Webinar Summary: Mapping the Risks of China’s Global Coastal Development to Marine Socio-Ecological Systems
By Kate Chi
On Wednesday, May 18, Blake Alexander Simmons, Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University, joined the Spring 2022 Global China Research Colloquium to discuss forthcoming research on China’s overseas development finance portfolio and the risks posed to marine habitats, biodiversity and coastal communities. Rebecca Ray, Senior Academic Researcher at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, moderated the discussion.
Simmons began by underlining the rapid decline of the state of world’s oceans arising from climate, land and ocean-based threats. The severity of these anthropogenic impacts is often considerable in coastal waters, which are a top priority to conserve marine biodiversity due to the growth of infrastructure and pollution associated coastal development. For instance, urbanizations, sedimentation and nutrient input represent common marine regime shifts including ecosystem transitions and collapse, hypoxia (depleted oxygen levels) and eutrophication (over-accumulation of nutrients) that affect over 37 percent of human populations in coastal areas dependent on ecological services of these aquatic habitats. While coastal populations are expected to grow over the next three decades, “bluing” coastal development activities remains an urgent priority to achieve several of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
As Chinese development finance institutions (DFIs) emerge as world’s largest bilateral creditors, there has been a boom in overseas financing for large-scale development projects. Since 2008, the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China have loaned above $460 million across 859 projects in 93 countries, with particular focus on supporting roads, power plants, ports and other infrastructure developments. Estimates identify China as the largest financier of overseas coastal projects, surpassing Japan and multilateral DFIs, including the Asian Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.
While China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the 21st century Maritime Silk Road support emerging markets prosperity, concerns over negative effects on the environment persist. In a 2021 study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Simmons and colleagues found nearly one-third of Chinese foreign development projects overlap with terrestrial protected areas, half overlap with potential critical habitats and approximately one-fourth overlap with land owned or managed by Indigenous people. In this forthcoming complementary research, Simmons and colleagues identified 114 DFI projects collectively amounting to $65 billion in 39 countries from 2008 to 2019 that pose risks to aquatic systems; these projects were then geolocated to the highest precision. Researchers investigated the extent to which China’s overseas development finance presents direct and indirect risks of adverse impacts on near- and off-shore marine ecosystems, how risk varies between DFI-supported projects and across spatial scales and to what extent DFI-financed projects pose additional risks to sensitive socio-ecological features, including threatened marine species, marine protected area, likely critical habitats and Indigenous-use seas. They also gauged the relationship between risk profile and pre-existing ocean health to represent baseline conditions prior to financing. For each project’s zone of impact, Simmons and colleagues explored the level of cumulative human effects facing the system before the project was financed, as well as whether the systems have been improving, declining or remaining relatively stable.
Along with geolocated datasets of Chinese overseas development projects, the researchers used global assessments of spatial and temporal changes in cumulative human impact on marine ecosystems based on 15 stressors at one square kilometer resolutions. Simmons and colleagues utilized distribution maps with species classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species for marine mammals, fish, reptiles, sea birds and elasmobranchs and consolidated mean impact risk to threatened taxa for various types of DFI projects at increasing distances from the project site, and mean impact risk per taxonomic group for projects within ten kilometers of the site. They also collected global estimates of critical habitat for marine industries and maps of coastal Indigenous communities. With the compilation of existing databases, they estimated vulnerability indices, and calculated total impact risks by multiplying exposure risk and habitat or taxon vulnerability. Simmons and colleagues established correlations between stressors and risks to identify impacts on marine socio-ecological systems.
They found ports present the greatest overall impact risks for sensitive socio-ecological features due to habitat loss, light pollution, inorganic pollution, biomass removal, wildlife injury and plastic pollution, to name a few. Across all taxonomic groups, the largest risks were associated with ports, while transmission lines threaten the conservation of sea birds. In addition, Simmons and colleagues compiled mean impact risks of airports, bridges, facilities, oil refineries, pipelines and submarine cables, power plants, railways and roads, with relatively more localized impact. By reviewing results, it became apparent that risks are most prominent in Africa and the Caribbean. In Western and Central Africa, the highest impact risks are in Angola, Cameroon, Mauritania and Côte d’Ivoire. Mozambique hosts the project with the highest overall impact, a port developed specifically for fishing, which raises additional risks to marine ecosystems from the fishing itself. Simmons and colleagues further found that 46 percent of the 114 Chinese DFI projects present risks to marine protected areas, 96 percent to likely critical habitats and 31 percent to Indigenous-use seas, while 6-11 percent of these DFI-supported projects pose significant high risks.
To conclude, Simmons accentuated major impact risks introduced by ports along the Maritime Silk Road, as he affirmed that other highly localized risks may be easier to mitigate. He noted that a robust agenda must be in place to “blue” the BRI and all of China’s overseas development finance by extending programs like China’s Ecological Red Line and its data-driven framework. As there are no standard models to capture adverse impacts of China’s overseas coastal development and to characterize social equity and responsibilities, Simmons and colleagues urged for the integration of socioeconomic and environmental safeguards, host-country impact assessments and land-sea risk mitigation as cornerstones in China’s development finance portfolio. Chinese foreign lending could be guided by international commitments on sustainable development and thus help conserve marine species, marine protected areas, likely critical habitats and Indigenous-use seas.
Kate Chi is a Research Assistant with the Global China Initiative at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center and a graduate student in the Department of Economics at Boston University.
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