LI MENGHAN
Li Menghan covers the junction of environmental policy and scientific research for China Daily, with a focus on how new technologies and scientific findings reshape green development, resource use and ecological restoration. Her work tracks national strategies on the green transition alongside detailed reporting on laboratory breakthroughs, showing how science, industry and governance intersect in practice.
Green transition, mining and ocean governance
Li Menghan writes closely on China’s push for a faster green transition, following government plans to accelerate the shift toward cleaner energy and more sustainable industrial practice.
Her coverage of green mining looks at the build-out of thousands of “green mines” and what those projects mean for environmental standards and resource extraction at scale, treating mining policy as a core environmental issue rather than a separate business beat. She reports on mineral exploration priorities under current planning cycles, explaining how exploration maps and policy documents set the framework for future resource use and environmental impact.
Ocean governance and marine protection recur in her work, including coverage of China’s “Blue Circle” ocean governance model and related initiatives that tie maritime rules to ecological protection. She also follows how coastal pollution control and shoreline regeneration turn damaged marine environments into ecological assets, treating these stories as evidence of long-term governance rather than isolated clean‑up efforts.
Space, planetary science and deep physics
Beyond conventional environmental topics, Li Menghan devotes substantial attention to space and planetary science where the environment is framed at Earth and solar system scale. She reports on research into Earth’s magnetosphere and its role in governing the speed of the solar wind, translating complex space physics into clear narratives about how the planet interacts with solar activity.
Her work on the “Blue Eye” pulsar and related radio astronomy highlights the capabilities of Chinese observatories and the scientific significance of rare cosmic phenomena. She follows the Chang’e 6 mission’s findings on lunar samples that challenge existing theories on the origin of Earth and the Moon, using those stories to show how space exploration feeds back into understanding planetary formation.
In deep physics, she covers achievements such as rare isotope observations at major science facilities, explaining how nuclear physics experiments extend fundamental knowledge while also building research capacity that underpins future energy and technology applications.
Life sciences, evolution and ecological research
Li Menghan’s beat also spans the life sciences, where she focuses on discoveries with implications for health, development and biodiversity. She reports on the development of a world‑first human embryo model for organ growth, outlining how such models can inform regenerative medicine and organ development research while raising questions about ethical and regulatory frameworks.
Her coverage of immunotherapy innovations, including work likened to “double‑sided tape” that helps engineered immune cells bind more effectively to cancer cells, shows an interest in highly technical biomedical advances and their practical impact on treatment. Evolution and ecology feature frequently in her reporting.
She has written about Jurassic fossils that fill gaps in the evolution of bird tails, using paleontological findings to connect fossil evidence to modern biodiversity. Her coverage of carnivorous plant discoveries that validate a theory proposed by Darwin underscores how contemporary fieldwork and lab research revisit long‑standing questions in evolutionary biology. Across these stories, she presents life‑science research as part of a broader picture of how scientific inquiry shapes understanding of ecosystems and living systems.
Technology, materials and environmental applications
Li Menghan often focuses on the material and technological layers that enable environmental goals.
She reports on breakthroughs in solar cells that retain both efficiency and durability, explaining how advances in materials science support the green transition by improving the performance and reliability of clean‑energy hardware. Her coverage of elderly care robots links robotics and artificial intelligence to social needs, showing how technology development responds to demographic change and care challenges.
Many of her stories highlight multi‑institution collaborations involving national research institutes, universities and international partners, emphasizing the networked nature of modern science. Across technology, materials and applied research, she consistently connects individual breakthroughs to their role in long‑term environmental sustainability, energy systems and social resilience.
Taken together, Li Menghan’s work is defined by its breadth across environment, space science, life sciences and advanced technology, and by a consistent effort to tie specialised research back to concrete policy goals and real‑world applications. She follows national plans and frameworks for green development while drawing deeply on scientific detail, making her coverage particularly relevant where environmental stories depend on complex research and technical innovation.
4 more environment journalists.
Adelaide Lang
Adelaide Lang combines climate reporting with courtroom and Indigenous-focused journalism. She reports for The Daily Telegraph, with work also appearing in The Canberra Times, and contributes guest pieces to National Indigenous Times. Her environment coverage focuses on climate-threatened islands, community resilience and how policy decisions affect people facing direct environmental risks. She follows local campaigns, adaptation efforts and political pressure while keeping the human effects clear. Lang also covers court proceedings involving public officials, including the trial of State MP Gareth Ward over historical sexual and indecent assault charges. Her reporting examines how allegations are tested in court and how the justice system handles accusations against people in power. With more than five years in digital media and courtroom reporting, she writes clear, factual accounts of events, legal processes and their consequences.
Ashleigh McMillan
Ashleigh McMillan is a breaking news reporter at The Age. She stands out for covering the environment through public events, infrastructure and everyday city life. Her reporting tracks how protests, policy decisions and sudden incidents change routines, public safety and the spaces people move through. She covers fast-moving stories across Victoria, with a focus on community tension, access and the lived effects of official decisions. Her work includes protests and public demonstrations, crime and courts, transport and ticketing changes, traffic experiments, weather, and environmental conditions in the city. She reports on what people see and feel on the ground, with attention to victims, commuters, residents and the practical consequences of legal and infrastructure decisions.
Bareket Falk
Bareket Falk uses environmental stories to show how growing bodies handle physical stress, especially heat, during exercise. She is a pediatric exercise physiologist and kinesiology professor whose work focuses on how children, adolescents and adults respond to activity across growth and development. She writes evidence-led explainers for The Conversation that test assumptions about children’s vulnerability and turn decades of exercise science into clear, practical guidance. Her core piece looks at how children and adults cope with extreme heat, walking through basic thermoregulation and challenging the idea that children are automatically more fragile. Her journalism draws directly on research into blood flow, sweating, body size and growth, keeping technical detail tight and translating findings into concrete behaviours such as pacing activity, seeking shade and hydration. She is interested in how physical activity interacts with maturation, body composition and recovery, and uses data to check myths about kids’ risk.
Bec Lorrimer
Bec Lorrimer is a visual journalist and picture editor who tells environment stories through photography and careful image selection at the Guardian. She works at the intersection of climate coverage and visual editing, using picture-led formats to show how global heating and other environmental pressures play out in everyday life. Her environment beat centres on picture galleries that track the lived experience of climate extremes, including record high temperatures in South Korea, with in pictures sequences that foreground the scale of global heating over text-led analysis. She also contributes to monthly roundups of the strongest photos and human-centred features such as a nursing home story, focusing on people and places under pressure. As a global visual editor and assistant picture editor on international fronts, she selects images across environment, politics, culture and general news, drawing on her background as a photographer, video director and photo producer.