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The scale of biodiversity impacts of the Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia
... The tropics are experiencing a biodiversity crisis, with more threatened terrestrial mammals residing in Southeast Asia than other comparable regions (Schipper et al., 2008). With imminent large-scale infrastructure projects underway throughout Southeast Asia, it is important to assess potential implications these developments might have for biodiversity (Ng et al., 2020). Identifying these implications early in the development process allows for adjustments and safeguards to be put in place so that infrastructure can be expanded in a sustainable way (Garrard et al., 2018). ...
... Infrastructure development and urban land expansion are major drivers of habitat disturbance and loss across the world (Laurance et al., 2015), but have received relatively little attention when compared with other drivers of biodiversity decline such as agriculture (Simkin et al., 2022). Asia is currently at the forefront of infrastructure development globally with the "Belt and Road Initiative"the largest infrastructure programme in human history -passing through 72 countries and numerous fragile ecoregions and habitats (Ng et al., 2020). The initiative is bolstered by ambitious national targets and development plans which are already underway, including road and hydropower development in Myanmar (Kaszta et al., 2020) and Malaysia (Alamgir et al., 2020), and a 10-year master plan for economic development in Indonesia that aims to capitalise on natural resources and redistribute wealth across the archipelago (Shira and Associates, 2011). ...
... We used overlapping buffer distances to represent ecological "impact zones" of the roads and the new urban area for the capital (Teo et al., 2020;Ng et al., 2020). We applied impact zone buffers to primary roads (https://map.nusantara-atlas.org) ...
Indonesia is embarking on an ambitious relocation of its capital city to Kalimantan, Borneo, bringing with it major urban and road infrastructure. Yet, despite being one of the world's most biologically diverse regions, the potential implications of this development for wildlife have yet to be fully assessed. We explored the potential impacts of the capital relocation, and road expansion and upgrades to critical habitat for medium-large mammals (>1 kg) using camera trap data from 11 forested landscapes. We applied Bayesian multi-species occupancy models to predict community and species-level responses to anthropogenic and environmental factors. We extrapolated spatial patterns of occupancy and species diversity across the forests of Kalimantan and identified “critical habitats” as the top 20th percentile of occupancy and species richness values. We subsequently overlapped these critical habitat layers with infrastructure impact zones to estimate the area that could potentially be affected by direct or secondary impacts. At both the community and species-level, distance to primary roads had the strongest negative influence on habitat-use. Occupancy was also influenced by forest quality and multidimensional poverty conditions in adjacent villages, demonstrating the sensitivity of biodiversity to socio-ecological pressures. Less than 1 % of the critical habitat for the threatened mammal community lay within the direct impact zone (30 km radius) of the capital relocation. However, approximately 16 % was located within 200 km and could potentially be affected by uncontrolled secondary impacts such as urban sprawl and associated regional development. The often-overlooked secondary implications of upgrading existing roads could also intersect a large amount of critical habitat for lowland species. Mitigating far-reaching secondary impacts of infrastructure development should be fully incorporated into environmental impact assessments. This will provide Indonesia with an opportunity to set an example of sustainable infrastructure development in the tropics.
... Port infrastructure and an increase in shipping lane traffic associated with the maritime component of China's BRI will lead to overfishing and noise pollution, which are likely to threaten marine species and reduce marine biodiversity [39]. According to the research, over 400 threatened marine species, including mammals, could be affected by port infrastructure, and over 200 threatened species are at risk from an increase in shipping traffic and noise pollution [40]. ...
... With the BRI vigorously implementing infrastructure projects, linear infrastructure in particular, such as roads and railways, is considered one of the leading proximate causes of habitat fragmentation in terrestrial ecosystems [39]. In order to create a transportation corridor, roads or railways could be built at the expense of habitat destruction, which causes habitat loss and fragmentation, leading to dramatic landscape transformation and loss of the ability to support healthy ecosystems and populations of plants and animals [36,41]. ...
... Infrastructure development, in particular, linear infrastructure such as roads and railways that could bring about hunting and traffic disturbances, drastically caused the decline and extinction of wildlife populations [39]. The construction of transportation infrastructure under the Belt and Road Initiative could contribute to the highest rates of wildlife-vehicle collision and poaching. ...
The “Belt and Road” Initiative (BRI), i.e., the official Chinese term for the “Silk Road Economic Belt” and the “21st Century Maritime Silk Road”, was proposed to share China’s development opportunities with BRI-related countries and achieve common prosperity. Though the BRI itself conveys rich social and economic connotations, ecosystem health and the environmental problems in the Belt and Road regions are scientific issues. In this study, papers relating to the ecological issues of the BRI between January 2013 and December 2021 were collected and analyzed via CiteSpace. We found that some ecological issues were involved with the environmental challenges posed by the BRI, whereas others were, to a certain extent, subjective assumptions. Accordingly, we identified and classified the limitations and constraints of those environmental views about the BRI. By emphasizing that scientific data is key to explaining the ecological problems, we advanced four prospects for ecosystem health and environmental geography studies in the Belt and Road regions: (1) Spatial analysis and monitoring technology for the environment; (2) Clarification of the characteristics and mechanisms of the ecosystem and environments; (3) A focus on the interaction between the economy and the environment; (4) Specific and targeted strategies and solutions to different environmental problems.
... In Part I, we describe an original spatial analysis of threats to biodiversity across Asia from major LI development projects. Several recent prospective spatial analyses have explored potential impacts of LI development on biodiversity at a very coarse scale, covering all or most of Asia and considering only high-profile road and railway projects associated with China's Belt and Road Initiative (Hughes, 2019;Ng et al., 2020). Our analysis expands on this earlier work by considering a larger set of LI projects, including power line projects and projects associated with international economic development initiatives other than BRI. ...
... We buffered routes by 25 km on either side to account for uncertainty in the exact location of routes due to poor spatial precision of LI features digitized from coarse-scale source maps and possible changes in route design between initial planning and construction. This buffer encompasses the likely spatial extent of most LI impacts to wildlife, including direct effects (e.g., disturbance from noise, artificial light, or vehicle exhaust fumes; edge effects; mortality from vehicle collision or electrocution) that typically occur within 5 km of LI (Benítez-López et al., 2010) and secondary effects (e.g., hunting and poaching; habitat loss from illegal logging) that occur over greater distances from LI (Ng et al., 2020). We henceforth refer to these areas within 25 km of the estimated routes of proposed LI features as "potential effect zones," or PEZs. ...
... China's Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI (Foggin et al., 2021;Hughes, 2019;Hughes et al., 2020;Lechner et al., 2018;Ng et al., 2020). BRI projects are geographically widespread, receive considerable media coverage, have important geopolitical ramifications, and are captured well in existing spatial databases, all of which contribute to the attention they receive. ...
... New canals continue to be built around the world, but global forecasts in growth are not available. While much attention is paid to the ecological consequences of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) -one of the largest infrastructure and development plans in history Narain et al., 2020;Ng et al., 2020) -there are many other investments being made by governments and financial institutions around the world that may have similar impacts (Jones et al., 2019;Joniak-Lüthi et al., 2022). The cumulative impacts of an innumerable number of smaller projects, such as sealing unpaved roads or widening existing networks, must also be recognised as significant contributors. ...
... Among other massive infrastructure development plans around the world, China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is deserving of particular attention for its size and scope Narain et al., 2020;Ng et al., 2020 (Dollar, 2018). A listing of Chinese bank environmental policies and further discussion of their relative strengths can be found in Annex 1. ...
The purpose of this technical report is to address ecological connectivity during the development of roads, railways and canals. To provide an overview of practical, feasible science-based strategies for Protected and Connected Area (PCA) managers, transport practitioners, industry, conservationists and other interested
stakeholders. It introduces and describes the numerous solutions that are available to support biodiversity and ecological connectivity conservation in, and adjacent to,
PCAs. It promotes best practices and provides details for the various phases of infrastructure development.
... Since the implementation of the BRI, a total of 21 terrestrial protected areas, accounting for 4% of 472 protected areas, in mainland Southeast Asia have been directly bisected by the BRI routes which traversed through 210 km of terrestrial protected habitat. Meanwhile, a total of 20 marine protected areas and 16 marine key biodiversity hotspots in insular Southeast Asia have been potentially affected within 50 km of the BRI's marine route [31]. ...
... In the early stage of the implementation of the BRI, infrastructure development, trade and investments under the BRI and their impacts may be the key drivers of eco-environmental risks [90][91][92]. Infrastructure project implementation, such as the construction of roads, railway, pipelines and seaports, has affected several terrestrial and marine biodiversity hotspots, wilderness areas and other key protected areas, contributing to biodiversity loss and vegetation loss, due to habitat degradation, fragmentation and illegal activities such as poaching and logging [29,31,93,94]. Meanwhile, the BRI may drive water and soil pollution, as well as climate change, due to the Chinese investments in some energy exploitation projects and construction and maintenance of transportation infrastructures [89,90,95]. ...
With the widespread recognition and in-depth implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), especially in the context of global climate change, the ecological environment of Belt and Road Initiative regions might be confronted with pressures and challenges with rapid socioeconomic development. In response to those potential environmental challenges, China has put forward Green BRI and enriched the new Silk Road with more environmental connotations, aiming to reduce the conflict between economic development and eco-environmental protection. Currently, there is a lack of systematic and holistic research on eco-environmental issues in BRI regions. In addition, feasible solutions to enhance BRI’s contribution to the eco-environment remain insufficient. Having systematically reviewed the relevant literature on the eco-environment in BRI regions, we found that most regions along the BRI routes are in sensitive zones of climate and geological change, with fragile eco-environments and strong vulnerability to climate change, natural disasters and human activities. The main eco-environment status of the BRI regions is as follows: (1) The total water resources in BRI regions account for only 36% of the global total, with uneven distribution and complex spatial precipitation, posing higher pressure on water security. (2) Vegetation varies significantly from region to region. The vegetation in South Asia is the richest, with its mean annual NDVI exceeding 0.7. The NDVI in East Europe, Russia and South China are between 0.4 and 0.7, and that in Central Asia and West Asia are below 0.2. (3) The BRI regions are abundantly blessed with natural resources, with the total recoverable oil reserves, natural gas reserves and the total mining area reaching 66%, 65.5% and 42.31% of the world’s total, respectively, but severe overexploitation and overconsumption of those resources degrade their eco-environment. Accordingly, future research directions, such as target on integrated, interdisciplinary and coordinated studies on eco-environmental issues in BRI regions, are proposed in this paper to achieve optimization of BRI’s contribution to eco-environment protection in BRI regions.
... The government has assigned 13 special economic zones (SEZs) to stimulate economic development, attract investment, and create jobs by providing tax incentives, trade benefits, deregulation, and other investment privileges. The SEZs are said to play an important role in Laos' development (PankeoVieng-vilay, 2016;Xinhua Silk Road, 2018), and infrastructures were built in some SEZs linked to the Chinese "One Belt One Road" initiative (UNODC, 2013;Gong, 2019;Van Uhm, 2019;Ng et al., 2020). However, several SEZs have also harbored illegalities such as wildlife trade, drug smuggling, and human trafficking (Tan, 2017;. ...
... However, the socioeconomic and geopolitical conditions also facilitate the trafficking of contraband across the borders (Van Uhm, 2023 in press;Walker, 1999: 72-75). In the context of China's One Belt One Road initiative with infrastructure investments (Gong, 2019;Ng et al., 2020), this provides new opportunities for illegal trade in wildlife (Lemieux and Bruschi, 2019;Van Uhm, 2019). ...
The Laos borders with China, Myanmar, and Thailand have been identified as vulnerable hubs for illegal wildlife trade. In particular, some special economic zones (SEZs) in Laos are linked to illegal wildlife products, including tiger bones, rhino horn, and ivory for sale. SEZs are zones granted more free market-oriented economic policies and flexible governmental measures. In this study, we conducted on-site observations to identify high-valued wildlife, including (parts of) tigers, rhinos, bears, and pangolins in 2 of the 13 SEZs-the Golden Triangle and Boten SEZs-and conducted semistructured interviews with anonymous participants in 2017 and 2019. The trend regarding illegal wildlife trade in these SEZs seems to fluctuate. In the Golden Triangle SEZ, we found that the illegal trade in wildlife is present but occurs more covertly than previously observed; the trade transformed underground to online social media. In Boten SEZ, we found a decrease in bear bile products and an increase in the volume of tiger products openly for sale. Informants explained that the decrease of openly sold wildlife in the Golden Triangle SEZ has been influenced by media and political attention as well as inspections from local authorities, while in Boten SEZ, illegal wildlife traders diversified into tiger products, due to the decline in bear bile products and the reduction in the opportunity to obtain them. CITATION van Uhm DP and Zhang M (2022) Illegal wildlife trade in two special economic zones in Laos: Underground-open-sale fluctuations in the Golden Triangle borderlands.
... Southeast Asia is one of the world's many biodiversity hotspots, combining a rich fauna and flora with a myriad of human threats that are endangering the biodiversity (Hughes, 2017;Myers et al., 2000;Ng et al., 2020). The growing human population in Southeast Asia continues to increase urbanization (Schneider et al., 2015), and road networks continue to expand to meet human demands, posing threats to wildlife (Ascensão et al., 2018;Hughes, 2018). ...
... Highway 304 is one of the busiest roads in Thailand; in 2006, 7,488 vehicles/ day were recorded (Srikrajang, 2006), which means one vehicle every 11.5 s on average. Moreover, with a consistent expansion of road infrastructure and users (Ng et al., 2020), we suspect traffic volumes to have been much higher during our study period than those observed in 2006. With all of our adult King Cobras having a total length between 2 and 4 m, it is unlikely that an individual would be able to avoid a vehicle collision during a crossing event on the road surface. ...
Global road networks continue to expand, and the wildlife responses to these landscape‐level changes need to be understood to advise long‐term management decisions. Roads have high mortality risk to snakes because snakes typically move slowly and can be intentionally targeted by drivers.
We investigated how radio‐tracked King Cobras (Ophiophagus hannah) traverse a major highway in northeast Thailand, and if reproductive cycles were associated with road hazards.
We surveyed a 15.3 km stretch of Highway 304 to determine if there were any locations where snakes could safely move across the road (e.g., culverts and bridges). We used recurse analyses to detect possible road‐crossing events, and used dynamic Brownian Bridge Movement Models (dBBMMs) to show movement pathways association with possible unintentional crossing structures. We further used Integrated Step Selection Functions (ISSF) to assess seasonal differences in avoidance of major roads for adult King Cobras in relation to reproductive state.
We discovered 32 unintentional wildlife crossing locations capable of facilitating King Cobra movement across the highway. While our dBBMMs broadly revealed underpasses as possible crossing points, they failed to identify specific underpasses used by telemetered individuals; however, the tracking locations pre‐ and post‐crossing and photographs provided strong evidence of underpass use. Our ISSF suggested a lower avoidance of roads during the breeding season, although the results were inconclusive. With the high volume of traffic, large size of King Cobras, and a 98.8% success rate of crossing the road in our study (nine individuals: 84 crossing attempts with one fatality), we strongly suspect that individuals are using the unintentional crossing structures to safely traverse the road.
Further research is needed to determine the extent of wildlife underpass use at our study site. We propose that more consistent integration of drainage culverts and bridges could help mitigate the impacts of roads on some terrestrial wildlife.
... Existing data suggest that there are widespread negative environmental conflicts associated with BRI projects (Ascensão et al. 2018, Hughes 2019, Losos et al. 2019, Teo et al. 2019, Narain et al. 2020, including habitat loss, as new roads and developments open up previously inaccessible areas to logging, mining and land conversions (Hughes 2019. Increasing transportation infrastructure and resource extraction in BRI projects in remote regions and ecosystems, especially within developing, tropical regions with high levels of biodiversity (Lechner et al. 2018), have led to documented deforestation, habitat fragmentation (Ibisch et al. 2016, Losos et al. 2019) and current and projected population loss of endangered large mammals (Nabi et al. 2017, Tracy et al. 2017, Ascensão et al. 2018, Laurance et al. 2020, Ng et al. 2020. Several reports identify the impacts of BRI infrastructure developments on terrestrial and marine wildlife (WWF 2018, Turschwell et al. 2020, and several comprehensive regional studies identify where future infrastructure operations associated with BRI projects affect highly biodiverse regions as well as protected areas and species (Alamgir et al. 2017, Nabi et al. 2017, Hughes 2019, Lashari et al. 2019, 2019a, 2019b, Ng et al. 2020, Plumptre et al. 2021. ...
... Increasing transportation infrastructure and resource extraction in BRI projects in remote regions and ecosystems, especially within developing, tropical regions with high levels of biodiversity (Lechner et al. 2018), have led to documented deforestation, habitat fragmentation (Ibisch et al. 2016, Losos et al. 2019) and current and projected population loss of endangered large mammals (Nabi et al. 2017, Tracy et al. 2017, Ascensão et al. 2018, Laurance et al. 2020, Ng et al. 2020. Several reports identify the impacts of BRI infrastructure developments on terrestrial and marine wildlife (WWF 2018, Turschwell et al. 2020, and several comprehensive regional studies identify where future infrastructure operations associated with BRI projects affect highly biodiverse regions as well as protected areas and species (Alamgir et al. 2017, Nabi et al. 2017, Hughes 2019, Lashari et al. 2019, 2019a, 2019b, Ng et al. 2020, Plumptre et al. 2021. ...
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), designed to build critical infrastructure and coordinate economic growth, is the most significant development initiative in modern history. The BRI has a documented vision for sustainability, including environmental impact assessments and responsibility tenets. Despite this, a growing body of literature has found adverse effects of BRI projects on protected land and species. To understand corporate responsibility and regulations for companies participating in the BRI, we gathered information on 260 BRI companies using the Refinitiv Eikon BRI Connect database and the China Global Investment Tracker. The results revealed a significant gap in corporate responsibility reporting for biodiversity impacts, environmental restoration, environmental project financing and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 14 ‘Life below Water’ and 15 ‘Life on Land’. The modest fraction of companies that we found to report biodiversity accountability highlights the need to restructure and incentivize the reporting of environmental and biodiversity risks. The current evidence of limited adherence to responsibility measures highlights a clear opportunity to align BRI development with the BRI’s vision for sustainability, and to strengthen links for policy engagement within Chinese regulatory frameworks and international obligations at the United Nations within its SDG framework.
... No wonder, then, that many researchers have been concerned with human activities under the BRI, such as infrastructure development (Coenen et al., 2020;Ng et al., 2020;Teo et al., 2019), trade and investments ; World Resources Institute (WRI), 2018), and tourism and natural resources extraction (Dong et al., 2017;Howard and Howard, 2016;Hughes, 2019;Lechner et al., 2018), that may bring potential, unprecedented, manifold, and direct or indirect negative impacts on ecosystems and wildlife (Teo et al., 2019), via biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions (Ascensão et al., 2018;WWF, 2017;Lechner et al., 2018), deforestation and other land use changes (Losos et al., 2019). These concerns may outweigh the economic benefits (Li et al., 2017c). ...
... In Southeast Asia, for example, there are 32 protected areas, 40 KBAs, and 29 ecoregions that are intersected within 1 km of all terrestrial routes; 142 threatened species including 26 critically endangered species are within 5 km of the new rail network. In marine ecosystems, there are 20 marine protected areas and 16 KBAs that are intersected by the MSR (Ng et al., 2020), and over 400 threatened species could be affected by port infrastructure, while over 200 threatened species could be affected by shipping traffic, and noise pollution (Turschwell et al., 2020). In Central Asia, the ecological security of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have improved, but in Turkmenistan the situation is getting worse (Wang et al., 2020d). ...
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will play an essential role in boosting the world's economy. However, the main portion of the Belt and Road (B&R) is in arid, semi-arid, or sub-humid fragile ecological regions, which with global climate change and the intensification of human activities will face many pressing environmental challenges in the future. Despite this, in the existing research on the B&R, papers in the field of natural sciences are less than 1.2-4.3% of the total number of papers on the main databases, which is far lower than the coverage in humanities and social sciences. And those focused on the ecological and environmental issues along the B&R are even fewer, so necessary understanding of both the risks and adequate mitigation measures remains unclear. This paper systematically reviews the relevant research on the eco-environments along the B&R, and summarizes it in terms including of spatial patterns and cognition, cost efficiency and evaluation, ecological security and evaluation , ecological footprint and carrying capacity. It further suggests that a better understanding of environmental changes and their effects on the B&R is needed. Additionally, it is essential that the potential positive socioeconomic impacts for the future under the BRI are sustainable. Finally, future research directions are proposed to improve for the better eco-environments in B&R regions with consideration of global changes.
... Moreover, the economic growth of the region is likely to continue or even accelerate in the near future, as the railway that connects Kunming, China to Bangkok, Thailand, passing through much of Laos, is completed (Chen & Haynes, 2017;Ng et al., 2020). Indeed, infrastructure development will increase the general appeal of the region and encourage foreign investment, contributing to direct and indirect threats to local ecosystems (Borda-de-Água et al., 2017;Torres et al., 2016). ...
Rapid economic development can pose a threat to the biodiversity of tropical countries. In Laos, this is manifested by the conversion of natural forests into plantations, even though this area is one of the biodiversity hotspots of Southeast Asia. Beetle communities can be good indicators of the impact of anthropogenic pressure on natural ecosystems. In this study, we analyzed for the first time a large-scale inventory of Coleoptera to assess the ecological and anthropogenic drivers of beetle communities in Laos. We examined beetle communities (described at the family level) across the country, located in distinct habitat types, in order to understand the impact of the conversion of natural forest into plantations. We found that beetle abundance had declined in plantations compared to natural forests. At the same time, we observed fewer beetle families in plantations overall, but at the scale of sampling sites there was no difference in local richness compared to natural forests, suggesting a homogenization of beetle communities in anthropogenic habitats. Although results are certainly sensitive to our coarse classification of beetle specimens into families, the negative impact of the conversion of natural tropical forests into agriculture area can still be clearly demonstrated. Our findings highlight that it is possible to make use of unstructured large-scale inventories to explore how beetle communities responds to landscape changes induced by human activities. We suggest that sampling beetle communities can be used as an ecological indicator to monitor anthropogenic impacts on tropical ecosystems.
... Furthermore, many of the countries in the region still have some relatively intact locations with high forest cover, such as Indonesia and Malaysia (Hughes, 2017;Lechner et al., 2021;Wilcove et al., 2013). The region is also undergoing rapid social and environmental changes, due in part, to infrastructure development spurned on by increasing investment, such as in transport networks (Ng et al., 2020;Teo et al., 2019) and massive urban development schemes such as Indonesia's new planned capital in Borneo (Teo et al., 2020). However, unlike many cities in the highly urbanised Global North, urban green spaces such as in Greater Kuala Lumpur (KL), an urban conurbation with a population of around 7.5 million people, have the capacity to support biodiversity, even though they are found with a high-density urban matrix (Samantha et al., 2020;Tee et al., 2018;Teo et al., 2021). ...
Tropical Southeast Asia is a hotspot for global biodiversity, and also a hotspot for rapidly expanding urbanisation. There is a need to identify, protect, restore and connect remaining green spaces in the urban matrix before this opportunity is lost to urban development. The objective of this study is to characterise ecological connectivity for mammals and identify important patches and linkages for connecting urban green spaces for Greater Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia. We first map land cover across the region using a linear mixture model with preprocessed multidate cloud‐free mosaics derived from Sentinel 2 remote sensing data in Google Earth Engine. We then model connectivity using the land cover maps, expert‐based parameterisation of Euclidian distance and graph‐based connectivity models for a range of dispersal guilds representing small and medium terrestrial and arboreal mammals. Our analysis showed large differences in the effects of fragmentation within Greater KL on the different dispersal groups, with some groups perceiving the landscape as disconnected. However, our analysis identified a network of green patches and pathways which potentially could support connectivity in the urban landscape. Our results demonstrate the potential for Southeast Asian megacities to support biodiversity in the urban context, and the potential for a different kind of urban development, which supports biodiversity in its urban fabric.
... These companies range from construction companies building roads and railroads to mining companies extracting coal and precious metals to medical institutions testing vaccines and all the supply chain companies fueling these operations. Many of these companies impact biodiversity [26,27]. ...
In 2022, the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF), which aimed to strengthen international protections on terrestrial and marine areas through biodiversity investments, corporate responsibility, and the elimination of environmentally damaging subsidies. China was fundamental in forming and passing this pivotal biodiversity framework. China's leadership in COP15 should result in escalated Chinese biodiversity protections, specifically through mandated biodiversity impact disclosures (BIDs) for companies associated with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). To achieve this, BID clauses should be inserted into BRI development agreements between Chinese foreign development institutions and BRI partner states or companies. Mandated BIDs would expand biodiversity and human health protections within China and globally. BRI-associated companies would be motivated to improve BID ratings for financial benefits, increased social capital, employee engagement, and customer loyalty. Biodiversity protection will also “future-proof” companies against any future environmental policy changes. By providing improved materiality to investors, governments, and other interested parties, BRI BIDs would enhance corporate oversight and awareness of biodiversity issues, advance the standardization and pervasiveness of BIDs, and elevate biodiversity and human health issues into more traditional commercial reporting systems. Thus, China's corporate responsibility measures under COP15 will influence global biodiversity, human health, and the future of BIDs.
... The selected areas include more than 50 countries, and most of the countries are located mainly in tropical and subtropical regions. Some of the countries are prone to frequent natural disasters, such as hurricanes and tsunamis, and some have fragile ecosystems [29] that are sensitive and show weak self-recovery [30,31], some are facing severe coastline retreat, and some have ongoing urban development and reclamation activities. In 2015, the United Nations proposed 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which provide a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet. ...
The acquisition of dynamic coastline change at fine spatial and temporal resolution is essential for enhancing sustainable coastal economic development and coastal environmental conservation. Port construction, land reclamation, urban development, and sediment deposition have resulted in extensive coastline change. In this study, the coastlines along the 56 coastal countries in 1990, 2000, 2010, 2015, and 2020 were delineated and classified into six categories using Landsat time-series images. Five relevant indices, i.e., the length, length ratio, length change rate, index of coastline utilization degree (ICUD), and fractal dimension (FD), were calculated to analyze and explore the spatiotemporal pattern of the coastlines. The results indicate that: (1) The overall length of the coastlines has increased from 3.45 × 10 5 km to 3.48 × 10 5 km in the past 30 years, with a net increase of nearly 3904 km. Between 1990 and 2020, the length of the artificial coastline increased by about 13,835 km (4.9~8.8%), while the length of the natural coastline decreased by 9932 km (95.1~91.2%). The increase in artificial coastline is concentrated in Southeast Asia and South Asia. (2) The coastline fractal dimensions (FDs) of countries and continents show that the average FD values of countries in South Asia (1.3~1.4) and Southeast Asia (1.2~1.3) were higher than other countries in the study regions, meaning that the coastlines in South Asia and Southeast Asia are more complex and curved. (3) The value of the ICUD index increased consistently between 1990 and 2015 (177.7~186.6) but decreased sharply between 2015 and 2020 (186.6~162.4), implying that the impact of human activities on the coastline continued to increase until 2015 and began to decrease after 2015. Our study examined the changes in various types of coastlines, which could be significant for sustainable development and environmental protection in coastal areas.
... The ECRL project is part of China's Belt and Road Initiative and will act as a major land bridge connecting the ECER region to the rest of the country (ECER Master Plan 2.0, 2019). The ECRL and other forms of land-use development in these frontier regions will potentially have negative environmental impacts, and are particularly concerning as these regions are commonly high in biodiversity (Lechner, Chee, et al., 2019;Ng et al., 2020;Teo et al., 2019). ...
Rapidly developing regions in Southeast Asia, such as Kuantan, Malaysia, require robust spatial analysis to understand changing landscape patterns and their socioenvironmental impacts to guide sustainable development and conservation planning. This study aims to characterise and evaluate the historic and future projections of land‐use and land‐cover (LULC) change patterns to understand the dynamics of the regional development process and identify potential future land‐use conflicts. We first map coarse‐scale land‐cover classes using Landsat 5 TM and Landsat 8 OLI data and a Random Forest classifier in the Google Earth Engine platform, and then use auxiliary reference data to manually construct fine‐scale LULC for 3 years: 2010, 2015 and 2020. Subsequently, we modelled future LULC change patterns in 2030 using Land Change Modeller, which applies a multilayer perceptron neural network and Markov chain analysis. The study showed that the region's land cover in the last 10 years has been largely altered by human intervention, driven by an increase in oil palm plantations, followed by mining, residential and industrial site expansion, with a consequent decline in forest and vegetation cover. The 2030 land‐use projections revealed a continuation of these land‐use development patterns. The modelling showed that industry, mining and residential LULC are clustered and growing closer in proximity while expanding extensively, likely causing future land‐use conflict and lead to further environmental degradation. Furthermore, our analysis showed extensive decline in forest cover within reserves. Our modelling demonstrated that natural resource management needs to take an integrated approach as the drivers of land‐use changes are complex, competing and dynamic.
... Moreover, the economic growth of the region is likely to continue or even accelerate in the near future, as the railway that connects Kunming, China to Bangkok, Thailand, passing through much of Laos, is completed (Chen & Haynes, 2017;Ng et al., 2020). Indeed, infrastructure development will increase the general appeal of the region and encourage foreign investment, contributing to direct and indirect threats to local ecosystems (Borda-de-Água et al., 2017;Torres et al., 2016). ...
Rapid economic development can pose a threat to the biodiversity of tropical countries. In Laos, this is manifested by the conversion of natural forests into plantations, even though this area is one of the biodiversity hotspots of Southeast Asia. Beetle communities can be good indicators of the impact of anthropogenic pressure on natural ecosystems. In this study, we analyzed for the first time a countrywide inventory of Coleoptera to assess the ecological and anthropogenic drivers of beetle communities in Laos. We examined beetle communities (described at the family level) across the country, located in distinct habitat types, in order to understand the impact a rapid increase in human activities has on the region’s biodiversity. We found that beetle abundance had declined in plantations compared to natural forests. At the same time, we observed fewer beetle families in plantations overall, but at the scale of sampling sites there was no difference in local diversity compared to natural forests, suggesting a homogenization of beetle communities in anthropogenic habitats. Although results are certainly sensitive to our coarse classification of beetle specimens into families, the negative impact of the conversion of natural tropical forests into agriculture area can still be clearly demonstrated. Our findings highlight that it is possible to make use of unstructured large-scale inventories to explore how beetle communities responds to landscape changes induced by human activities. We suggest that sampling beetle communities can be used as an ecological indicator to monitor anthropogenic impacts on tropical ecosystems.
... The BRI is beneficial to promote regional economic cooperation, boost trade growth, and increase employment opportunities [27]. Many studies have inferred that massive LUC might be triggered by the ongoing infrastructure projects and investment [28][29][30]. Myanmar is a developing country that actively integrates into BRI. ...
Land use change (LUC) can be affected by investment growth and planning policies under the context of regional economic cooperation and development. Previous studies on land use simulation mostly emphasized the effects of local socioeconomic factors and planning constraint areas that prevent land conversions. However, investment and national planning policies that trigger regional LUC were often ignored. This study aims to couple the economic theory-based Computable General Equilibrium of Land Use Change (CGELUC) model and the cellular automata-based Future Land Use Simulation (FLUS) model to incorporate macroscopic impacts of investment into land use simulation, while proposing an updated mechanism that integrates into the FLUS model to consider the local impacts of planning policies. Taking Myanmar as a case, the method was applied to project the land use patterns (LUPs) during 2017–2050 under three scenarios: baseline, fast, and harmonious development. Specifically, the simulated land use structure (LUS) in 2018 acquired by the CGELUC model was verified by the existing data, and the future LUSs under different scenarios were projected later. Simultaneously, the consistencies between the results simulated by the FLUS model and land use maps in 2013, 2015, and 2017 were represented by the kappa coefficient. The updated mechanism was applied to update the Probability-of-Occurrence (PoO) surfaces based on the planning railway networks and special economic zone. Lastly, the LUPs under different scenarios were projected based on the future LUSs and updated PoO surfaces. Results reveal that the validation accuracy reaches 96.87% for the simulated LUS, and satisfactory accuracies of the simulated LUPs are obtained (kappa coefficients > 0.83). The updated mechanism increases the mean PoO values of built-up land in areas affected by planning policies (increasing by 0.01 to 0.21), indicating the importance of the planning policies in simulation. The cultivated land and built-up land increase with investment increasing under all three scenarios. The harmonious development scenario, showing the least forest encroachment and the highest diversity of LUP, is the optimal approach to achieve land sustainability. This study highlights the impacts of investment and planning policies on future LUCs of Myanmar, and a dynamic simulation process is expected to minimize the uncertainties of the input data and model in the future work.
... It is likely that the full extent of the impacts of the BRI will take a long time to measure due to the time lag between large-scale infrastructure construction and its environmental impact (Ascensão et al., 2022;Ng et al., 2020). Besides, negative effects on the individual or population scale of one specie need to be measured at a fine spatial scale (Fahrig & Rytwinski, 2009), which requires detailed longterm study. ...
Aim
Biodiversity hotspots often span international borders, thus conservation efforts must as well. China is one of the most biodiverse countries and the length of its international land borders is the longest in the world; thus, there is a strong need for transboundary conservation. We identify China's transboundary conservation hotspots and analyse the potential effects of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on them to provide recommendations for conservation actions.
Location
China, Asia.
Methods
We compiled a species list of terrestrial vertebrates that span China's borders. Using their distribution, we extracted the top 30% of the area with the highest richness value weighted by Red List category and considered these transboundary hotspots for conservation priority. Then we analysed protected area (PA) coverage and connectivity to identify conservation gaps. To measure potential impact of the BRI, we counted the species whose distribution range is traversed by the BRI, and calculated the aggregation index, proportion of natural land and night light index along its routes.
Results
We identified 1964 terrestrial vertebrate species living in the border region. We identified four transboundary hotspots and found insufficient PA coverage and low connectivity in three of them. The BRI routes intersected all four hotspots and traversed 82.4% (1619/1964) of the transboundary species, half of which (918) are sensitive to the potential risks brought by the BRI. Night light index increased generally along the BRI. However, the proportion of natural land and the aggregation index near the BRI showed different trends in hotspots.
Main Conclusions
There is an urgent need for conservation action in China's transboundary region. The BRI should put biodiversity conservation at the core of its development strategy. Furthermore, we suggest using the planned BRI as a platform for dialogue and consultation, knowledge and data sharing, and joint planning to promote transboundary conservation.
... Further from roads and at higher elevations, leopards were farther from human activity; other studies have similarly reported leopards avoided areas close to human disturbances (Abade et al., 2018;Havmøller et al., 2019). Roads in particular can fragment habitat and facilitate use of new areas by humans to exploit natural resources (Clements et al., 2014;Ng et al., 2020); these effects are widely known to negatively impact leopards (Ngoprasert et al., 2007;Thapa et al., 2021). Straddling its southern border, Kweekoh has a relatively high density of roads, including a system of both paved and dirt roads surrounding our study area where there was more evidence of habitat degradation and human activity. ...
Large carnivores have been largely extirpated from Southeast Asia due to deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and poaching. Estimating the density of endangered carnivore populations, and identifying relationships between species occupancy and both environmental and anthropogenic factors, is essential for effective conservation planning. Recently, the IUCN conservation status of the Indochinese leopard ( Panthera pardus delacouri ) was upgraded to “Critically Endangered.” We surveyed Kweekoh Wildlife Sanctuary in Kawthoolei, an area administered by the Karen ethnic group in eastern Myanmar, to quantify (1) leopard population density using spatially explicit mark‐resight (SMR) models, (2) leopard occupancy as influenced by important ecological variables, and (3) potential differences in activity between melanistic and spotted leopard morphs. Leopard density was estimated to be 1.39 ± SE 0.22/100 km ² . Leopard occupancy ( ψ = 0.43; 95% credible interval: 0.26–0.67) increased further from roads, at relatively higher elevations, and in areas with higher relative abundance of wild boar. Leopard activity was cathemeral, with higher activity during night hours, and significant overlap (Δ = 0.84; 95% confidence interval: 0.71–0.96) between melanistic and spotted morphs. However, melanistic leopards were more active during twilight hours than spotted individuals whose activity did not significantly vary throughout the day. Indochinese leopard density estimates in Kweekoh were among the lowest reported from Southeast Asia. Leopard occupancy was highest in the sanctuary's core areas, suggesting the presence of negative anthropogenic impacts along the sanctuary borders. We suggest our low density estimates warrant immediate and decisive conservation action, including better protection for leopards, their habitat, and their prey.
... While the operational bioassessment programs in many wealthier, industrialized countries have supported important research for decades (e.g., Miltner & Rankin, 1998), industrializing, historically marginalized nations (also known as the Global South) are important "blind spots" for global freshwater conservation, with fewer available data (Alahuhta et al., 2019). This is despite the fact that many of these nations contain biodiversity hotspots, and will see growing ecological impacts from sweeping infrastructure development plans and growing societal demands for resources in coming decades (e.g., Ng et al., 2020). Furthermore, the general scientific community may have limited access to available biomonitoring data from Global South countries due to its marked reliance on the English language, a factor that greatly limits global conservation applications (Amano et al., 2021). ...
... Urbanisation in Southeast Asia is of particular concern for conservation globally, as the region is home to four out of 34 of the planet's biodiversity hotspots (Myers et al., 2000), and many of the countries in the region still have some relatively intact landscapes with high forest cover Hughes, 2017;Wilcove et al., 2013). Southeast Asia is also undergoing rapid social and environmental changes due to infrastructure development spurned on by increasing investment such as in transport networks (Ng et al., 2020;Teo et al., 2019) and massive urban development schemes such as Indonesia's new planned capital Borneo (Teo et al., 2020). However, in Southeast Asia -unlike many cities in the highly urbanised Global North -urban green spaces such as in the Greater Kuala Lumpur, an urban conurbation with a population of around 7.5 million people, have the capacity to support biodiversity, even though they are found with a high-density urban matrix (Kanniah & Siong, 2017). ...
Tropical Southeast Asia is a hotspot for global biodiversity, and also a hotspot for rapidly expanding urbanisation. There is a need to identify, protect, restore, and connect remaining green spaces in the urban matrix before this opportunity is lost to urban development. The objective of this study is to characterise ecological connectivity for mammals and identify important patches and linkages for connecting urban green spaces for Greater Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia. We first map land cover across the region using linear mixture model with preprocessed multi-date cloud free mosaics derived from Sentinel 2 remote sensing data in Google Earth Engine. We then model connectivity using the land cover maps, expert-based parameterisation of Euclidian distance, and graph-based connectivity models for a range of dispersal guilds representing small and medium terrestrial and arboreal mammals. Our analysis showed large differences in the effects of fragmentation within Greater KL on the different dispersal groups, with some groups perceiving the landscape as disconnected. However, our analysis identified a network of green patches and pathways which potentially could support connectivity in the urban landscape. Our results demonstrate the potential for Southeast Asian mega cities to support biodiversity in the urban context, and the potential for a different kind of urban development, which supports biodiversity in its urban fabric.
... The policies and legislation, along with field enforcement of these laws are very crucial protecting this marine animal (Sills 2019). Interestingly, the recent business and connectivity infrastructure initiatives taken by China (One belt, one road or Belt and road initiatives, BRI) might be another threat to the wild life conservation process, including marine animals where the name of dugong is found enlisted (Ng et al. 2020). We have observed an increase in dugong basis research over the past decade, which is very encouraging, and the research focus can be multi-disciplinary with inter-country collaborations. ...
Area of the Coral Triangle (CT), namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste, comprises 5.7 million km2 of the Pacific Ocean. It is one of the most bio-diverse marine eco-regions on the planet, as well as a global hotspot for seagrass species. Many sea creatures of this eco-region rely on the seagrass ecosystem, especially dugong species extensively (a total number of 2279 individuals), sea turtles (4–6 species), benthic organisms, and fish. Apart from these ecological services, carbon sequestration (2.6 billion Mg CO2 storage) by the seagrass ecosystem is considerably higher in comparison to terrestrial vegetation. In this paper, we scrutinized previously acknowledged seagrass species distribution, the associated fauna in seagrass meadows, the total carbon sequestration in the Coral Triangle, past and present research conducted on seagrass and other aspects, and major threats to seagrass ecosystems within this biogeographic region. Depending on their different locations, the six CT countries have a minimum of 10 to a maximum of 19 seagrass species that belong to four distinct families (Hydrocharitaceae, Cymodoceaceae, Zosteraceae, and Ruppiaceae) and cover almost 58,550.63 km2. While a total of 21 species of seagrass have been found throughout this eco-region, very little research has been conducted to assess the overall status of the ecosystems within this eco-region. Seagrass ecosystems and services from these habitats within the Coral Triangle are also associated with 100 million human inhabitants, who are supported directly or indirectly by the resources of this ecosystem. These inhabitants may cause considerable disturbance to seagrass ecosystems. For the long-term sustainable management and conservation of these ecosystems, two types of threats, namely local human activities and global transboundary issues including climate change, have been identified and need to be taken into consideration. In terms of human activities, local threats include water quality deterioration due to sewage and pollutant discharge, agricultural activities mainly from palm oil plantations, over-exploitation of seagrass-associated resources, sediment runoff, and destructive fishing practices. Global threats comprise macro and microplastics, sea-level rise due to climate change, global warming, and acidification. Further study of social, cultural, and economic interaction between the local inhabitants and seagrass ecosystems is highly recommended for assessing the ecological and economic contribution of this habitat to the human societies of the Coral Triangle. Despite their importance for human food services and the maintenance of the food web for marine and coastal animals, human activities have a negative impact on seagrass ecosystems around the world, particularly in the Coral Triangle.
... With a focus on "win-win partnerships" and "connectivity," the project has received mixed reviews from those who have looked at its potential broader impacts. It has been found by Ng et al. (2020) that the BRI could have a significant impact on ecosystems and terrestrial and marine biodiversity in Southeast Asia, affecting plant and animal habitats resulting in a violation of the United Nations rules in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 8,11,13,and 15). For this reason, the Chinese government should establish biodiversity monitoring stations and invest in the construction of ecological corridors for the movement of species when building roads and railways. ...
The present study uses both carbon dioxide emission and ecological footprints as proxies for environmental degradation to examine the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for the top three emitters from Asia, i.e., China, India, and Japan. To this end, the autoregressive distributed lag model for time series and panel estimation is used for a period spanning over 1980-2016. For carbon dioxide emission, China presents an inverted-U shape of the environmental Kuznets curve, while a U-shape relationship is found for India and Japan. Similarly, when the hypothesis is tested with the ecological footprint, Japan offers an inverted U-shape and U-shaped association is detected for China and India. The panel analysis indicates the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve with both proxies of environmental degradation. Besides, human capital and renewable energy promote environmental sustainability, while non-renewable energy use hinders environmental quality. The findings of this study suggest that in order to meet the combined goals of economic growth and environmental protection, the three economies, i.e., China, India, and Japan, should employ renewable energy-enabled technology.
... With a focus on "win-win partnerships" and "connectivity," the project has received mixed reviews from those who have looked at its potential broader impacts. It has been found by Ng et al. (2020) that the BRI could have a significant impact on ecosystems and terrestrial and marine biodiversity in Southeast Asia, affecting plant and animal habitats resulting in a violation of the United Nations rules in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 8,11,13,and 15). For this reason, the Chinese government should establish biodiversity monitoring stations and invest in the construction of ecological corridors for the movement of species when building roads and railways. ...
The present study uses both carbon dioxide emission and ecological footprints as proxies for environmental degradation to examine the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for the top three emitters from Asia, i.e., China, India, and Japan. To this end, the autoregressive distributed lag model for time series and panel estimation is used for a period spanning over 1980–2016. For carbon dioxide emission, China presents an inverted-U shape of the environmental Kuznets curve, while a U-shape relationship is found for India and Japan. Similarly, when the hypothesis is tested with the ecological footprint, Japan offers an inverted U-shape and U-shaped association is detected for China and India. The panel analysis indicates the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve with both proxies of environmental degradation. Besides, human capital and renewable energy promote environmental sustainability, while non-renewable energy use hinders environmental quality. The findings of this study suggest that in order to meet the combined goals of economic growth and environmental protection, the three economies, i.e., China, India, and Japan, should employ renewable energy–enabled technology.
Graphical abstract
... It is estimated that moose populations declined by 70% due to wildlife-train collision in parts of Alaska [27]. Linear infrastructures increase wildlife-vehicle and -train collisions [28,29] and pose a grave threat to diverse species including the iconic Asian elephant [4,30]. Limited studies on ETCs exist [8, 9,31,32] and assess land cover changes and habitat fragmentation in affected areas. ...
Railways are an indispensable component of sustainable transportation systems, but also exact a toll on wildlife. Wild Asian elephants are often killed by trains in Assam, India, where we assess temporal variations in the occurrences of elephant-train collisions (ETCs) and casualties during 1990–2018. This study also assesses spatially varying relationships between elephant-train collision (ETC) rates and elephant and train densities in the adjoining 10 km ² grid cells of 11 prioritized railroad segments using ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) models. The temporal analysis indicated that ETCs spiked at certain hours and months. The adult and calf elephant casualties on the railroads were found to be two to fivefold high during the post monsoon season compared to other seasons. During the operation period of meter gauge railroads (1990–1997), the proportions of ETCs and casualties were only 15.6% and 8.7% respectively. However, these increased substantially to 84.4% and 91.3% respectively during the operation of broad gauge railroads (1998–2018). The OLS model indicated that both elephant and train densities explained 37% of the variance of ETC rate, while GWR model showed 83% of the variance of ETC rate. The local coefficient values of GWR indicated that both the predictor variables interplayed significantly and positively to determine ETC rates in the Mariani-Nakachari and Khatkhati-Dimapur railroad segments. However, the relationship between ETC rate and elephant density is significantly negative in the Habaipur-Diphu railroad, implying that the elephant population along this railroad stretch is significantly affected by railways through large scale ETCs. Hence, there is an urgent need to address long-term mitigation strategies so that elephants can be conserved by providing safe passages and survival resources along railway lines.
... More people lead to more roadkill, more invasive species, more poaching, more pollution, and more wildlife disturbance overall. Often population increase occurs along new roads and railroads (Estrada, 2017;Hughes, 2017) and particularly in the developing world, immense new transport systems threaten to degrade many natural areas (Ahmed et al., 2014;Ng et al., 2020). ...
Global biodiversity decline is best understood as too many people consuming and producing too much and displacing other species. Wild landscapes and seascapes are replaced with people, our domestics and commensals, our economic support systems, and our trash. Conservation biologists have documented many of the ways that human activity drives global biodiversity loss, but they generally neglect the role of overpopulation. We summarize the evidence for how excessive human numbers destroy and degrade habitats for other species, and how population decrease opens possibilities for ecological restoration. We discuss opportunities for further research into how human demographic changes help or hinder conservation efforts. Finally, we encourage conservation biologists to advocate for smaller populations, through improved access to modern contraception and explicit promotion of small families. In the long term, smaller human populations are necessary to preserve biodiversity in both less developed and more developed parts of the world. Whether the goal is to save threatened species, create more protected areas, restore degraded landscapes, limit climate disruption, or any of the other objectives key to preserving biodiversity, reducing the size of the human population is necessary to achieve it.
... Despite the importance of BRI worldwide, countries along its route are predominantly located in arid, semi-arid, or sub-humid fragile ecosystems (Ng et al., 2020), that are both sensitive and show weak self-recovery (Chen et al., 2016;Hughes et al., 2020;Li et al., 2021). Additionally, these ecosystems exhibit regional differences in resource and environmental conditions, such as unevenly distributed water resources , zonal gradients in soil and vegetation elements (Skokanová et al., 2020;Oiry and Barillé, 2021), and uneven production and consumption (Huang, 2019;Hussain et al., 2020). ...
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) significantly contributes to the world economy. However, the central part of the Belt and Road (B&R) is located in fragile ecological zones that are arid, semi-arid, or sub-humid. Using the entropy method, the economic-social-natural ecological niches and their coupling coordination during 2007–2019 along B&R’s 11 countries were explored along with regional differences and spatiotemporal characteristics. The economic-social-natural ecological niches were low, with a fluctuating upward trend. Additionally, the average annual growth rate of the synthesis ecological niche dramatically improved after the BRI. Further, the BRI facilitated inter-country trade and promoted the economic ecological niche. However, the BRI marginally affected the social ecological position, possibly because the social ecological niche was high pre-BRI. The natural ecological niche showed a negative growth after the BRI. Further, the coupling coordination of economic-social ecological niche and natural ecological niche showed an upward trend, transforming from severe discoordination to advanced coordination. Although BRI promoted advanced coordination, it did not affect internal categories. Policy recommendations for sustainable development in China-ASEAN Free Trade Area were provided. This study can assist policymakers to balance economic-social development and environmental protection.
... The BRI has quickly attracted huge attention from people from all walks of life in the world because of its huge volume and grand vision. In addition to its impact on the global economy, its environmental impact on the Silk Roads countries, especially carbon dioxide emission, has received extensive attention (Ascensão et al., 2018;Hafeez et al., 2019;Teo et al., 2019;Butt and Ali, 2020;Ng et al., 2020). While the BRI brings new development opportunities to the Silk Roads countries (Zheng et al, 2021a;, new projects and industrial development may lead to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. ...
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has aroused rich discussions about the possible increase in carbon dioxide emission under the arduous global carbon dioxide emission reduction task. Adopting the methods of input-output technique and complex network analysis, we first construct a fairer method to trace carbon dioxide emission transfer based on global value chains, then trace the source of carbon dioxide emission transfer to the Silk Roads countries with a long-term multiple regional input-output database. We find that, first, after the proposal of the BRI, the total direct carbon dioxide emissions of the Silk Roads countries and China’s proportion of carbon dioxide emission transfer to the other Silk Roads countries have both declined. Second, the Silk Roads countries are generally the net receivers of carbon dioxide emission transfer, and the inflow is mainly distributed in Southeast Asian countries and core countries in other sub-regions. Then, the transfer of carbon dioxide emission accepted by the Silk Roads countries comes mostly from large developing countries, such as China, Russia, and India, and developed countries, such as the United States, Japan, and Germany. The products are mainly concentrated in energy and chemical industries, as well as heavy industries, such as mining and quarrying, and metal products. We suggest that, due to the high degree of spatial and industrial concentrations of carbon dioxide emission transfer, it is necessary to make targeted policies for these countries and industries to reduce these transfers.
... Particularly during the spatial planning phase of linear infrastructure routes, important decisions are taken that determine the overall trajectory of the environmental sustainability. Even though many studies on the BRI highlight the importance of governance instruments like the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to anticipate, prevent and mitigate potential negative environmental effects of plans and projects (e.g., Aungh et al., 2020;Harlan, 2020;Ng et al., 2020;Turschwell et al., 2020;Wang et al., 2020), this case illustrates that the mere existence of EIAs or SEAs does not suffice for effective environmental protection. The EIA was conducted too late to have a real impact on the design of the highway, a comprehensive assessment of the highway's effects on flora and fauna was lacking, and limited institutional capacities inhibit effective monitoring and enforcement of the provisions outlined in the EIA. ...
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an ambitious effort to increase trans-continental connectivity and cooperation mainly through infrastructure investments and trade. On the one hand, this globally unparalleled initiative is expected to foster economic growth, but on the other hand, it can have substantial environmental implications. The BRI creates new challenges and opportunities for environmental governance as new actor constellations emerge in BRI host countries to plan and construct large infrastructure projects. Although China has outlined its vision of building a “green Belt and Road”, it remains unknown how it unfolds on the ground.
As an example of a BRI project with clear environmental implications, we present a case study of the Bar-Boljare highway in Montenegro. Based on expert interviews, we elucidate the complex web of actors and contractual arrangements involved, and demonstrate how internal and external actors exert influence on domestic environmental governance in this EU candidate country in the Western Balkans. We find that Montenegro has substantial agency over the environmental governance of this BRI project, but shows little concern over the environmental impacts of the project. Environmental issues could have been prevented during the spatial planning phase, but important governance instruments such as the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) were of limited effectiveness due to its fast and late completion, lack of assessment of alternative routes, and the limited enforcement of the provisions therein. International institutions like the EU or UNESCO have drawn on their normative power in environmental governance to demand greater environmental safeguards from Montenegrin authorities. This case is illustrative of a larger set of BRI projects which run the risk of falling short on sustainability due to a lack of environmentally sound and transparent planning and implementation.
... An increasing number of scholars are concerned about the environmental degradation brought by regional development (Tracy et al., 2017;Hughes, 2019;Teo et al., 2019;Cheng and Ge, 2020), and their research has carried on from theory, monitoring, assessment, and regulation. Energy cooperation and infrastructure are the most direct economic activities of the initiative, but the construction of many facilities may threaten biodiversity in some areas (Hughes, 2019;Narain et al., 2020;Ng et al., 2020) and can reduce ecosystem stability (Teo et al., 2019). Satellite remote sensing has been used as a monitoring tool to understand BRI countries' ecosystem status quickly and quantitatively evaluate ecological vulnerability (Guo et al., 2019) and risks (Huang, 2019). ...
Ecological risks associated with mineral resource extraction are of particular concern in the Belt and Road regions, yet ecological restoration has received little attention. This paper reviewed the mining situation and related ecological impacts in the Belt and Road areas, analyzed the factors impeding ecological restoration capability, assessed the capability, and then presented the key challenges and promotion strategy. The main results showed that: (1) Abundant mineral resources exist in the Belt and Road, covering up to 24,234 km², accounting for 42.31% of the global mining areas; (2) Mining activities, open-pit or underground, can cause ecological disturbances such as excavation damage, land occupation, collapse, and pollution; (3) Economic development, environmental management, scientific and technological innovation, the political environment, investment by mining enterprises, and ecological conditions affect the ecological restoration capacity in each country; (4) The ecological restoration capability index was 67.14, 66.80, 65.12, 64.73, 60.20, and 58.89 in West Asia & North Africa, Northeast Asia & Russia, Southeast Asia, Central & Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia, with large regional and internal differences; (5) Key challenges include imperfect multi-stakeholder administration system, lack of effective remediation technologies, and shortage of financial support. Therefore, the countries in the Belt and Road regions should be united to establish extensive policy standards and mine governance systems applicable to the mining lifecycle, improve joint research and development of restoration technologies, and build multi-funding support systems.
... Realizing the importance of providing an efficient and effective logistics system to expand the economic connectivity between these different regions and Southeast Asia, the Malaysian government along with international financiers is developing the 620km long East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) project (Huam et al., 2018). The ECRL project is a part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that will act as a major land bridge in connecting the ECER region to the rest of the country, whilst boosting the local tourism sector (ECER Master Plan 2.0, 2019), but potentially having negative environmental and social impacts Ng et al., 2020;Teo et al., 2019). ...
Kuantan is emerging as a dynamically developing region supported by the megaeconomic development projects such as the East Coast Economic Development Plan in conjunction with the extension of China-Malaysia bilateral industrial parks and establishment of East Coast Rail Link (ECRL), a part of the great Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Such a rapidly developing region requires a robust spatial analysis to understand the changing landscape pattern and its socio-environmental impacts to guide sustainable development. Addressing the lack of research focused on this key economic development region, this study aims to characterise and evaluate the historic and future projection of land use land cover (LULC) change patterns to understand the dynamics of the regional development process and to identify potential future land use conflicts. The methodology for this research includes construction of coarse-scale land cover classes by using Landsat 5 TM and Landsat 8 OLI data based on a combination of Random Forest classifier on Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform and manual refinement to construct fine-scale LULC maps by using auxiliary reference data. The produced timeseries imageries’ overall accuracy assessment scored at an average of 83%. Subsequently, to further assess and model the future LULC change pattern, the Land Change Modeler (LCM) in TerrSet was utilized by training the multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network and using the Markov chain analysis. The study shows that the region’s land cover will be largely altered by human intervention driven by urbanisation and the region’s evolving economic vision. Overall, the LULC timeseries for the years 2010 to 2020 revealed a prominent increase in oil palm plantation, followed by mining, residential, and industrial site expansion, with a consequent decline in forest and disturbed vegetation cover. The future land use projection for the year 2030 also revealed similar land use development patterns. Both the historical remote sensing data and future projections showed that industry, mining, and residential are clustered and growing in close proximity while expanding extensively, which may likely be a cause of future land use conflict. Although modelled future projections may contain many uncertainties, having the ability to envision future possible scenarios provide key insights into the current and evolving future patterns of land use changes and predicting their impacts on people and the environment. This will assist government bodies, stakeholders, and policy makers by providing information essential for future planning and sustainable development decisions.
... Furthermore, the transportation network that has significant impacts on economic development and urbanization expansion may be expanded much larger than the current system. The greater transportation network disturbances on HQ could be reduced by the Green Infrastructure and Belt and Road Initiative methods that have been used in many southeast Asian countries [57,58]. These methods can increase urban green cover and raise residents' income. ...
Dong Trieu district is a vital connection for territorial ecological security and human welfare between Hanoi (the capital of Vietnam) and Quang Ninh province. Therefore, habitat quality (HQ) is of extraordinary importance to the area’s sustainable development. The ArcGIS platform, Dyna-CLUE, and InVEST models were utilized in this study to assess the spatial and temporal transformations of land use and the changes of HQ in 2030 under various scenarios, with intentions to find strategies that may mitigate the HQ’s deteriorating trend in the district. Simulated results indicated that, assuming the development is maintained as usual, the average HQ of the District at 2030 could diminish by 0.044 from that of 2019 (a four-times decrease compared to the previous decade). Cases comprised of four basic scenarios, including development as usual, built-up expansion slowdown, forest protection emphasized, and agricultural land conversion, were used to identify potential strategies to mitigate the deteriorating trend. Simulated results revealed that keeping the built-up expansion rate lower than 100 ha y−1, the deforestation rate lower than 20 ha y−1, and preferring orchards over agricultural land conversion is required to limit the drop in HQ to within 0.01 in the next decade. Other than the existing population growth control policy, new guidelines such as (1) changing urban expansion type from outward to upward to control the built-up expansion rate, (2) substituting forest-harming industries to forest-preservation industries to reduce deforestation rate, (3) encouraging orchards preferred over agricultural land conversion to increase incomes while maintaining higher habitat quality, (4) practicing better farming technologies to improve crop production and to alleviate potential food security issues due to considerable reduction in cropland, and (5) promoting Green Infrastructure and the Belt and Road Initiative to increase urban green cover and raise residents’ income should be considered in designing the new mitigation strategies.
... A contrasting situation of land degradation, deforestation, and habitat fragmentation occurred in all other range countries (Table 3) in the snow leopard landscape [88][89][90]. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which was initiated by the Chinese government in 2013 to enhance regional connectivity and so economic development, is the largest infrastructure project in human history [102]. Recently, several studies along the different economic corridors, including the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor [103], the New Eurasia Land Bridge Economic Corridor [104], and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor [105], identified the associated environmental issues. ...
Citation: Sultan, H.; Rashid, W.; Shi, J.; Rahim, I.u.; Nafees, M.; Bohnett, E.; Rashid, S.; Khan, M.T.; Shah, I.A.; Han, H.; et al. Horizon Scan of Transboundary Concerns Impacting Snow Leopard Landscapes in Asia. Land 2022, 11, 248. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11020248
... Globalisation scenarios in the countries of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have been widely established in recent academia (Liu and Dunford 2016;Liu et al. 2018;Liu 2019;Berlie 2020). On the other hand, adverse environmental effects in BRI countries have also been established by many researchers (Ascensão et al. 2018;Teo et al. 2019;Hughes 2019;Hughes et al. 2020;Shuen ng L. et al. 2020, Fang et al. 2021. These works suggest that the environmental conditions in BRI countries are concerning. ...
Over the past few years, a growing number of scholars have explored environmental deterioration and its connection to various indicators acting as proxies for growth and globalisation. Taking this into view, the current study examines the globalisation-environment nexus, using 66 major countries and administrative regions of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as case studies for 2000-2015. For this analysis, six biophysical resource usages were used within the safe operating space of the planetary boundary concept as proxies for the environmental state, along with the four main and five sub-indices of the Konjunkturforschungsstelle (KOF) globalisation index. Pearson's correlation, hierarchical clustering, redundancy analysis, linear regression, autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) forecasting, etc. were used to infer existing trends, the interactions between the environment and globalisation, a projected future, and coupling with safe operating space aspects. The findings reveal the long-run asymmetric relationship of variables. Surpassing safe operating limits to achieve globalisation is the most prominent outcome. Economic, trade, and financial globalisation are more crucially related to biophysical resource usage. Nitrogen use and material footprint act as strong drivers for various indices of globalisation. At least 40% of countries are above the global average resource usage and 50% have crossed all of the safe operating limits. At the present rate, nearly 51% of countries might cross all their safe operating spaces in 2030. In a race to achieve more globalisation (0.95), more than 30% of countries might cross 5 of the 6 planetary boundaries. Land system change, the biogeochemical cycle, and climate change are impending as the most important domains to be focused on regarding globalisation. Based on the findings, it can be recommended that governments and policymakers devote more attention to reframing and redesigning globalisation to be more environmental friendly to achieve long-term sustainable development goals.
... Therefore, we include the distance from each hydro power project to the nearest international, national, or regional protected area (UNEP-WCMC and IUCN, 2021) as a proxy for the project's risks to ecosystems of high ecological importance and biodiversity value. We hypothesize that hydro projects located closer to protected areas may be more likely to adversely impact these important ecosystems (Ng et al., 2020;Yang et al., 2021), ultimately increasing the likelihood of suspension. ...
Power sector investment is crucial to accelerate a sustainable energy transition, but not all investments are successful. To shed light on investment trends, we examine 1393 Chinese overseas electric power projects spanned around 78 countries over the past two decades. We identify 5% have been cancelled or delayed, with coal and hydro projects having much higher failure rates than solar and wind projects. We find the suspension is associated with technology-specific, georeferenced environmental risks. Coal projects located in more densely populated areas where more people are exposed to air pollutants, in countries with more fatalities from extreme weather events, and in places with environmental protests, are more likely to be suspended. Additionally, hydro projects closer to protected areas have a higher suspension rate. Our results suggest that restraining from investing in environmentally risky projects helps mitigate environmental damages and prevent financial losses due to cancellation and postponement.
... The majority (90%) of lowland forests within mainland Southeast Asia have been identified as severely threatened and vulnerable to deforestation (Namkhan et al., 2021). Further increases in deforestation and losses of biodiversity are predicted within this area following extensive infrastructure development for the Belt and Road Initiative (Ng et al., 2020). ...
Plasmodium knowlesi, a simian malaria parasite of great public health concern has been reported from most countries in Southeast Asia and exported to various countries around the world. Currently P. knowlesi is the predominant species infecting humans in Malaysia. Besides this species, other simian malaria parasites such as P. cynomolgi and P. inui are also infecting humans in the region. The vectors of P. knowlesi and other Asian simian malarias belong to the Leucosphyrus Group of Anopheles mosquitoes which are generally forest dwelling species. Continual deforestation has resulted in these species moving into forest fringes, farms, plantations and human settlements along with their macaque hosts. Limited studies have shown that mosquito vectors are attracted to both humans and macaque hosts, preferring to bite outdoors and in the early part of the night. We here review the current status of simian malaria vectors and their parasites, knowledge of vector competence from experimental infections and discuss possible vector control measures. The challenges encountered in simian malaria elimination are also discussed. We highlight key knowledge gaps on vector distribution and ecology that may impede effective control strategies.
... The majority (90%) of lowland forests within mainland Southeast Asia have been identified as severely threatened and vulnerable to deforestation (Namkhan et al., 2021). Further increases in deforestation and losses of biodiversity are predicted within this area following extensive infrastructure development for the Belt and Road Initiative (Ng et al., 2020). ...
Within the past two decades, incidence of human cases of the zoonotic malaria Plasmodium knowlesi has increased markedly. P. knowlesi is now the most common cause of human malaria in Malaysia and threatens to undermine malaria control programmes across Southeast Asia. The emergence of zoonotic malaria corresponds to a period of rapid deforestation within this region. These environmental changes impact the distribution and behaviour of the simian hosts, mosquito vector species and human populations, creating new opportunities for P. knowlesi transmission. Here, we review how landscape changes can drive zoonotic disease emergence, examine the extent and causes of these changes across Southeast and identify how these mechanisms may be impacting P. knowlesi dynamics. We review the current spatial epidemiology of reported P. knowlesi infections in people and assess how these demographic and environmental changes may lead to changes in transmission patterns. Finally, we identify opportunities to improve P. knowlesi surveillance and develop targeted ecological interventions within these landscapes.
... Each LSIP is divided into two stages: "before" the project implementation, and "after" the project was completed (See Table A.1 for the detailed timeline of each project). Referring to previous studies (Benítez-López et al., 2010;Isaksson and Kotsadam, 2018;Ng et al., 2020), we chose 50 km as the threshold distance to determine the project impact zone. Our SES approach builds on and advances previous studies by integrating emerging big data sources and novel tools (e.g., artificial intelligence, cloud computing) to enable human-environment research at a large spatial scale. ...
The booming development of large-scale infrastructure projects (LSIPs) facilitated by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has drawn global concern regarding the scale, pace, and potential impact. Studies have largely focused on the geopolitical impact (i.e., politics and international relations) but less is known about social and environmental impact. This is in large part because consistent, high-resolution, cross-boundary social and environmental data at large scales are rather limited. To address the knowledge gap, this research developed a novel Socio-Environmental Sensing (SES) approach by synthesizing remote sensing imagery and geotagged Twitter data to map the socio-environmental impact of LSIPs. We demonstrated the applicability of this approach using two BRI flagship projects, namely, the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) in Kenya and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in Pakistan. Our analysis shows that both projects have led to a substantial loss of natural land (e.g., 3.7 % loss of vegetation in Kenya, and 23.3 % reduction of the glacier in Pakistan) but gains in artificial land (e.g., 4.2 % increase in cropland in Kenya, and 34.6 % expansion of built-up land in Pakistan). In addition, the BRI-LSIPs have largely improved local economic development, because nighttime light imagery revealed that regions near the BRI-LSIP sites became much brighter than other regions. Regarding the social aspect, we found that public sentiment toward the projects was largely positive and improved over time, which contradicts the prevalent pessimism to BRI-LSIPs by critics. Nevertheless, sentiment also presented strong spatial heterogeneity – regions around the BRI transportation hubs (usually large cities) most showed more positive sentiment than other regions. By spatially joining the georeferenced sentiment scores with environmental indicators from remote sensing, we further found that positive sentiment improved more in more developed regions, but only changed slightly in other regions. This study provides a novel approach to assess the socio-environmental impact of large-scale projects, and the findings would be useful for informing the implementation of future BRI projects across the globe.
... Our assessment has highlighted several regions that are currently facing an unprecedented and massive development of linear infrastructures under China's Belt and Road Initiative. With a projected expenditure of 1 trillion dollars, the Belt and Road Initiative will further expose biodiversity to high pressure from direct and indirect infrastructure ( Ascensão 2020;Ascensão et al. 2018;Farhadinia et al. 2019;Laurance et al. 2015;Ng et al. 2020). For example, mega-dams are being built in the world's most biodiverse river basins, the Amazon, Congo, and Mekong (Winemiller et al. 2016). ...
Approximately 65% of primate species are facing extinction, with threats including the impacts of linear infrastructures such as roads, railways, and power lines, associated with habitat loss and fragmentation, direct and indirect mortality, and changes in animal behavioral patterns. Nevertheless, this is an often-overlooked topic in primatology, and there is limited information on which regions and species are most affected by linear infrastructures. Here, we provide a global assessment of priority areas and primate species for conservation by integrating information from global-scale open-access data sets on the distributional ranges, traits, and threats to primate species and linear infrastructures, together with a systematic literature review and a questionnaire sent to primatological societies. We produced a bivariate map that reflects the patterns of co-occurrence of the Conservation Value and Infrastructure Density. From this map we highlight Primate Mitigation Areas (regions with high Primate Conservation Value and Infrastructure Density), which are areas where infrastructure mitigation should be prioritized; and the Primate Preservation Areas (regions with high Primate Conservation Value and low Infrastructure Density), which represent areas that should be preserved from further infrastructure development. Primate Mitigation Areas primarily include the Atlantic forest of Brazil, the Guinean forests of West Africa, and most of Southeastern Asia, whereas Primate Preservation Areas are found principally in the Amazon and Congo River basins. Our assessment also produced a list of priority species affected by infrastructures, with the great apes and gibbons ranking highest. Global infrastructure projects, especially the Belt and Road Initiative, can seriously affect both priority areas (particularly preservation areas) and the most vulnerable species, due to the massive sprawl of linear infrastructures and associated human activity. Thus, we call for dedicated strategic environmental and social assessments throughout these different economic corridors within the Belt and Road Initiative planning process, prior to developing the different projects. Our assessment can serve as a tool to coordinate management actions and legislation around the world.
... According to Van den Berghe, Jacobs, and Boelens (2018), the term port city used in this article refers to a self-organized system, characterized by a 'relational geometry' through which interact a wide range of: (a) actors, such as municipalities, port authorities, shipping companies, couriers, logistic service companies, financial institutions, terminal workers, trade unions, non-profit organizations, container operators, research centers, universities, transport companies, technology companies, manufacturing companies, start-ups, and so on; and (b) economic, environmental, social and technological resources. Consequently, today's port cities are characterized by a wide range of issues such as the industrial waste management (Di Vaio, Varriale, & Trujillo, 2019), energy efficiency (Iris & Lam, 2019), water management (Nur, Marufuzzaman, & Puryear, 2020), loss of biodiversity (Ng et al., 2020), air and acoustic pollution (Vakili, Ö lçer, & Ballini, 2020), renewable energy sources (Hentschel, Ketter, & Collins, 2018), public health prevention (Čurović et al., 2021), soil management optimization (AlRukaibi, AlKheder, & AlMashan, 2020;Ioppolo, Heijungs, Cucurachi, Salomone, & Kleijn, 2014), safety, security and cybersecurity (Senarak, 2020a), sustainable economic growth (Cong et al., 2020), and traffic congestion (Fan, Wilson, & Dahl, 2012). Indeed, these challenges are discussed in the 'World Ports Climate Action Program', where policymakers from major port cities globally came together to make their contribution to achieving the goal of the Paris agreement on climate change mitigation (Fenton, 2017). ...
Digital technologies integrated into port logistics are becoming increasingly decisive among port cities around the world. This growing importance is due to the need for policymakers, urban managers, port authorities, local administrators, shipping companies, couriers, and so on to develop increasingly digitalized and sustainable logistic processes. Therefore, in a global context characterized by intense datafication and globalization of trade, the data-based approach has become a necessary modus operandi to promote smart and sustainable logistics development. This forward-looking model of port logistics uses technologies such as IoT, sensors, cloud computing platforms, Big Data analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), GPS tracking systems, radars, drones, real-time monitoring stations, smart grids, and so on in order to collect, process, monitor and analyse data and information concerning the economic, environmental, social and technological sphere of port cities. In this sense, mobile and fixed platforms help logistics operators to optimize the management of flows (e.g., water, waste, emissions, raw materials, people, monetary investments, etc.) in an efficient and digitized manner. The study proposes a systematic literature review of the most recurring themes concerning smart and sustainable logistics initiatives within port cities in order to develop a multidimensional framework capable of holistically integrating the prevailing enabling factors (Ecosystem, Internal Organization, Data and Security, Policy and Regulation, Finance and Funding, and Digital and Technology), domains (Mobility, Environment, Economy, Telecommunications, Safety and Security, Government, and Community) and goals (Sustainable Development and Digitalization) that characterize smart and sustainable logistical development. To this end, the best practices of several pioneering port cities such as Rotterdam, Hamburg, Singapore, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, etc. implemented in partnerships with technology companies such as Cisco, IBM, Huawei and SAP were also analysed. Therefore, the results of this research show that smart and sustainable logistics initiatives in port cities: (a) have the potential to enhance the efficiency of the economic, environmental, social and technological flows; (b) increase the involvement and awareness of stakeholders such as couriers, shippers, shipping companies, citizens, port authorities, municipalities, security officers, gate and terminal personnel, and so on; and (c) provide a detailed overview of the enabling factors, domains and goals that must be activated by port cities to foster a smart and sustainable logistic transition.
... Asia and especially China is unique in terms of population densities and total population size (Schneider et al. 2015;World Bank Group 2015). The region is also a global focus for infrastructure investment such as the Belt and Road Initiative which includes industrial parks, transport infrastructure and power generation (Teo et al. 2019;Ng et al. 2020). ...
Low- and middle-income countries in Southeast and East Asia face a range of challenges related to the rapid pace of urbanisation in the region, the scale of pollution, climate change, loss of ecosystem services and associated difficulties for ecological restoration. Possible pathways towards a more sustainable future lie in the applications of nature-based solutions (NBS). However, there is relatively little literature on the application of NBS in the region, particularly Southeast Asia. In this paper we address this gap by assessing the socio-ecological challenges to the application of NBS in the region – one of the most globally biodiverse. We first provide an overview and background on NBS and its underpinnings in biodiversity and ecosystem services. We then present a typology describing five unique challenges for the application of NBS in the region: (1) Characteristics of urbanisation; (2) Biophysical environmental and climatic context; (3) Environmental risks and challenges for restoration; (4) Human nature relationships and conflicts; and (5) Policy and governance context. Exploiting the opportunities through South-South and North-South collaboration to address the challenges of NBS in Southeast and East Asia needs to be a priority for government, planners and academics. Highlights
Most research on Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) is in high income nations with low population growth rates and regulated urban planning.;
Urban blue-green infrastructure is being degraded in low and middle-income Southeast and East Asian countries.;
Applications of NBS in the region need to address the unique socio-ecological challenges.;
We provide an overview of key knowledge gaps to support the implementation of NBS.;
Economic and social development, the state of the environment and a propensity for disasters are closely intertwined. Therefore, environmental policy integration (EPI) across development and disaster management (DM) policies and plans is important. Pakistan as a country is highly vulnerable to climate-induced environmental changes and associated disasters. In this paper, the extent to which its national environment and climate change policy, disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy as well as disaster management (DM) plans are aligned is established, based on a review of government documents and expert opinions. In this context, a particular emphasis is put on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that led the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor Plan (CPEC; 2017–2030). While environmental assessment (EA) is currently not conducted for any DM policies and plans, DM and EA are well integrated into provincial environmental protection acts, in national as well as most provincial DM plans. It is concluded that a regulatory framework to guide EPI in DM for BRI and CPEC projects is needed.
China claims that the Belt and Road Initiative is a cross-regional comprehensive initiative covering the economy, social and environmental pillars. When it was first proposed, it identified five main areas which call for cooperation priorities, i.e. policy coordination, interconnection of facilities, unimpeded trade, financial integration and people-to-people bond. Scholars globally are focusing on the development of the Belt and Road Initiative as it has gone through several development stages. The Belt and Road Initiative initially focused on economic development, equal dialogue and cultural interchange between the Belt and Road Initiative partners and China, and now it has added the concept of green development. This paper reviews the Belt and Road Initiative documents since 2013 and analyses the changes of environmental policies in the Belt and Road Initiative, aiming to identify the challenges and implications of green development. The outcome of this paper provides insight into how the Belt and Road Initiative can contribute towards sustainable development with its partner countries.
Power sector investment is crucial to accelerate a sustainable energy transition, but not all investments are successful. We examine 1,393 Chinese overseas electric power projects across 78 countries over the past two decades. We identify 5% that have been canceled or delayed, with coal and hydro projects having much higher suspension rates than solar and wind projects. We find electric projects with higher environmental risks are more likely to be suspended. Specifically, coal projects located in more densely populated areas where more people are exposed to air pollutants, in countries with more fatalities from extreme weather events, and in places with a record of environmental protests, are more likely to be suspended. Additionally, hydro projects closer to protected areas have a higher suspension rate. Our results suggest that refraining from investing in environmentally risky projects helps mitigate environmental damages and prevents financial losses due to cancellation and postponement.
Understanding spatial change and its driving factors behind coastal development is essential for coastal management and restoration. There is an urgent need for quantitative assessments of sustainable development in the coastal ecosystems that are most affected by anthropogenic activities and climate change. This study built a theme-based evaluation methodology with the Natural-Economic-Social (NES) complex ecosystem and proposed an evaluation system of coastal sustainable development (CSD) to understand the complex interactions between coastal ecosystems and anthropogenic activities. The approach revealed the levels of coastal natural, economic, and social sustainable development in the countries along the Maritime Silk Road (MSR) from 2010 to 2020. The results showed (1) a decreasing trend for coastal sustainable development between 2010 and 2015 and a rapid increasing trend between 2015 and 2020; (2) spatially varied CSD, with higher levels in Europe and Southeast Asia and lower levels in South and West Asia and North Africa; and (3) a strong influence on CSD by a combination of economic and social factors and relatively little influence by natural factors. The study further assessed the natural, economic, and social development scores for 41 countries and compared them with the mean scores (MSR) to classify coastal development patterns into three stages (favorable, transitional, and unfavorable). Finally, in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the study highlighted the importance of more refined global indicators for CSD assessments.
From 2015, China began to promote eco-sustainability in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) through not only vision statements but also specific guidelines and governance initiatives. What has driven these policy changes? Bringing together theories of norm localization, norm subsidiarity, and policy deliberation, we argue that China’s move toward green BRI began as a norm localization process where environmental norms emerged in the open policy space created by China’s top leaders carrying the ambition to make the BRI a new global governance model. After adopting a broad norm on environmental stewardship, state bureaucracies found opportunities to create procedural and operational rules. A novel procedural rule-making methodology emphasizing inclusive dialogue with host countries has emerged, driven by top leaders’ pursuit of international leadership and preexisting local norms guiding South–South cooperation. With operational rules, different actors follow their preferences to localize existing international standards or develop new ones.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a mega-global infrastructure development strategy initiated in 2013. Although the BRI has fostered huge potential for economic growth, it poses a significant threat to biodiversity, especially because many of the infrastructure projects are cross-border and are being built in areas where rare and endangered species found nowhere else on the planet live. This paper reflects and raises concerns about the repercussions of BRI infrastructure projects on species extinction. While most research has been geared towards assessing the economic and social impacts of BRI on host countries, this paper contributes to the sustainable planning and evaluation of the impacts of a less investigated sector—the infrastructure sector through the lens of extinction accounting.
By identifying the specific extinction risks of different types of infrastructure projects during construction-in-progress period and daily operations period, this paper refines and extends prior general frameworks of extinction accounting, and further tailors them to the specific and important context of infrastructure projects under the BRI scenario. In addition, this paper serves as a counterpoint to prior literature on extinction accounting within the Chinese frame of reference by critically underscoring the current infirmity in extinction accounting by Chinese MNEs operating under the mega initiative. Thirty representative cross-border infrastructure projects under the BRI are examined on how they report and attempt to mitigate their ecology-specific impacts using the extinction accounting checklist. This paper concludes that the extinction accounting practices of BRI infrastructure projects are still at their embryonic stage and offers practitioners, researchers and policy makers critical insights and a broader perspective on the role of human activities in extinction crises along cross-border corridors.
Linear infrastructures, such as roads, highways and railways, can bring significant social and economic benefits while posing great threats to local environment and biodiversity. Although processes such as Strategic Environmental Assessment have been increasingly applied during the route planning stage of major linear infrastructures to evaluate their potential impacts, the assessment of the spatial variations in these impacts is often missing. Thus, a spatial planning tool that balances both the costs and benefits for environmental and socioeconomic aspects is needed. Here we propose a Sustainable Linear Infrastructure Route Planning Model, which incorporates the spatial assessments of potential environmental and socioeconomic impacts using factors from six aspects, which are ecosystem importance, biodiversity conservation, environmental risks, economic costs, social costs, and socioeconomic benefits. The model allows users to set weights for different factors according to specific development priorities, then produces a weighted spatial resistance map, and identifies the optimized route through least-cost path analysis. We implemented this model through a case study of the Southern Expressway Extension project in Sri Lanka to test its validity. The results showed that the route choices from our model under three hypothetical scenarios (environmental, socioeconomic and balanced) all resulted in lower negative impacts compared to the current route. The proposed model can provide decision-makers an effective tool to improve the sustainability of roads, highways and railways in the age of rapid linear infrastructure expansion across the globe.
With thousands of projects being built along eight transcontinental corridors, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is driving the global infrastructure boom. BRI is likely to have a sizeable biodiversity footprint as its corridors overlap several priority areas for conservation and 150,000 km2 of critical habitat. Biodiversity safeguards for the initiative therefore warrant scrutiny. Biodiversity safeguards are policies or standards (adopted by regulators, project proponents or financiers) that specify biodiversity impact mitigation measures. Here we examine a key source of safeguards—lending requirements of BRI’s financiers. We compare them with International Finance Corporation’s Performance Standard 6, which is often regarded as international best practice and which requires projects affecting ‘critical habitat’ to achieve a ‘net gain’ of biodiversity through impact mitigation. We find that of the 65 financiers identified (35 Chinese and 30 international), just 17 require biodiversity impact mitigation and 12 require a ‘net gain’. Among those with biodiversity safeguards, 16 are international, and despite the Chinese financiers accounting for over 90% of BRI’s financing (by quantum of investment), only 1 of the 35 we identified has biodiversity safeguards. Because most BRI finance is not subject to biodiversity safeguards, we conclude that potential impacts of BRI linear infrastructure projects may remain unmitigated, despite approximately 369,000 km2 of critical and natural habitat occurring within the 25 km buffer zone of such projects. We therefore argue for urgent adherence to best-practice safeguards for all institutions financing the BRI. An analysis reveals only 17 out of 65 financiers require biodiversity impact mitigation measures, and overall the initiative falls short of international best practices
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) represents the largest infrastructure and development project in human history, and presents risks and opportunities for ecosystems, economies, and communities. Some risks (habitat fragmentation, roadkill) are obvious, however, many of the BRI’s largest challenges for development and conservation are not obvious and require extensive consideration to identify. In this first BRI Horizon Scan, we identify 11 frontier issues that may have large environmental and social impacts but are not yet recognised. More generally, the BRI will increase China’s participation in international environmental governance. Thus, new cooperative modes of governance are needed to balance geopolitical, societal, and environmental interests. Upgrading and standardising global environmental standards is essential to safeguard ecological systems and human societies.
The Heart of Borneo initiative has promoted the integration of protected areas and sustainably-managed forests across Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei. Recently, however, member states of the Heart of Borneo have begun pursuing ambitious unilateral infrastructure-development schemes to accelerate economic growth, jeopardizing the underlying goal of trans-boundary integrated conservation. Focusing on Sabah, Malaysia, we highlight conflicts between its Pan-Borneo Highway scheme and the regional integration of protected areas, unprotected intact forests, and conservation-priority forests. Road developments in southern Sabah in particular would drastically reduce protected-area integration across the northern Heart of Borneo region. Such developments would separate two major clusters of protected areas that account for one-quarter of all protected areas within the Heart of Borneo complex. Sabah has proposed forest corridors and highway underpasses as means of retaining ecological connectivity in this context. Connectivity modelling identified numerous overlooked areas for connectivity rehabilitation among intact forest patches following planned road development. While such ‘linear-conservation planning’ might theoretically retain up to 85% of intact-forest connectivity and integrate half of the conservation-priority forests across Sabah, in reality it is very unlikely to achieve meaningful ecological integration. Moreover, such measure would be exceedingly costly if properly implemented–apparently beyond the operating budget of relevant Malaysian authorities. Unless critical road segments are cancelled, planned infrastructure will fragment important conservation landscapes with little recourse for mitigation. This likelihood reinforces earlier calls for the legal recognition of the Heart of Borneo region for conservation planning as well as for enhanced tri-lateral coordination of both conservation and development.
China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the largest infrastructure scheme in our lifetime, bringing unprecedented geopolitical and economic shifts far larger than previous rising powers. Concerns about its environmental impacts are legitimate and threaten to thwart China's ambitions, especially since there is little precedent for analysing and planning for environmental impacts of massive infrastructure development at the scale of BRI. In this paper, we review infrastructure development under BRI to characterise the nature and types of environmental impacts and demonstrate how social, economic and political factors can shape these impacts. We first address the ambiguity around how BRI is defined. Then we describe our interdisciplinary framework for considering the nature of its environmental impacts, showing how impacts interact and aggregate across multiple spatiotemporal scales creating cumulative impacts. We also propose a typology of BRI infrastructure, and describe how economic and socio-political drivers influence BRI infrastructure and the nature of its environmental impacts. Increasingly, environmental policies associated with BRI are being designed and implemented, although there are concerns about how these will translate effectively into practice. Planning and addressing environmental issues associated with the BRI is immensely complex and multi-scaled. Understanding BRI and its environment impacts is the first step for China and countries along the routes to ensure the assumed positive socioeconomic impacts associated with BRI are sustainable.
Overexploitation is one of the main threats to biodiversity, but the intensity of this threat varies geographically. We identified global concentrations, on land and at sea, of 4543 species threatened by unsustainable commercial harvesting. Regions under high-intensity threat (based on accessibility on land and on fishing catch at sea) cover 4.3% of the land and 6.1% of the seas and contain 82% of all species threatened by unsustainable harvesting and >80% of the ranges of Critically Endangered species threatened by unsustainable harvesting. Currently, only 16% of these regions are covered by protected areas on land and just 6% at sea. Urgent actions are needed in these centers of unsustainable harvesting to ensure that use of species is sustainable and to prevent further species' extinctions.
China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) sets to create connections and build infrastructure across Eurasia, Asia, and parts of the African continent in its initial phase and is the largest infrastructure project of all time. Any infrastructure project on this scale will necessarily pass through ecofragile regions and key biodiversity areas (KBAs). This creates an imperative to identify possible areas of impact and probable effects on conservation values to facilitate adaptive planning and to mitigate, minimize, or avoid impacts. Using the highest resolution route maps of the BRI available, I overlaid the proposed road and rail routes on KBAs, protected areas, and predicted biodiversity hotspots for over 4138 animal and 7371 plant species. I also assessed the relationship between the proposed route with the distribution of mines across BRI countries and the proportion of deforestation and forest near routes. Infrastructure, especially mining, was clustered near the proposed route; thus, construction and development along the route may increase the size and number of mines. Up to 15% of KBAs were within 1 km of proposed railways. Thus, planned and probable development along the routes may pose a significant risk to biodiversity, especially because the majority of KBAs are unprotected. Many biodiversity hotspots for different taxa were near the route. These hotspots varied between taxa, making systematic management and environmental impact assessments an effective strategy for at least some taxa. A combination of planning and mitigation strategies will likely be necessary to protect the most important areas for biodiversity proximal to development, especially in currently unprotected KBAs and other regions that need protection. A fuller assessment of trade‐offs between conservation and other values will be necessary to make good decisions for each project and site being developed, including potentially modifying parts of the route to minimize impacts. Modification or foregoing of infrastructure may be needed if stakeholders consider the conservation costs too high.
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The Belt and Road Initiative, due to its diverse and extensive infrastructure investments, poses a wide range of environmental risks. Some projects have easily identifiable and measurable impacts, such as energy projects’ greenhouse gas emissions. Others, such as transportation infrastructure, due to their vast geographic reach, generate more complex and potentially more extensive environmental risks. The proposed Belt and Road Initiative rail and road investments have stimulated concerns because of the history of significant negative environmental impacts from large-scale
transportation projects across the globe. This paper studies environmental risks—direct and indirect—from Belt and Road Initiative transportation projects and the mitigation strategies and policies to address them. The paper concludes with a recommendation on how to take advantage of the scale of the Belt and Road Initiative to address these concerns in a way not typically available to stand-alone projects. In short, this scale motivates and permits early integrated development and conservation planning.
Background and goal
The study is conducted to facilitate conservation of migratory wader species along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, particularly to 1) Identify hotspots of wader species richness along the flyway and effectively map how these might change between breeding, non-breeding and migratory phases; 2) Determine if the existing network of protected areas (PA) is sufficient to effectively conserve wader biodiversity hotspots along the EAAF; 3) Assess how species distribution models can provide complementary distribution estimates to existing BirdLife range maps.
Methods
We use a species distribution modelling (SDM) approach (MaxEnt) to develop temporally explicit individual range maps of 57 migratory wader species across their annual cycle, including breeding, non-breeding and migratory phases, which in turn provide the first biodiversity hotspot map of migratory waders along the EAAF for each of these phases. We assess the protected area coverage during each migration period, and analyse the dominant environmental drivers of distributions for each period. Additionally, we compare model hotspots to those existing range maps of the same species obtained from the BirdLife Internationals’ database.
Results
Our model results indicate an overall higher and a spatially different species richness pattern compared to that derived from a wader biodiversity hotspot map based on BirdLife range maps. Field observation records from the eBird database for our 57 study species confirm many of the hotspots revealed by model outputs (especially within the Yellow Sea coastal region), suggesting that current richness of the EAAF may have been underestimated and certain hotspots overlooked. Less than 10% of the terrestrial zones area (inland and coastal) which support waders are protected and, only 5% of areas with the highest 10% species richness is protected.
Main conclusions
The study results suggest the need for new areas for migratory wader research and conservation priorities including Yellow Sea region and Russian far-East. It also suggests a need to increase the coverage and percentage of current PA network to achieve Aichi Target 11 for Flyway countries, including giving stronger consideration to the temporal dynamics of wader migration.
KEY MESSAGES
• China’s BRI is potentially the most significant infrastructure development programme this century, spanning over 70 countries with investments estimated at over US$3 trillion. Since its commencement in 2013, US$200 billion has already been invested in over 200 BRI projects
• Development in BRI partner countries (including Central Asia) is contingent on local geographic constraints (e.g., resources, historic pathways, etc.) as well as subject to suitable policies
• To date, the BRI focuses mainly on economic development and building transport infrastructure. However, there is increasing recognition that social and environmental elements of development need to be addressed
• Sustainable development goals could be promoted through BRI – most beneficially if the explicit mission of BRI were expanded and made to align with partner countries’ SDG commitments
• Embracing opportunities to strengthen conservation and resilience in water rich mountain regions would benefit all of the BRI geopolitical partners
[Suggested citation: Foggin, M., Emslie-Smith, M., Hughes, A., Lechner, A.M., Sternberg, T., and Dossani, R. 2018. Conservation Geopolitics: Envisioning the future of the ‘Belt & Road Initiative’ in the Mountains of Central Asia. MSRI Brief, Oct. 2018. Mountain Societies Research Institute, University of Central Asia. URL: https://ucentralasia.org/Research/Item/1886.]
Railway ecology is an emerging discipline. In this review, we focus on what is known today regarding the impacts of railways on wildlife, and on the methods to identify, monitor, and mitigate these impacts. Wildlife-train collisions are the most often reported impact, although railway lines can also represent barriers to animal movement, bisecting populations or reducing wildlife access to resources. Little is known on the impact of habitat loss and fragmentation due to railways alone, or on their disturbance effects, including pollution (noise, chemical, light), and on the potential to provide habitat connectivity or surrogate habitats for native species in degraded landscapes. Molecular techniques are one of the most promising methods to study the impacts of railways, as genetic analyses are useful to identify both population sub-structuring, and to assess the potential restoration of functional connectivity by mitigation measures like wildlife passes, or to estimate effective population sizes. Field work is necessary to provide credible mortality rates, which, combined with computer simulations, can allow for estimations of the impact of mortality on population viability. Studies should ideally have Before-After-Control-Impact designs and be long-term. We need to improve mortality estimates, and to understand how impacts threaten population dynamics. We need to go from local-scale studies (e.g., animals use the underpasses) to landscape-scale (i.e., where to place these underpasses to maximize the connectivity at regional/populational levels). Finally, we need to expand our knowledge on less studied, less charismatic species, and to explore the potential environmental benefits of green practices on railway corridors.
Shipping routes in the ocean are analogous to terrestrial roads, in that they are regularly used thoroughfares that concentrate the movement of vessels between multiple locations. We applied a terrestrial road ecology framework to examine the ecological impacts of increased global shipping on “marine giants” (ie great whales, basking sharks [Cetorhinus maximus], and whale sharks [Rhincodon typus]). This framework aided in identifying where such “marine roads” and marine giants are likely to interact and the consequences of those interactions. We also reviewed known impacts of shipping routes on these species, and then applied the road ecology framework to detect unknown and potentially threatening processes. In the marine environment, such a framework can be used to incorporate knowledge of existing shipping impacts into management practices, thereby reducing the detrimental effects of future expansion of shipping routes on marine giants.
Disputing research that depicts weak states getting overwhelmed by China’s financial might, this article argues that the political elites in a relatively weak and small state such as Malaysia are adept in engaging with a rising China to advance key projects, furthering their own agenda. In the case of Malaysia, the eventual outcome of this interaction is dependent on three key conditions: fulfilment of Malaysia’s longstanding pro-ethnic Malay policy, a mutual vision between the state and federal authorities, and advancement of geopolitical interests for both Malaysia and China. The article puts forward a typology illustrating various possible outcomes to examine the interconnections between key players at a time of Chinese ascendancy.
The environmental and social consequences of clearing tropical forests for palm oil and soybean monoculture have been analyzed in a number of studies and are widely recognized. Some initiatives and studies have examined portions of the supply chain from the perspective of individual companies and stages in the supply chain. We complement this work by providing a consistent, detailed, global trade-linked analysis of the four major vegetable oils, connecting land use for production and its biodiversity impact, through global supply chains, to final consumers. To this end, we develop a global model by fully integrating FAO's physical supply-utilization accounts into the environmentally extended multiregional input–output model EXIOBASE. Global supply chains are linked with the life-cycle impact assessment model LC-Impact to assess biodiversity impact of land use via global maps of oil crop cultivation. For the period 2000–2010, we find significant substitution of domestically produced oils with relatively low biodiversity impacts with Indonesian palm oil and Brazilian soybean oil for the major consuming countries, China, Europe and the US. Whereas soybean oil remains the vegetable oil with the largest impact on biodiversity at a global scale, biodiversity footprints of palm oil have grown substantially larger in the period 2000–2010, driven by demand from Europe and China. Our results suggest that demand-side policies focused on specific oils, such as palm oil, might lead to switching oils and unintended shifts of environmental impacts.
Ecosystems services (ES) assessment is a significant scientific topic recognized for its potential to address sustainability issues. However, there is an absence of science-policy frameworks in land use planning that lead to the ES science being used in policy. China's Ecological Redline Policy (ERP) is one of the first national policies utilizing multiple ES, but there is no standardized approach for working across the science-policy interface. We propose a transdisciplinary framework to determine ecological redline areas (ERAs) in Shanghai using: ES, biodiversity and ecologically fragile hotspots, landscape structure, and stakeholder opinions. We determine the five criteria to identify ERAs for Shanghai using multi-temporal, high resolution images (0.5 m) and biophysical models. We examine ERP effectiveness by comparing land use scenarios for 2040. Compared to alternative land uses, ES increase significantly under the ERP. The inclusion of ES in spatial planning led stakeholders to increase terrestrial habitat protection by 174% in Shanghai. Our analysis suggests that strategic planning for ES could reduce tradeoffs between environmental quality and development.
In an era of massive biodiversity loss, the greatest conservation success story has been
the growth of protected land globally. Protected areas are the primary defense against
biodiversity loss, but extensive human activity within their boundaries can undermine this.
Using the most comprehensive global map of human pressure, we show that 6 million
square kilometers (32.8%) of protected land is under intense human pressure. For
protected areas designated before the Convention on Biological Diversity was ratified in
1992, 55% have since experienced human pressure increases. These increases were lowest
in large, strict protected areas, showing that they are potentially effective, at least
in some nations. Transparent reporting on human pressure within protected areas is now
critical, as are global targets aimed at efforts required to halt biodiversity loss.
The Belt and Road Initiative will greatly influence the future of global trade. However, it may also promote permanent environmental degradation. We call for rigorous strategic environmental and social assessments, raising the bar for environmental protection worldwide.
The Indo-Malaysian region harbours some of the highest diversity globally, yet it is also has the highest rates of deforestation. Furthermore some countries have shown up-to a 10 times increase in the area deforested annually between 2001 and 2014. Large-scale forest clearance is preceded by the growth of road networks which provide a stark warning for the region's future as many of the roads established for clearance or infrastructure are illegal and unmapped. In some regions almost 100% of roads were previously unmapped on the global roads map, yet 99.9% of deforestation occurs within 2.5 km of these roads. In Borneo the majority of plantations are on an industrial-scale averaging over 10 km2 in size, whereas most of the region typically has plantations under 1 km2 integrated into a landscape mosaic, though the preliminary infrastructure for industrial plantations are being developed in parts of the region. Within the coming decade most of the region may lose almost all unprotected forests. As some countries have only 2% of their land-area protected this condemns many of the regions endemic species to extinction. Urgent measures are needed to protect a much larger proportion of remaining forest, as this offers the only means to protect many of the regions endemic species.
The distributions of amphibians, birds and mammals have underpinned global and local conservation priorities, and have been fundamental to our understanding of the determinants of global biodiversity. In contrast, the global distributions of reptiles, representing a third of terrestrial vertebrate diversity, have been unavailable. This prevented the incorporation of reptiles into conservation planning and biased our understanding of the underlying processes governing global vertebrate biodiversity. Here, we present and analyse the global distribution of 10,064 reptile species (99% of extant terrestrial species). We show that richness patterns of the other three tetrapod classes are good spatial surrogates for species richness of all reptiles combined and of snakes, but characterize diversity patterns of lizards and turtles poorly. Hotspots of total and endemic lizard richness overlap very little with those of other taxa. Moreover, existing protected areas, sites of biodiversity significance and global conservation schemes represent birds and mammals better than reptiles. We show that additional conservation actions are needed to effectively protect reptiles, particularly lizards and turtles. Adding reptile knowledge to a global complementarity conservation priority scheme identifies many locations that consequently become important. Notably, investing resources in some of the world’s arid, grassland and savannah habitats might be necessary to represent all terrestrial vertebrates efficiently.
In this chapter we provide practical suggestions, together with examples, to identify, monitor and mitigate railway barrier effects on wildlife, as this is considered one of the railways’ greatest impacts. Railways can be both physical and behavioral barriers to wildlife movement, as well as disturbance to populations living close to them. Also, mortality is recognized as an important contribution to the barrier effect. However, the consequences of habitat loss, and fragmentation due to railways alone remain largely unexplored. Barrier effects have mainly been mitigated with wildlife passes, with the effectiveness of this tool being one of the most-studied topics in Railway Ecology. Methods formerly employed to monitor pass usage, such as track beds or video-surveillance, are now being replaced by molecular ones. Among the latter methods, genetic fingerprinting allows individual-based approaches, opening the door to population-scale studies. In fact, genetic sampling allows for the assessment of functional connectivity, which is closely linked to successful reproduction and population viability, variables not necessarily coupled with crossing rates. There is strong evidence that railway verges offer new habitats for generalist species and for opportunistic individuals, a point that deserves to be experimentally explored in order to find wildlife-friendly policies. Preventing animals from crossing (e.g., by fencing), should be reserved for collision hotspots, as it increases barrier effects. Instead, it has been shown that warning signals or pole barriers effectively reduce collisions without increasing barrier effects. In this respect, we argue that computer simulations are a promising field to investigate potential impact scenarios. Finally, we present a protocol to guide planners and managers when assessing barrier effects, with emphasis on monitoring and mitigation strategies.
We assess progress toward the protection of 50% of the terrestrial biosphere to address the species-extinction crisis and conserve a global ecological heritage for future generations. Using a map of Earth's 846 terrestrial ecoregions, we show that 98 ecoregions (12%) exceed Half Protected; 313 ecoregions (37%) fall short of Half Protected but have sufficient unaltered habitat remaining to reach the target; and 207 ecoregions (24%) are in peril, where an average of only 4% of natural habitat remains. We propose a Global Deal for Nature—a companion to the Paris Climate Deal—to promote increased habitat protection and restoration, national-and ecoregion-scale conservation strategies, and the empowerment of indigenous peoples to protect their sovereign lands. The goal of such an accord would be to protect half the terrestrial realm by 2050 to halt the extinction crisis while sustaining human livelihoods.