{"id":22907,"date":"2022-12-06T11:15:08","date_gmt":"2022-12-06T16:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/?p=22907"},"modified":"2022-12-06T11:15:47","modified_gmt":"2022-12-06T16:15:47","slug":"chinas-global-development-finance-poses-heterogeneous-risks-to-coastal-and-marine-socio-ecological-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/2022\/12\/06\/chinas-global-development-finance-poses-heterogeneous-risks-to-coastal-and-marine-socio-ecological-systems\/","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s Global Development Finance Poses Heterogeneous Risks to Coastal and Marine Socio-ecological Systems"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment22922\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment22922\" style=\"width: 646px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/gdp\/files\/2022\/11\/michael-hacker-VCksv_sJ9hM-unsplash-636x477.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"636\" height=\"477\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-22922\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2022\/11\/michael-hacker-VCksv_sJ9hM-unsplash-636x477.jpg 636w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2022\/11\/michael-hacker-VCksv_sJ9hM-unsplash-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2022\/11\/michael-hacker-VCksv_sJ9hM-unsplash-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2022\/11\/michael-hacker-VCksv_sJ9hM-unsplash-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/files\/2022\/11\/michael-hacker-VCksv_sJ9hM-unsplash.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 636px) 100vw, 636px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment22922\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kahadamodara Beach, Sri Lanka. Photo by Michael Hacker via Unsplash.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u200b\u200bAs the largest bilateral creditor of overseas development finance, Chinese development finance is under growing scrutiny for its impact on marine systems and the more than 27 million coastal Indigenous peoples around the world who rely on a healthy and functioning marine ecosystem for food and income.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How risky are Chinese development finance projects to marine socio-ecological systems? What types of projects carry the least or greatest risk? How can China take steps to \u201cblue\u201d its overseas development finance portfolio?<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/one-earth\/fulltext\/S2590-3322(22)00578-4\"><b><i>new journal article<\/i><\/b><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> published in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One Earth<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, researchers from the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, the University of Queensland, University of California Santa Barbara and Colorado State University provide the first comprehensive, quantitative evaluation of the risks to marine socio-ecological systems across China\u2019s diverse portfolio of overseas development finance. They quantified the marine risks of 114 coastal development projects financed by China from 2008-2019.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>Main findings:<\/b><\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 114 projects analyzed represent 20 percent of all Chinese development finance projects that have been geolocated with the highest precision, worth nearly $65 billion in finance commitments (7 percent of all commitments) from 2008-2019.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Risks to marine habitats are most prominent in Caribbean island nations, such as the Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda, as well as coastal waters across Africa, most notably along Western and Central African coastlines.<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the Bahamas, Angola and Mozambique, more than 2,000 km<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">2<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of marine habitats face high impact risks.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Among recipient countries of Chinese overseas development finance, those with the smallest extent of risk include Myanmar, Kenya and Liberia.<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Smaller impact risks are more pervasive across countries. Angola, Fiji, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, for example, have more than 50,000 km2 of their marine habitats facing low but non-negligible risks from nearby projects.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ports present the greatest impact risks to marine habitats around the world and these risks remain high even up to 30 km from the port.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These ports are present in the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Cuba, Mauritania, C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, Cameroon, Angola, Mozambique, Djibouti and Sri Lanka, and are a prominent driver of the regional hotspots of risk.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The only fishing port included in this study\u2014the Beira Fishing Port Rehabilitation project in Mozambique\u2014presents the single greatest mean impact risk to marine habitats within 10 km of all projects considered in the study.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Several other types of development finance projects present high impact risks within 1 km of the project site, such as power plants, bridges, roads and other facilities.<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Impact risks decline rapidly, however, at increasing distances from the project site, with most types of projects presenting relatively low risks beyond 10 km, on average.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some of the most at-risk habitats over larger distances include pelagic surface waters, shallow soft bottom habitats and rocky reefs.<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"2\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Impact risks tend to be highest for most habitats 1 to 5 km from the project site, including shellfish\/suspension reefs, salt marshes, mudflats and rocky intertidal habitats.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chinese development finance projects present the greatest additive risks to marine habitats that are already experiencing high cumulative human impacts.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While all projects were found to present some risk to threatened marine species and potential critical habitats, few presented high risks to nearby protected areas.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The researchers argue an agenda is needed for \u201cblue-ing\u201d the Belt and Road Initiative and all of China\u2019s overseas development finance. Mitigating marine risks will require greater social and environmental safeguards, higher standards for host-country impact assessments and greater integration of land-sea risk mitigation and management approaches that are inclusive of the voices of local communities and Indigenous peoples.<\/span><\/p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/one-earth\/fulltext\/S2590-3322(22)00578-4\" class=\"button\">Read the Journal Article<\/a>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/2022\/12\/06\/blue-ing-the-bri-mitigating-the-marine-risks-of-chinas-overseas-development-finance\/\" class=\"button\">Read the Blog<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u200b\u200bAs the largest bilateral creditor of overseas development finance, Chinese development finance is under growing scrutiny for its impact on marine systems and the more than 27 million coastal Indigenous peoples around the world who rely on a healthy and functioning marine ecosystem for food and income. How risky are Chinese development finance projects to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19928,"featured_media":22922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1149,1070,156,72,105],"tags":[1618,394,501,1589,1680,3216,2158,654,1165,1625,3215,3217,3212,3214,1482,3211,3218,3213],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22907"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19928"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22907"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22982,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22907\/revisions\/22982"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}