China insists on environment-effective impact of BRI

04.10.2024

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—China’s multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure program across 145 countries and counting—is provoking concern among observers that China is exporting its polluting model of development. Yet, China’s leaders frame the BRI as a pathway for “green development,” pointing to China’s ambitious climate targets and leadership in green industries like renewable energy. To date, efforts to “green” the BRI have focused on mitigating impacts of large-scale infrastructure—but a “soft” approach to greening is emerging. In this essay, we trace the rapid rise of what we call green development cooperation: environmentally-focused activities that forge peopleto-people connections with host countries. Activities include training, dialogues, research, and development projects, some of which build on existing initiatives, and some which are entirely new. Our systematic review of these engagements finds that cooperation emphasizes technocratic approaches to environment and development problems that are based on China’s own experience. Cooperation thus offers a means to position China as an alternative environmental leader—a kind of green soft power—while also facilitating transfer of Chinese green technology and expertise to the Global South. At the same time, the green BRI is a fluid and malleable concept, shaped by diverse Chinese and host country actors who seek to advance their own objectives through cooperation. This carries the risk of ineffective or “greenwashed” cooperation interventions, but also creates opportunities for new forms of engagement and dimensions of coalition-building, and an important opening for improving the environmental performance of the BRI.

Since it was first announced in 2013, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted criticism for its environmental impacts. Observers point out that China’s large-scale infrastructure projects—such as roads, bridges, ports, and dams—can significantly alter ecosystems and reduce biodiversity. Critics also highlight China’s role in driving increased carbon emissions in BRI countries, most notably by financing and constructing fossil fuel extraction and generation infrastructure. Measures to mitigate these environmental impacts, on the other hand, have been deemed insufficient. Chinese BRI projects have tended to defer to weak host country standards in assessing and regulating environmental harm, and consultation with local communities and stakeholders has been generally absent. But this reticence to engage in environmental governance, we find, is changing.

China’s leaders are heavily promoting the BRI as “green.” This framing is more than just a pledge to minimize environmental impacts; rather, in the words of Xi Jinping, it promises to foster “a way of life that is green, lowcarbon, circular and sustainable.” The green BRI entered official Chinese discourse in the late 2010s—embodied in dual guidelines issued by China’s central government —and is now a prominent feature in official speeches, communiques, and media coverage. China’s leaders highlight their national dominance in renewable energy and high-speed rail as evidence of their ability to deliver on green claims along the BRI, and the country is taking an increasingly active, leadership role in global environmental governance initiatives more broadly. Outside observers, meanwhile, see both potential for greening BRI infrastructure and risks that rhetoric will not translate into meaningful change in investment decisions and construction practices.

This green discourse is part of larger efforts in China to foster positive perceptions of the BRI, in part by framing it as more than just an infrastructure initiative. Xi made this point explicitly at the Third BRI Symposium in November 2021, categorizing BRI activities as “the infrastructure “hard connectivity” as an important direction, the rules and standards “soft connectivity” as an important support, with the construction of the people of the countries “heart connectivity” as an important foundation.” Indeed, Beijing has sought to advance these latter goals of soft power and person-to-person connections for decades, beginning with agricultural training programs in Africa in the 1960s, and expanding to encompass trainings across sectors, policy dialogues, joint research and scholarships for study in China, and specific projects focused on rural development and poverty alleviation. In the last five years, moreover, many such initiatives have been refashioned as green, incorporating the rhetoric of the green BRI. These “soft” activities exist alongside, but still apart from, “hard” infrastructure projects, offering a focused channel for advancing a vision of the BRI that is both win-win and sustainable.

Chinese leaders refer to a wide range of transnational engagements as development cooperation, and while most of these activities have begun to refer to environmental concerns, we see an emergence of trainings, dialogues, research, and development projects as the main ways China engages in explicitly green cooperation. Our analysis reveals that, since the late 2010s, the green BRI has become a core organizing principle of China’s development cooperation. Green cooperation activities have  increased substantially as a result. Many of these activities are delivered through existing cooperation mechanisms, such as decades-old agricultural technology demonstration centers in Africa; others are entirely new. The organizations and actors who design and implement cooperation are likewise diverse, and include foreign cooperation departments of Chinese central and provincial government ministries, state-owned and private enterprises, think tanks and research centers, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Cooperation initiatives target Global South countries facing environmental risks, and emphasize technological solutions drawn from China’s own experience. From a broader perspective, we find that green cooperation has become a primary venue through which China projects influence over global environmental governance—a kind of green soft power. It does so by promoting a China- and BRI-centric narrative of green development and “ecological civilization” that emphasizes technocratic and growth-oriented approaches, offering a potential alternative to the Western-led development model. At the same time, the green BRI is a fluid and malleable concept, shaped by Chinese and host country actors who seek to advance their own political, economic, and environmental objectives. This carries the risk of ineffective or “greenwashed” cooperation interventions, but also creates opportunities for collaboration and engagement. Indeed, the rapid growth of green cooperation shows that China is serious about environmental issues. Working with rather than against this cooperation should thus be a top U.S. priority.

Green cooperation on the Belt and Road—like the BRI itself—is rooted in China’s own domestic socioeconomic and environmental context. China faces numerous well-publicized environmental challenges, which over time have prompted ever-stronger responses from China’s leadership, as evidenced by the strengthening of environmental policies, targets, and government bureaucracy. Underpinning these important shifts is the discourse of “ecological civilization,” which was introduced into Communist Party ideology in 2007, adopted by Xi Jinping as a major framework in 2013, and elevated to a prominent position in the constitution in 2018. Ecological civilization pervades Chinese rhetoric of the green BRI. In its 2017 “Guidance on Promoting Green Belt and Road,” the Communist Party Central Committee and State Council foreground the goal to “mainstream ecological civilization in the ‘Belt and Road Initiative,’” while the Ministry of Environmental Protection’s (MEP) “Belt and Road Ecological and Environmental Cooperation Plan” specifically states that “to 2025, we will integrate the concepts of ecological civilization and green development into the Belt and Road Initiative.” Indeed, the government is promoting the concept of ecological civilization heavily in multilateral contexts, including most recently its selection as the theme of the China-hosted 2021 COP15 Biodiversity Summit. Chinese scholars tend to view the mainstreaming of ecological civilization positively, seeing it as a means for China to influence international environmental governance by drawing on national wisdom and experience. Non-Chinese researchers and think tanks, meanwhile, show some concern that China aims to supplant existing global environmental norms and values with those drawn from ecological civilization, and to channel these through the BRI.

The technocratic emphasis of efforts to green the BRI is similarly rooted in China’s own experience and its domestic efforts towards sustainable development. while China is “talking the talk” through green BRI discourse, scholars find that it is not “walking the walk” through its investments on the Belt and Road. This green mercantilism seeks to woo developing countries through environmental discourse—with particular emphasis on China’s expertise and technology—but it chiefly serves to advance economic and political objectives over environmental benefits. As a result, Chinese investments on the BRI are mostly comprised of “brown” infrastructure projects, including several hundred coal-fired power plants, with only limited engagement in green projects like solar and wind energy. China’s hydropower projects on the BRI, meanwhile, have been controversially promoted by Chinese actors as “green,” despite their well-documented social and environmental impacts. Some observers thus conclude that the green BRI discourse is largely being ignored or simply “greenwashed” in favor of infrastructural and technological interventions that benefit the Chinese state and host country elites. Beijing’s recent pledge to end state-sponsored finance for overseas coal power projects offers cause for optimism—as do new Chinese solar and wind projects in Africa—but there remains a disconnect between green BRI promises and actions on the ground.

Focusing only on this disconnect, however, risks overlooking the broader implication of the green BRI: that China is centering environmental protection in how it engages as a global development partner. This engagement increasingly occurs through people-to-people cooperation activities—trainings, dialogues, research, and development projects—that are related to, but exist separately from, high-level policy discourse or infrastructure investments. This cooperation aims to strengthen China’s environmental leadership and soft power, but it does so in ways that are shaped by the specific actors involved. Indeed, drawing on the literature on Chinese development aid, we can understand green cooperation as spaces of encounter, where norms and values are both advanced and co-constructed by Chinese and host country actors. Understanding how this cooperation occurs can shed important light on how the green BRI is being defined in particular contexts, and how it is shaping development pathways.

Green cooperation activities are clearly on the rise. They are part of an overarching trend in which all types of overseas interventions by Chinese actors are referred to in connection with the Chinese state’s vision of a green Belt and Road. This trend intersects with China’s increasing investment in “soft” connectivity by facilitating people-to-people interactions and collaborations between Chinese actors and the rest of the world. Our review revealed four primary types of green cooperation activities initiated by Chinese actors with explicitly stated (though often broadly defined and interpreted) environmental objectives: trainings, dialogues, research, and development projects. These interventions involve encounters between Chinese actors and public and private sector decision-makers from BRI countries which go beyond the expanding sphere of formal environmental policymaking and “hard” infrastructure projects or other physical investments.

The majority of green cooperation activities captured in our review occur in three sectors: water (including hydropower), agriculture, and forestry (often connected with conservation efforts). This concentration makes sense considering that China has invested considerable resources in developing these sectors domestically and has historically focused its development aid contributions to developing countries in the same sectors. Agricultural technology demonstration centers, for example, have featured heavily in Chinese foreign aid to Africa and simultaneously provide agricultural extension services, commercial opportunities (connecting Chinese agribusinesses with farmers), and connections between Chinese and African agricultural sector state officials.26 China’s water management sector also has a long history of training developing country technicians and state representatives, again unsurprising considering China’s status as one of the top hydropower and irrigation technology developers in the world. Forest sector activities range from advising afforestation and anti-wildlife trafficking efforts to developing sustainable investment tools for Chinese firms like the “Guide on Sustainable Management and Utilization of Overseas Forests by Chinese Enterprises” issued by China’s State Forest Administration in collaboration with WWF, The Nature Conservancy, Forest Trends, and IUCN. Activities in other sectors such as urban greening, pollution and waste management, and energy initiatives are likely to increase in the future, with many currently in the planning phase.

Sharing data between Chinese and other countries’ research institutions or engaging in collaborative research, particularly to facilitate joint monitoring and assessment of shared ecosystems, is increasingly common. A number of institutions, networks, and diplomatic fora have been established that aim to facilitate dialogue and other forms of engagement between actors in China with certain regions on a range of topics including the environment (e.g., the Lancang-Mekong Environmental Cooperation Center [LMEC], discussed below) or on common specified environmental goals (e.g., the China-Africa Forest Governance Platform launched in 2013). We include in this category a particularly fast growing set of engagements between Chinese (often state and sectoral institution) actors and foreign entities (often international NGOs or their counterparts in BRI countries) establishing voluntary environmental standards. Finally, a limited but growing number of onthe-ground development projects are noted, some of which pilot the application of Chinese environmental interventions elsewhere, others which seek to offset the environmental impacts of Chinese investment activities (e.g., the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway Wildlife Corridor). These types of activities overlap with each other: institutions that facilitate dialogues may organize training series, these trainings may be used to launch research collaborations, and so on. Table 1 provides examples of each type.

The Lancang-Mekong Environmental Cooperation Center offers an example of how these activities are often organized and can overlap. LMEC was established by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the first Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Leaders’ Meeting in 2016, and was formally integrated into the overall Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Framework in 2018. In its own words, the Center “aims to disseminate China’s theory of environmental governance, boost the capacity of environmental governance of each country and achieve regional sustainable development through the promotion of environmental cooperation among Lancang-Mekong countries.” It does this primarily through what it calls the “Green Lancang-Mekong Initiative,” an umbrella for all four types of cooperation activities including “policy dialogue, capacity building, mainstreaming environmental policy, joint research and the demonstration of environmental projects, etc.” Recent topics include water quality, ecological remote sensing, industrial gas emission standards, and waste management, with strong emphasis on technological solutions. All of these activities—and LMEC itself—operate under the auspices of China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, but also have stated partnerships with UN agencies, international NGOs, and Chinese business associations and large SOEs.

ndeed, there is a vast array of Chinese actors engaged in green cooperation. China’s environmental turn on both domestic and international fronts— through the emphasis on ecological civilization domestically and on greening the BRI—has compelled all Chinese actors to at least engage with a baseline level of environmental concerns while creating a much greater space for actors to push for environmental improvements. The Chinese state is involved across all types of green cooperation, a reality which parallels non-environmental activities in the same sectors. Standard setting activities disproportionately involve Chinese private sector actors from individual corporations (both private and state-owned) to sector business associations and research institutions. NGOs (Chinese, international, and BRI host country domestic) are also active across types and sectors but hold far more leadership roles in implementing activities in the areas of conservation and forestry. These actors are increasingly collaborating, with ties between civil society and the private sector, and between Chinese and multilateral organizations, becoming increasingly common. Several preliminary observations emerged through the compilation and review of these green cooperation activities. Many featured activities serve as channels for the transfer of Chinese experiences and technology alike to other countries. Such activities are referred to by Chinese proponents as SouthSouth cooperation, and while assessing their reception as such in Belt and Road countries is beyond the scope of this report, we take the rise of green cooperation to indicate that China’s environmental turn is linked to its commitment to serving as a development partner and a model for developing countries to follow. Chinese technology transfer activities occur primarily in areas where Chinese companies excel, such as the production of high-productivity seeds, irrigation management systems, and hydropower production, among others. But they also occur in these sectors because Chinese companies invest heavily in them, have experienced the costs of environmental risks, and are learning firsthand the value of preventing or mitigating them.

We take the diversity of actors engaged in green cooperation as indicative that concern for the environment has become a dominant discourse in Chinese development thinking. On one hand, much like the broader concept of sustainable development, the mainstreaming of the green BRI means that many actors will promote environmental rhetoric without actually committing to behavioral or structural change. It is simply normatively necessary for them to acknowledge the green BRI in order to continue operating. On the other hand, green cooperation offers a new space for environmental action on the BRI. New coalitions are forming, not just between natural allies, but also between actors who might generally be hostile to one another, such as Chinese firms and international NGOs. Finally, most activities documented are extremely new. This too means considerable promise for future change, but also the need for more careful, in-depth assessment of their implications.

The BRI has an enormous environmental footprint, and China’s attempts to green this footprint are both necessary and welcome. This paper highlights that such efforts are very much underway, pointing to a rapid increase in the last five years in Chinese-led trainings, dialogues, research, and development projects focused on the green BRI. These myriad activities—which we term green cooperation—build upon longstanding development cooperation between China and other countries, particularly in the realms of water, agriculture, and conservation. Such cooperation is now placing the environment at the forefront, drawing on China’s domestic efforts (and in some cases, global leadership) in strengthening environmental protection. Indeed, just as the environment has become a central tenet of domestic policy making and development planning in China, greening the BRI and green cooperation are becoming mainstream.

An analysis of this cooperation itself reveals a strong focus on technological solutions to environmental problems, drawn from China’s own historical and contemporary experience. This perspective is grounded in the concept of “ecological civilization,” which China’s leaders promote internationally as a rallying principle for win-win and sustainable development. For the many Chinese actors and institutions involved in cooperation—including government ministries, state and private firms, think tanks, and NGOs—there is thus a clear connection between China’s own domestic environmental transformation and its push to green the BRI. Our case studies of rubber and hydropower show that this push at times is superficial and opportunistic, but the broader momentum of change is genuine and holds massive opportunity. Concerned governments and institutions, then, should identify and focus on shared goals and perspectives for a green BRI, engaging with rather than working against China’s green cooperation. Analysis of cooperation in this paper and of our rubber and hydropower case studies shows that collaboration for a green BRI is possible, even if its current implementation is limited. Simply labeling China’s green cooperation as an attempt at “greenwashing” will only deepen mistrust; it is far better to engage in and seek to strengthen this cooperation. Indeed, the joint climate pledges from China and the U.S. at COP illustrate the possibility for collaboration on norms and standards— an outcome we hope to see replicated on the BRI.

By Tyler Harlan and Juliet Lu for the Wilson China Fellowship.