Ecological Civilizationalism: Greater Educational Cooperation and Sustainable Development under the bri

Abstract

Abstract Ecological Civilization (EC) represents a constituted effort on the part of China to utilize its developing regional linkages to promote a form of globalization that places the bioeconomy as a foundational core of sustainable global development. This article first outlines how China, through a unique form of state-centric globalization-through-regionalism, has continued to develop cooperative networks based on global trade, infrastructure, and educational exchanges. Second, signaling a fundamental shift within the higher education (HE) landscape, we outline that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and its ever-increasing number of open and inclusive university partnerships, represents a rich avenue for people-to-people exchange within a third-space for scientific collaboration. Third, within both a shifting HE landscape (and the scholarly push to engage with a new postdigital scientific/philosophical paradigm) China’s pursuit of EC constitutes a form of biodigitalism which conceptualizes the bioeconomy as a pursuit of technological advancement that preserves and strengthens humanity’s intimate relationship with the natural world. Finally, we argue that building a BRI-ESD community undergirded by the biodigital ecopedagogy of EC will provide both the curriculum and educational space to more fully enact UNESCO’s ESD 2030 framework.