China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI; also known as “One Belt One Road”) is potentially the largest infrastructure development in our lifetime. In 2013, President Xi Jinping revealed his vision for BRI, which is expected to be core to China’s development strategy for at least the next decade [1]. With an estimated cost of over four trillion US dollars, BRI will connect roughly half of the world’s population, across over 65 countries, with land and marine routes [2]. Although much has been discussed about its economic and geopolitical implications, the implications of BRI for biodiversity must also be considered, especially in Asia.
Infrastructure and its impacts are key drivers of biodiversity loss. BRI will cross several terrestrial and marine biodiversity hotspots [3,4], wilderness areas [5], and other key conservation areas, such as Southeast Asia’s Coral Triangle5 (Fig. 1). These disruptions will create obvious threats to biodiversity. Roads, for example, open a Pandora’s box of environmental impacts, such as habitat loss, fragmentation, invasive species, and illegal activities like poaching and logging [6]. In the marine environment, increased sea traffic exacerbates the movement of invasive species and pollution [7,8]. Poorly planned infrastructure has the risk of locking in undesirable environmental practices for decades to come. BRI could have disastrous consequences for biodiversity.
We challenge decision-makers, infrastructure planners, and conservationists to work together not only to mitigate BRI’s negative impacts but also to think how to transform this juggernaut into an opportunity for biodiversity. If BRI adopts biodiversity conservation as one of its core values, it could, for example, plan and implement a network of protected areas and wildlife corridors across Eurasia. In much of BRI’s region, especially in Southeast, Central, and Western Asia, there is a clear need for additional protected areas9,10 to meet the Convention on Biological Diversity’s target of “17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water, and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas” [11] within protected areas, or even a more ambitious target. BRI could achieve this by learning from, supporting, and expanding existing national initiatives in the region such as Bhutan For Life [12] or Malaysia’s Central Forest Spine [13], and by opportunistically promoting transboundary conservation parks and conservation activities14. Furthermore, developments under BRI need to follow best practice environmental planning such as applying Strategic Environmental Assessments15,16 and early assessment of impacts at the feasibility stage rather than once investments have been made (before an Environmental Impact Assessment)16. The BRI should also apply the mitigation hierarchy to ensure at least no net loss of biodiversity and to aim for a net biodiversity gain that yield benefits to conservation which would not have otherwise occurred [17] .
Many negative environmental impacts are attributable to Chinese activity, both within China and across the globe [14,18], but China has recently launched a policy paradigm known as “ecological civilization”, which aims to improve environmental regulations, reduce pollution and increase the adoption of green technology [19]. If China can match its rhetoric with action (see 15) and similarly embrace biodiversity conservation, it could use its geopolitical weight to pursue the conservation agenda in the BRI landscapes. The vision we propose should be led by Chinese authorities and diplomacy but will require clear involvement from other governments and stakeholders, including intergovernmental organizations such as UNDP, financiers, developers, and civil society. Conservationists, planners, and decision-makers need to think outside of the box about BRI’s biodiversity implications to ensure that biodiversity is at the core of BRI’s values rather than an afterthought.
Originally published
Lechner, A. M., F.K.S. Chan and A. Campos-Arceiz (2018) Biodiversity conservation should be a Core Value of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Nature Ecology and Evolution.23, 23-24
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