Applying Humboldt’s holistic perspective in China’s sustainability

Alexander von Humboldt,was a great German geobotanist,educator and naturalist who greatly influenced sci-ence and humanities for more than two hundred years.In addition to scientific contributions(such as the un-derstanding of vegetation distribution,the concepts of isotherm and pressure contours,and the initial concept of continental drift theory),he firmly believed in the concept of the interconnection of everything and the method-ological approach of a holistic perspective to development,which has significance in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals,because they include both synergy and trade-offs among these goals.China has undergone tremendous changes since its reform and opening up in 1978 and now faces severe challenges in sustainable de-velopment.The scientific methods applied by Chinese scientists in sustainability fulfil the Humboldtian holistic perspective of nature.Here I provide four successful cases and their significant implications for addressing the increasingly severe water shortage,biological conservation,and conflicts between human well-being and land.The four examples discussed in this article are enlightened to establish a strong,just,and influential government and require empirical research to implement sustainable development plans.I believe that it’s vital to encourage and supervise public participation for a successful program;for example,the participants should not be restricted to project executors,i.e.,farmers or workers,but also students and scientists.Eradicating poverty must be priori-tized,and well-being is the ultimate goal for sustainable development.This review article provides an extremely valuable reference for other developing or even developed countries to address sustainability challenges.

Proposal for Offshore Wind Farm with Triangle-Coupled Movable Parallelogram Buoyancy Structure for the High Seas

We are responsible for providing energy and food resources for our next generation.After more than 20 years of research,the author has confirmed that the VAWT with flip-up mechanism can maintain rotation without the brake,even in strong winds.Experiments have shown that the triangularly coupled movable parallelogram buoyancy structure makes it easy to maintain the verticality of the wind turbine tower even under large waves.Furthermore,as a result of studying the connection between the HAWT(horizontal axis wind turbine)and the movable parallelogram buoyancy structure of the triangular connection,the feasibility was confirmed.The only way for all people in the world to secure energy and food fairly is to look for the remaining areas such as the high seas.The author would like to propose the use of the high seas to combat global hunger,which is likely to be a global problem in the future.

Developing food,water and energy nexus workflows

There is a growing recognition of the interdependencies among the supply systems that rely upon food,water and energy.Billions of people lack safe and sufficient access to these systems,coupled with a rapidly growing global demand and increasing resource constraints.Modeling frameworks are considered one of the few means available to understand the complex interrelationships among the sectors,however development of nexus related frameworks has been limited.We describe three opensource models well known in their respective domains(i.e.TerrSysMP,WOFOST and SWAT)where components of each if combined could help decision-makers address the nexus issue.We propose as a first step the development of simple workflows utilizing essential variables and addressing components of the above-mentioned models which can act as building-blocks to be used ultimately in a comprehensive nexus model framework.The outputs of the workflows and the model framework are designed to address the SDGs.