Fruitful Results of the Green Belt and Road

Editor's note: Xu Qinhua is a professor at the School of International Studies, the vice dean of the National Academy of Development and Strategy (NADS), and the executive dean of Eurasian Research Institute, RUC.

Over the past 10 years, China has always emphasized the concept of green development throughout the process of jointly building the Belt and Road. When China strives to realize our own green development, it has carried out a wide range of exchanges and cooperation in a variety of fields, contents, and forms with the countries and regions that are co-builders of the Belt and Road to promote the building of a green Belt and Road, which has achieved positive progress and remarkable results.

The concept of green development leads the joint contribution.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, adhering to the concept of green development, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has promoted comprehensive green economic and social transformation and created a world-renowned miracle of green development. While steadily promoting domestic green development and ecological civilization construction, China is also actively exploring the integration of our own green development experience into the construction of the Belt and Road. In 2016, President Xi Jinping emphasized in his speech at the Legislative Chamber of the Supreme Council of Uzbekistan that efforts should be made to deepen environmental cooperation, practice the concept of green development, intensify ecological environmental protection, and join hands to build a Green Silk Road. In 2019, President Xi Jinping explicitly proposed at the opening ceremony of the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation that green should be taken as a base color, and green infrastructure construction, green investment, and green finance should be promoted, to take good care of the Earth, the only home of human beings. President Xi Jinping accurately grasps the current world trend of green transformation and development in a series of important discussions on building a green Belt and Road, pointing out the direction of China’s ecological environmental protection and international cooperation on environmental protection, and providing important guidelines for building a clean and beautiful world together.

In 2017, in order to accelerate the construction of a green Belt and Road, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and other departments jointly issued the "Guidance on Promoting Green Belt and Road", which formally put forward the construction of a green Belt and Road and comprehensively and systematically elaborated the significance of green development for the Belt and Road. Guided by Xi Jinping's thoughts on ecological civilization, the green Belt and Road, combined with China's rich experience and vivid practice of green development, has launched a large number of pragmatic, practical and practical projects through the "five links" of the joint construction of the Belt and Road, and the "five links" of the "One Belt, One Road". Through the "Five Links" of the Belt and Road, a large number of pragmatic green projects benefiting the countries along the route have been launched, and an all-round and complex green partnership is being built. Over the past decade, the Green Belt and Road Initiative has achieved tangible results in the supply of green public goods and has been well received by the countries along the Belt and Road Initiative.

Green practical cooperation has expanded and deepened.

Over the past decade, China has been actively working with countries along the routes to build a green Belt and Road. With the continuous improvement of the green top-level institutional design, the continuous expansion and deepening of green practical cooperation, and the concept of green development becoming a broad consensus, the construction of the green Belt and Road has been steadily advancing and has achieved fruitful results.

The design of the green top-level system has been continuously improved. Positive progress has been made in Central Asia, Southeast Asia and Central and Eastern Europe. Green cooperation with Central Asian countries is based on the cooperation framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The Concept of the SCO Member States' Cooperation in Environmental Protection adopted at the 2018 SCO Qingdao Summit and the SCO Green Belt Programme adopted at the 2021 Dushanbe Summit have provided policy guidance for China's green cooperation with Central Asian countries and even Middle Eastern countries. Since then, SCO member states have held four meetings of environment ministers to hold in-depth discussions on the implementation of specific cooperation mechanisms, and continuously deepen environmental exchanges and cooperation among SCO countries. In 2016, China and ASEAN signed theFramework of ASEAN-China Environmental Cooperation Strategy and Action Plan (2016-2020) to further promote a series of high-level policy dialogues and jointly share ecological environmental protection and green development concepts and practices.In 2018, at the Ministerial Conference on China-Central and Eastern European Countries (CEE) Environmental Protection Cooperation, the two sides adopted the Framework Document on China-CEE Environmental Protection Cooperation and launched an environmental protection cooperation mechanism, providing a broad platform for China-CEE ecological and environmental protection In 2019, the Belt and Road International Green Development Coalition was officially launched, which has attracted more than 150 Chinese and foreign partners from 43 countries.

Green practical cooperation continues to expand and deepen. Over the past ten years, green Belt and Road construction projects have covered a number of key areas, including infrastructure connectivity, energy, and education, and have actively served the cause of green development in countries along the route. In the field of green infrastructure, China attaches great importance to ecological environmental protection in countries along the route, so it has invested in a large number of green infrastructure projects. Major projects such as the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway, Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway, and the China-Laos Railway have been implemented one after another, extensively integrating green technology, green wisdom, and green concepts from China. Take the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway as an example. The project was designed and constructed with large wildlife passages and isolation fences along the whole line. The Mombasa-Nairobi Railway project has not only comprehensively driven Kenya's economic and social development, but also effectively protected local wildlife. In the field of green energy, from 2014 to 2020, China's investment in renewable energy in the Belt and Road project accounted for nearly 40%, helping countries along the route to build a number of key clean energy projects. Under the framework of the Green Belt and Road, China has shared its experience in green development through the Green Silk Road Envoy Program. As of February 2023, China has trained about 3,000 green talents for more than 120 Belt and Road countries.

The concept of green development has become a broad consensus among countries along the Belt and Road, and even globally. With the continuous improvement of green top-level institutional design and the expansion and deepening of green practical cooperation, the concept of green Belt and Road has become more deeply rooted in people's hearts and has injected new vitality into environmental governance and cooperation among countries along the routes as well as globally. According to the white paper titled "China's Green Development in the New Era", China has launched the Belt and Road Green Development Partnership Initiative with 31 countries and established the Belt and Road Energy Partnership with 32 countries. As the green Belt and Road has become a consensus among countries along the route and even around the globe, China's role in the world's energy transition and green low-carbon development has become more prominent. China's active participation in the global governance of climate change through the green Belt and Road not only promotes more progress in the construction of its own ecological civilization but also provides a strong guarantee for the achievement of the Paris Agreement and the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Towards a new journey with a green foundation.

Although the green Belt and Road have achieved fruitful results in the past ten years, the demand gap for green and low-carbon development of the countries along the route is still obvious, which is mainly reflected in the three major areas of green infrastructure, green finance, and green energy. China has an obvious advantage in supplying advanced technologies and cost-effective solutions in these areas, which complement the green and low-carbon development needs of the countries along the Belt and Road. This will provide a new driving force for the development of the green Belt and Road in the next decade.

Green infrastructure is the material key to high-quality connectivity of counties along the Belt and Road. There are still two major green issues that need to be resolved in the infrastructure development of countries along the Belt and Road, namely, how to make infrastructure meet the needs of local natural environment protection and how to realize the low-carbon construction and operation of infrastructure. In the future, the development of green infrastructure along the Belt and Road will be required to guide enterprises to adopt energy and water conservation standards, improve resource utilization and pay attention to waste treatment. When designing, we should rationally select sites and routes to reduce the impact on various types of protected areas and ecologically sensitive and fragile areas. And environmental impact assessment should also be taken seriously.

Green finance is the core driving force for the new development of the Belt and Road. Countries along the Belt and Road are facing more environmental and climate challenges, and the demand for green finance is even more urgent. According to the estimation of the African Development Bank, if the African power sector is to realize the energy development goal in 2025, the average annual investment gap is about 35 to 50 billion US dollars. In the future, green financial cooperation will remain an important driving force for the development of the green Belt and Road. Countries along the route should promote the two-way opening of the green financial market in an orderly manner, encourage financial institutions and relevant enterprises to carry out green financing in the international market, and strengthen cooperation under multilateral financial frameworks such as the ADB and the BRICS New Development Bank. Through the provision of green loans, the issuance of green bonds, the establishment of green funds, and the innovation of green financial products, we will help the Belt and Road realize sustainable new development.

Green energy will remain an important theme of the Belt and Road cooperation. With the efforts and cooperation of all countries, significant progress has been made in greening the energy structure of countries along the Belt and Road, and the trend of transformation is still accelerating. As of May 2023, green energy has exceeded traditional energy in energy investment in countries along the Belt and Road. Despite the huge potential of renewable energy in the countries along the Belt and Road, their reliance on traditional fossil energy is still relatively serious, and the pressure of energy transition is still large. Although many countries along the Belt and Road will vigorously develop renewable energy as a fundamental path to achieve sustainable energy development, but due to insufficient funds, weak equipment manufacturing technology, lack of professional and technical personnel, the overall development of the overall development still has a greater upside. The future development of the green Belt and Road still needs to deepen green and clean energy cooperation and promote low-carbon transformation of international energy cooperation. China should actively assume the responsibility of the provider of corresponding products, relying on its own advantages, to help the new development of the green Belt and Road. On the one hand, China should actively encourage solar power, wind power and other enterprises to go out, and promote the completion of a number of green energy best practice projects. On the other hand, China should deepen cooperation in the field of energy technology and equipment, focusing on high-efficiency and low-cost renewable energy power generation, advanced nuclear power, smart grids, hydrogen energy, energy storage, carbon dioxide capture and storage to carry out joint research.