Tag: jessica dicarlo

Mind the Gap: Grounding Development Finance and Safeguards through Land Compensation on the Laos-China Belt and Road Corridor

China’s vast construction of infrastructure around the world involves not only promises of transnational cooperation, connectivity, and national development, but also local dispossession. Indeed, construction requires large tracts of land, which often leads to the displacement of local people. In Laos, investments since the early-2000s have entailed land loss and questionable safeguard practices. Despite pressure […]

Lost in Translation: Environmental and Social Safeguards for the Laos-China Railway

By Jessica DiCarlo While investment in infrastructure offers certain benefits, it also poses social, environmental, and human rights risks—such as pollution, displacement, loss of livelihoods, or various modes of insecurity. As more countries turn to China for development and infrastructure finance, the question of how Chinese institutions will improve and ensure social and environmental safeguards […]