Abstract
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the largest infrastructure scheme in our lifetime, bringing unprecedented geopolitical and economic shifts far larger than previous rising powers. Concerns about its environmental impacts are legitimate and threaten to thwart China’s ambitions, especially since there is little precedent for analysing and planning for environmental impacts of massive infrastructure development at the scale of BRI. In this paper, we review infrastructure development under BRI to characterise the nature and types of environmental impacts and demonstrate how social, economic and political factors can shape these impacts. We first address the ambiguity around how BRI is defined. Then we describe our interdisciplinary framework for considering the nature of its environmental impacts, showing how impacts interact and aggregate across multiple spatiotemporal scales creating cumulative impacts. We also propose a typology of BRI infrastructure, and describe how economic and socio-political drivers influence BRI infrastructure and the nature of its environmental impacts. Increasingly, environmental policies associated with BRI are being designed and implemented, although there are concerns about how these will translate effectively into practice. Planning and addressing environmental issues associated with the BRI is immensely complex and multi-scaled. Understanding BRI and its environment impacts is the first step for China and countries along the routes to ensure the assumed positive socio-economic impacts associated with BRI are sustainable.
Highlights
China’s “Going Out” strategy has culminated in what will be the largest infrastructure scheme in our lifetime—the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI; initially known as “One Belt One Road” or OBOR), announced by President Xi Jinping in 2013 [1]
Japan have been often geopolitically-motivated as well [36], but BRI differs from these investments by being spatially concentrated along corridors designed with the express aim of facilitating trans-Eurasian transport connectivity and integration with China
These values allow for comparisons between infrastructure, but cumulative impacts of infrastructure can vary between 10 km and 80 km or more and can even cross nations [56,57]; 2 See Section 4.1 for a more detailed discussion on linear, nodal and concentrated typologies; 3 Indicative values for area and length of impact derived from land-based footprint of port and associated developments
Summary
China’s “Going Out” strategy has culminated in what will be the largest infrastructure scheme in our lifetime—the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI; initially known as “One Belt One Road” or OBOR), announced by President Xi Jinping in 2013 [1]. Given the importance of a scientific evidence-based approach, which the Chinese government and academics have recognised [17], it is necessary to understand the environmental impacts of BRI as a prerequisite for effective policy-making which encourages environmental and social sustainability. We review infrastructure development under BRI to characterise the nature and types of environmental impacts and demonstrate how social, economic and political factors can shape these impacts. The paper aims to address some of the ambiguity regarding the nature and impacts of the BRI and lay the groundwork for further interdisciplinary study and planning on the BRI that accounts for the multi-scale nature of this trans-boundary initiative This is critical as the impacts of BRI are likely to be felt for many generations after the construction and development of BRI projects are completed across the globe
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