Environmental governance of China’s Belt and Road Initiative

ABSTRACT

On the 10^th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), we present this special symposium to advance knowledge on environmental governance of China’s overseas engagement. While China’s fast-growing investments across the world have large implications for global and local environmental politics, this phenomenon has so far received insufficient attention of students of environmental politics. Moreover, China has become increasingly proactive in promoting green development in the BRI, but little research has assessed relevant governance initiatives. Recognising this research gap, contributors to the symposium provide rigorous analysis on institutional interactions involving China and host country actors as well as forces driving new governance initiatives aiming to green the BRI. Building on the insights drawn from the symposium, we propose a research agenda to focus on the effects of China-US geopolitical rivalry, institutional evolution, and agency of host countries to understand the evolving system governing environmental impacts of China’s overseas engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• Belt and Road Initiative
• environmental governance
• institutions
• overseas development finance
• sustainable development

1. Introduction: dynamism in environmental governance of the BRI

In 2013, China launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a flagship policy framework to promote international development cooperation, especially through infrastructure investment. With over 150 participating countries, the BRI has made China the world’s leading provider of development finance, generating infrastructure projects worth USD 170 billion across every world region (Malik et al. 2021). Large-scale infrastructure development triggered by the BRI, especially high-carbon investments (e.g. coal-fired power plants) in biodiversity rich areas and jurisdictions with weak regulations, has led to growing concern of many researchers and practitioners (Ascensão et al. 2018, Hughes 2019, Kong and Gallagher 2021b, Yang et al. 2021). At the same time, the Chinese government began to increasingly emphasize green development – including for its overseas engagement – since Xi Jinping became the country’s top leader (Li and Shapiro 2020, Harlan 2020, Coenen et al. 2021). Accordingly, the governance of the BRI has undergone significant changes over the last decade by putting increasing emphasis on promoting the so-called ‘Green BRI’ (Sun and Yu 2023). More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting impact on Chinese economy seem to cause a dramatic slowing down of BRI investments, especially in hard infrastructure (Nedopil 2023). Some observers therefore suggest that China is shifting to a new approach to overseas development finance by prioritising smaller and more targeted projects with higher standards (Ray 2023). Given these dynamics, it is the time to provide rigorous analysis on various policies and institutions that have been gradually developed to govern environmental impacts of the BRI.

On the 10^th anniversary of the BRI, we present this special symposium to advance our knowledge on environmental governance of the BRI. Through the lens of ‘governance’, our primary focus is on rules, norms, and institutions seeking to manage environmental impacts of Chinese overseas investments in the BRI. To date, researchers of environmental politics have paid insufficient attention to the BRI, even though the BRI has been widely recognised as an important phenomenon of the changing global order and having large implications for global and local environmental politics. The existing BRI literature in political science has largely focused on investigating political aims of China’s overseas engagement (e.g. Benabdallah 2019, Jones and Zeng 2019, Zhao 2020, Dreher et al. 2022) and to a less extent on political and socio-economic impacts of BRI projects in host countries (e.g. Garlick 2020, Oliveira et al. 2020). Hence, the questions of how the BRI impacts the environment and sustainable development in different contexts and how such impacts are managed remain underexplored. Meanwhile, in the field of environmental studies (including environmental science and ecology), an increasing number of studies began to model environmental and sustainability risks of BRI projects across the globe (Chen et al. 2020, Ng et al. 2020, Yang et al. 2021, Simmons et al. 2022). However, without investigating political processes through which different actors interact to regulate the environment and Chinese overseas investment, this line of inquiry can only draw an incomplete picture on environmental impacts of the BRI. We seek to bridge this knowledge gap by giving special attention to the evolving governance system that involves both Chinese and non-Chinese actors for managing environmental impacts of the BRI.

More specifically, the symposium focuses on two sets of inter-related questions. First, despite many criticisms on the lack of low-carbon investments in the BRI, very little research has examined the institutions and political processes underpinning this pattern. In other words, there is an urgent need to investigate how interactions of Chinese actors and institutions with those in host countries lead to different types of projects with varying environmental and climate impacts. For students of environmental politics, this is not only an important empirical question to explain variation in environmental impacts of BRI projects across countries and subnational regions (Shen and Power 2017, Kong and Gallagher 2021a) but also has large theoretical implications for understanding China’s approaches to overseas development finance and investment in comparison with Western countries (Brautigam 2011, Dunford 2020). Answering this question would require researchers to unpack the relevant policy-making processes through which different actors pursue their interests in specific institutional settings.

Second, taking into account Beijing's proactive promotion of green development in the BRI, we need to interrogate what has driven Chinese actors to develop such new policies and institutions and through which mechanisms these policies and institutions actually govern environmental impacts of the BRI. Recently, many researchers have questioned the intentions and effectiveness of Beijing’s green BRI policy (Harlan 2020, Coenen et al. 2021). However, students of environmental politics have yet to carefully assess how different initiatives have been developed and what are their up-to-date outcomes. The answers to these questions will not only reveal the existing principles and mechanisms governing environmental challenges associated with the BRI but also shed light on China’s influence on global environmental governance.

By addressing these pressing questions, our symposium aims to propose a new research agenda on environmental politics behind China’s growing global engagement. Below we briefly summarize each article in the symposium. We conclude by highlighting three areas for future research.

2. Summary of the articles

As a collective effort, our symposium aims to show a more complete picture on the evolving system governing environmental impacts of the BRI. Two articles examine the interactions of Chinese actors with host country institutions, with different geographical focuses. Liu et al. (2022) investigate variation in energy mixes in China’s overseas investments in the power sector in Asia through a structure comparison between Pakistan and Indonesia. By analysing the interactions of Chinese investors with stakeholders and institutions in host countries, they find that the exclusion of coal interests in domestic policy-making, a highly institutionalised regime set by the host country to govern Chinese investments, and the host government’s strategy of linking investments with Beijing’s geopolitical interests have helped Pakistan to attract more clean energy investments than Indonesia. Also interested in energy investments, Chiyemura et al. (2023) examine the interactions between Chinese and host country institutions in Africa through the cases of South Africa and Ethiopia. They found that China’s highly fragmented institutional system to support overseas infrastructure investments made key Chinese state actors detached from institutional contexts of host countries, and this has significantly constrained China’s renewable investments in Africa despite enormous opportunities for clean energy transition in the region. Together, the two studies unpack the complex systems involving both Chinese and host country actors to govern the BRI in different contexts and how such governance institutions affect environmental and climate impacts of Chinese infrastructure investments.

Three articles investigate policies and governance initiatives that have emerged in recent years as part of China’s efforts to green the BRI. Geng and Lo (2022) study the case of the BRI Green International Green Development Coalition (BRIGC) – a flagship governance initiative to promote green BRI led by China’s Ministry of Environment and Ecology in collaboration with international partners. Through the theoretical lens of transnational governance and orchestration, they examine specific pathways through which the BRIGC seeks to govern green development in the BRI and identify limitations in the Coalition’s orchestration work. Davidson et al. (2023) focus on China’s recent pledge to stop financing overseas coal projects announced in September 2021. By situating China’s policy in the broad context of ceasing coal export finance by Japan and South Korea, their study finds declining demand in host countries, growing international pressure against coal development, and diminished political support for coal incumbents as three key drivers of this policy move. Lastly, Gong and Lewis (2023) investigate the roles of international actors in a range of governance initiatives aiming at greening the BRI. By studying four governance programmes, they identify two models of international engagement in greening the BRI: direct engagement by redirecting Chinese investments and indirect engagement by influencing policies and practices of Chinese actors. Through different theoretical and empirical focuses, these articles provide important insights into the rise and functioning of new policies and institutions seeking to govern environmental impacts of the BRI.

3. Towards a research agenda

Over the last decade, environmental governance of the BRI has been fast evolving due to the changing global market and geopolitical contexts as well as China’s new policy priorities. However, researchers of environmental politics have so far paid insufficient attention to this important phenomenon in international development and its implications for local and global environmental politics. As China is likely to remain as the leading financier of infrastructure development in the Global South in the foreseeable future, there is urgent need to improve our knowledge on the ways in which environmental impacts of China’s overseas engagement are governed. Building on the insights drawn from the studies in this symposium and considering emerging trends in global politics, we suggest three key areas for future research on the BRI in the field of environmental politics.

First, in the context of geopolitical rivalry between China and the US, it is crucial to explore how great power competition in projecting global influence would influence sustainability governance of China’s overseas engagement. While many scholars and practitioners remain highly pessimistic on great power competition between China and the West, recent evidence has shown a ratcheting-up effect in environmental governance of Chinese overseas investment due to Western donors’ newly committed support for sustainable infrastructure in developing countries (Sun and Liu 2023). Hence, we need more research to assess when and under what conditions this type of positive ratcheting-up effects can happen and to what extent recipient countries can benefit from stronger regulations and standards adopted by China. Second, to better understand how Chinese actors manage environmental impacts of the BRI, researchers should pay more attention to the question of institutional development and evolution. To date, the policy-making processes for China’s overseas engagement remain largely opaque, so fine-grained analysis is urgently needed to reveal the forces shaping various governance initiatives (Hale et al. 2020). As the relevant initiatives will gradually evolve, researchers should also consider feedback between policies such as the phenomena of path dependency or the influence of pre-existing rules and norms on new governance arrangements. Third, as underscored by some recent studies, the agency of host countries deserves more attention, especially the question of how host country actors and institutions shape the on-the-ground impact of Chinese overseas investments (Bhandary et al. 2022). In this respect, comparative studies across and within countries will generate important insights into the impact of contextual factors on environmental governance of the BRI.

Looking ahead, the BRI is likely to undergo a qualitative change and so will the systems to govern its environmental impacts. In the meantime, the BRI will still have a large influence on the development of many countries as well as our future system of global governance. As more and more data on the BRI have become available, we hope this symposium prompts a new research agenda for students of environmental politics to examine environmental governance of China’s overseas engagement and its implications for global and local environmental politics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).