In 1990s, western environmental history was introduced into China, which promoted the rise of environmental history research in China, and gradually formed a sudden emergence in recent years. However, the study of China's environmental history has its own academic foundation and social conditions, but it is not completely imported in terms of thinking methods, problem consciousness and goal orientation. The Chinese nation's historical thinking on the relationship between man and nature can be traced back to more than 2,000 years ago. Sima Qian, a great historian in the Western Han Dynasty, took it as his duty to "study the relationship between man and nature and understand the changes of ancient and modern times", which included the intention of revealing the relationship between economy, society and local environment. Since then, there have been a lot of records about geography, local materials, customs, climate and special natural phenomena in official history and local chronicles, which contain many historical and ecological information and ideological elements worthy of reference by environmental historians. Before the introduction of western environmental history, scholars in the fields of historical geography, agriculture and forestry history and archaeology in China have done a lot of related research, which provided rich local academic resources for the construction of environmental history in China.
When the study of China's environmental history started, China was striding towards industrialization and urbanization, and it took decades to go through the process of industrial civilization in western countries for hundreds of years. While great achievements have been made in economic and social development, the ecological environment is also under great pressure. Resource consumption and environmental pollution not only seriously restrict the sustainable development of economy and society, but also threaten political stability and social harmony.
With the increasingly prominent environmental problems, the public's attention to ecological security has been increasing. Our party and government judge the situation, conform to public opinion, establish resource conservation and environmental protection as basic national policies, and promote "building ecological civilization" as a national development strategy. This new situation provides an important opportunity for the vigorous rise of environmental history research, and also gives historians a special mission of the times.