reflects
on the concept of kichi ( 機智 ), an East AsianTechne that inseparably combines ki the machinewith chi the wit by re-considering successes andfailures in our materially attached, inspired, andresourced ways of surviving various calamities.

Disconnected Network deals with the constructionof undersea cables in South Korea by the Korean
Telecom (KT) from the 1990s to the 2000s with thefocus on the so-called human- nature assemblage
in installing and maintaining these crucial media
infrastructure. These undersea cables, invisible
when they work smoothly enabling our intercontinental communication, reveal themselves when
they slowed down or failed to connect owing totechno-environmental 'disasters' like earthquakes.
These environmentally induced shortcomings ofconnection brought human into the sea and create
unique human-nature assemblages through humanlabor, which this paper explores and contemplates
on.

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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Kichi (機智), Resourceful Eco-Techne with
Material

Towards a Planetary History and Planetary
Humanities

ED4-07

ED4-08“Was that Mountain Really There?”
Posthuman Ecological Approach toHistory of Nanjido Landfill

From Environmental Humanities toPlanetary Humanities

Ae-Ryung Kim

Sekhar Mahapatra

Ewha Womans University

Jadavpur University"Was that Mountain Really There?" deals with thehistory of the Nanjido Landfill, stinky waste heaps
transformed into &quot;ecological park&quot; since1993. The landfill built in 1978 once constituted
two artificial mountains filled with the waste ofSeoul citizens, and had visualized the social andenvironmental problem of the city for 15 years,
fuming stench from decay and frequented by urban
waste diggers. Yet, it became the success story of
ecological restoration since the construction of theecological park. The paper examines what happened
to the waste mountain with the &quot;post-humanecological approach&quot; of capturing living andmade things, discarded and rediscovered things aswell as people, policies, and their successes andfailures throughout their history.

The human activities have altered the ecosystemof the Earth in an unprecedented geological scale.
This ecological deviation has adversely affected theplanet by global warming along with the associatedclimatic irregularities. The ecological catastrophe
has brought about a grave situation for the humancivilizations. With the arrival of the Homo-Sapienson the Earth, 100,000 years ago the situation tooka turn for the worse. Our written history is a few
thousand years old. The future of our Universe isdependent on the wellbeing of human civilizations.
It is now necessary to create a new conceptual
category of planetary humanities which will help toinitiate a dialogue between the historical time, on
the one hand, and the geological time and biologicaltime on the other. This discourse will bring theimportance of the contextualised planetary history
as well as the further promotion of environmental
humanities which will produce transdisciplinary
wisdom in social sciences.

104

EAEH 2023

Towards a Planetary History and Planetary
Humanities

Towards a Planetary History and Planetary
Humanities

ED4-08

ED4-08Martin Heidegger and the Creation of‘Earth’ as a philosophic category

Expanding the Frontier of
Temporality: A Conversation between
Historical and Planetary Times

Mili Ghose

Aryama Ghosh

Independent Researcher

Jadavpur University

Martin Heidegger, the philosopher, introduced theword ‘earth’ in a philosophic sense in his lecturedelivered in 1936 in Berlin. He separated theearth from the planet. The planet, he said, does
not concern the humans. The planet is left to thegeologists and the astronomers.
Using the Heidegger’s language, we can say thatthe harder we work the earth in or quest for profit
and power, the more we shall encounter the planet.
Under the changed situation, not only the earth
but the also the planet is becoming a category inhumanist thought. The rise of planetary humanities
is just a matter of time.

Historians have long viewed this world as the"bounds of Human Empire" since the advent of
the scientific and Enlightenment ethos, an idea thatis fundamentally Eurocentric. However, after threecenturies of plundering the planet with an essentiallyacquisitive mentality, which was perceived under afleeting illusion of destructive progress, humanity
experienced an existential crisis. The impending
crisis compelled new historians to think beyond
the conventional, anthropocentric temporality andconsider expanding the boundaries of time's concept
in history beyond human endeavours. In order tofind a practical methodological solution regarding
the sense of time, this article attempts to connect
anthropocentric temporality with later theoreticalinnovations like "bio-centric," "geocentric," andfinally "planetary" temporality.

105The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

Conflicts, Epidemics, and Climate Crisis:
An Environmental History in Comparative
Perspectives

Conflicts, Epidemics, and Climate Crisis:
An Environmental History in Comparative
Perspectives

ED4-09ED4-09Soldiers, Epidemics and bohemianrural enviroment in the 18th and 19th
century

The Earth System as an agent of
humanity: perspectives derived froma comparative study on
environmentally local economies

Josef Grulich
Václav Černý

Satoshi Murayama
Kagawa University

University of South Bohemia

In the era of the Anthropocene and the climate
crisis, it is reasonable to say that the time forthinking about human life alone has come to an end.
This is because the humanities and social sciences
need to go beyond the familiar interrelationships
between individual and collective human beings,
and to look not only at the reproduction of all
species, but also to understand the convergent Earth
System itself as an extremely important agent of
humanity. Therefore, I would like to extend theinstitutional approach to the relationship between
the individual and the collective, which has madegreat strides especially in the fields of economics
and economic history, to the field of ecosystems andthe Earth System. In this presentation, I would liketo focus on some environmentally local economies
in Eurasia and consider what can be drawn fromthem for this purpose.

Paper will try to point out the connection between
the mortality of the rural population and the military
campaigns. The numerous marches of the troops
across the manorial domains were connected withan accommodation of soldiers in the farmsteads andhouses of ordinary villagers and brought with them
numerous difficulties. These could also be a disease
spreading rapidly among the soldiers, as well as
problems with supply or feeding quartered military
units. The lack of food could lead to famines
which were, in addition to epidemics, anothersource of the demographic crises that affected
the South Bohemian countryside in the 18th and19th centuries. Not only individual demographic
crises originating from plague, cholera and famine
epidemics related to the War of the Austrian
Succession (1740–1748), Seven Years' War (1756–
1763), War of the Bavarian Succession (1778–
1779), French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
(1792–1815) and Austro-Prussian War (1866) will
be presented. Since the march of the armies broughtwith it not only the hardships for the villagers but
also the deaths of the soldiers of the warring armies
which were incidentally recorded in rural area,
this topic will also be included in the conference
paper. We will use small, localised probes in two
estates in South Bohemian region – Estate ofProtivín and Estate of Třeboň to present echoesof land wide mortality crisis in selected localities
of a researched area. The conference paper will bebased on the available literature based on previous
researches and mapping individual mortality crisesin the Bohemia in the observed period, and on local
serial sources – registers of deaths and on narrative
sources - chronicles.

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EAEH 2023

Conflicts, Epidemics, and Climate Crisis:
An Environmental History in Comparative
Perspectives

ED4-09Characteristics of Precipitation
Distribution and River Flood Using
Historical Precipitation Datasets: A
Study for the Northern Kyoto Region,Japan
Masahide Ishizuka,
Toru Terao,
Satoshi Murayama
Kagawa University
As we live in a changing global environment, wehave paid attention to possible future changes in
the natural environment and have conducted manystudies using numerical simulations. As a result,
we have predicted possible future environmental
changes and their effects, and have studied
adaptation measures to these changes. However,the problem is that there is no data to verify theprediction results.
On the other hand, for past natural phenomena
we have experienced (this study focuses on
extreme natural disasters, especially floods), we
have observational data, records, and information
on human behavior and its effects on the social
environment. However, it is difficult to say whether
the results of numerical simulations are correct for
the reproduction of such past natural phenomena,
and whether there is sufficient understanding of how
we have behaved during contingencies. Reasonsfor this include: 1) lack of historical observation
data, 2) even if data is available, it is not systematic(lack of unified definition of terms), 3) low spatial
resolution of data, 4) scattered data, 5) written inold characters, 6) paper-based data (not digitized),and so on.
In recent years, however, efforts to restore historicalhydro-meteorological data have progressed,
and a foundation for understanding past natural
phenomena is being developed. Therefore, in thisstudy, an archive set of historical precipitation dataand climate model outputs aiming to reconstructpast climate changes are used for the northern
Kyoto Prefecture area and the Yura River basin(1,880 km2) that flows through the area. Then,characteristics of precipitation distribution,
reproduction results of river flood, and issues related
to the past precipitation data set are presented.
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The Seventh Biennial Conference of East Asain Environmetal History

The Politics of Sustainability: Elemental Mediaand Contemporary Art in East Asia and Beyond

The Politics of Sustainability: Elemental Mediaand Contemporary Art in East Asia and Beyond

ED4-10ED4-10Invasive Species, Colonialism, andArtistic Practice

The Aesthetics of Air and Tactile
Politics in Wang Te-yu’s Inflatable
Art, circa 1996

Eunha Chang
Independent Curator

Pei-chun Viola Hsieh

This presentation examines the relationshipbetween invasive species, colonialism, and artistic
practice through the analysis of four artists: TJ
Shin, Alaa Abu Asad, Chulayarnon Siriphol, andMooni Perry. By using the concept of invasive
species as a lens for understanding colonialism
and post/decolonization, it aims to reconfigure
the relationships between human, non-human,gender, nature and geopolitics. In doing so, it
argues that Asia emerges as a richly layered
mode of entanglements, where the species' pasts,
colonialism and modern governmental policies, andthe embattled legacy of colonial ruins that are stillfound in the present and future intersect.
The presentation will provide a detailed
examination of the artistic practices of four artists
and how they engage with the themes of invasive
species. In the work of TJ Shin, the artist explores
the intertwined narratives and meaning of invasive
species such as mugwort on the environment.
Similarly, Alaa Abu Asad's work focuses on
how invasive species have been used as a toolof colonialism to reshape the world, while
Chulayarnon Siriphol's work examines the impact
of colonialism on Thai society and how it has beenshown through invasive species. Mooni Perry's
work delves into the intersections of race, gender,and colonialism and how they intersect with theimpact of migrant species.
By critically analyzing the work of these four
artists, this presentation will provide a nuanced
understanding of the ongoing legacy of colonialism
and how it continues to shape our environment,
society, and culture through invasive species.
Furthermore, the presentation will highlight thepotential of art as a means of understanding andaddressing complex issues related to colonialism
and invasive species, promoting awareness, andfostering critical engagement with these themes.

Binghamton University“My inflatable object is about pushing and grasping
the edge of air.” This statement, by
Taiwanese contemporary artist Wang Te-yu, reveals
the intentions she has for the inflatable, balloonlike installations that have become her signature
work over the past decade. Her work bodies fortha radical aesthetics of air that both challenges the
habitual nature of our sensual vitality and opens
unexpected political possibilities. In her playgroundof the possible, visual experience is largely
displaced by rich, immersive, tactile experiencesof the air. Making our way through one of her
inflatable objects, we first encounter the resistanceof the inflatable: air pressure; next, we sense
the vibrations as we rebalance ourselves among
other stumbling spectators; lastly, we encounterthe permeability of the work, prompting us toreorient ourselves in the floating maze in relation
to others. Namely, in Wang’s inflatable spheres, themateriality of air is made explicit for us to touch
and wrestle with.
Taking a cue from Wang’s tactile aesthetic of air,
this paper argues that Wang’s pneumatic structures
prompt a sensory reformation and thus enrich thediscussion of the air as the environing medium. Her
exploration on tangible forms—including horizontal
platforms, domes, and their combinations—fosters
a breath commune via touch. In this spirit, I suggestthat Wang’s intimate, pneumatic structure provides
us dynamic fields that not merely demonstrate thecondition of possibility of air in a tangible way,
but stimulates an introspective micro- community,
where the scale of human is being tested, pressed,
stretched, and with potential line of flights throughone breath commune to another.

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EAEH 2023

The Politics of Sustainability: Elemental Mediaand Contemporary Art in East Asia and Beyond

ED4-10A Restoration of the Oldest Media in
the Works of Lee Seung-taek, Kim
Ku-lim, Park Hyun-ki
Bookyung Son
Binghamton University
This study reconsiders the boundary of the earlyenvironmental art in the post-war Korean avantgarde movement through the works of Lee Seungtaek, Kim Ku-lim, and Park Hyun-ki. A seriesof environment-related practices – a sculptural
structure using natural objects, a happening
performed against the backdrop of nature, anddocumentation of conceptual marks on the naturallandscape – was one of the prominent formats
in the larger field known as Korean avant-gardeart. In the historicization of the local avant-garde,such environmental elements in their works areunderstood mainly in terms of either an immaterial
expansion in the formal sense or a critical gesture toaddress the rapid industrialization of Korean society.
While the initial discourses of environmental art
contributed to situating its diverse modalities withina familiar boundary of global contemporary art, thefocal point of this study is oriented more to the ageold, rooted relationship between natural materials
and cultural habits, both regionally peculiar to
Korea.
To revise the narrative of environmental works,
this study examines the three exemplary worksof the artists: Kim Ku-lim’s From Phenomenon
to Traces (1970), Lee Seung-taek’s Greening
Campaign (1976), and Park Hyun-ki’s Media as
Translator (1982). Each work juxtaposes naturalelements and other man-made cultural products indifferent ways. Through an analysis concerning theinterdependency of nature and the new material
situation in the juxtapositions, their approaches tothe natural environment can be reconceptualized
as already chained to a technological environment
in each period. In this respect, it can be said thatthe works I discuss here remind the long-standing
operation of the natural environment as a material
infrastructure for its inhabitants and also the oldest

media for its inhabitants in forming a culture. The
works are environmental, not just because theypresent an environmental form or message, but
because their region-specific practices are heading
to the point before the modern ideology of naturetechnology distinction was imported.

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