ENSURE collaborative projects show substantial progress two years on
Prof. Steve Yim (3rd left) and Prof. Jim Haywood (4th left) with team members at the Hong Kong Observatory.
This April marked the second anniversary of the CUHK-University of Exeter (Exeter) Joint Centre for Environmental Sustainability and Resilience (ENSURE) since its establishment in 2018. The joint centre has been fostering inter-disciplinary collaborations through projects and workshops to address issues emerging from the changing environment and its influences on human health and wellbeing.
Three collaborative projects have been funded by ENSURE in 2019–2020 engaging over 30 researchers in the fields of earth system science, economics, environment and energy, geography, law, life sciences, mathematics, public health, and public policy. These projects include:
| Title | CUHK PI | Exeter PI | Aims |
| Global Food Security, Climate Change & Resilience: An International Perspective | Prof. LAM Hon-ming, Director, State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology (CUHK) | Dr. Catherine Caine, Lecturer, Law School | Examine the inter-relationship between agricultural intensification, consumers’ diets/food choice & human health with the aim of developing policies which will alleviate climate change & minimise environmental impacts
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| Sustainability of Coastal Megalopolises in the Face of Global Environmental Change: China’s Greater Bay Area | Prof. Joe Lee, Co-Director, ENSURE | Prof. Brendan Godley, Professor of Conservation Science, College of Life & Environmental Sciences | Study the capacity of coastal ecosystems in the Greater Bay Area to provide critical services that sustain human livelihood, health & wellbeing with a view to developing a framework to inform development in other coastal mega-cities
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| Transboundary Air Pollution in China & the UK: Intensity, Attribution & Impacts | Prof. Steve Yim, Associate Professor, Dept. of Geography & Resource Management | Prof. Jim Haywood, Professor of Atmospheric Science, Dept. of Mathematics | Gain a better understanding about emissions, chemical transformations & deposition rates of air pollutants & the resultant population exposures & health impact
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All the three projects are making good progress. Team members of the ‘Global Food Security’ project are preparing a review paper on the ‘indirect’ health cost of China’s historical dietary trend over the last 30 years and have conducted a survey in China, Japan, and Vietnam to test the resilience of consumers to changes in the food market.
Team members of the ‘Global Food Security’ project conduct surveys in China.
Initial activities of the ‘Sustainability of Coastal Megalopolises’ project have focused on acquiring massive datasets to analyse the relationship between land use changes and water quality and other key ecosystem services in Hong Kong, and conducting archival research and literature review to identify data gaps in biodiversity and conservation research in the region.
In the ‘Transboundary Air Pollution’ project, drone and lidar instrumentation have been deployed to collect ground level and vertical information of aerosol and meteorological conditions in Hong Kong, mainland China, and the UK. Two papers related to data collection and measurement/modelling were published.