scholarly journals Island climate change adaptation and global public goods within the Belt and Road Initiative

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-192
Author(s):  
Chunlin Li ◽  
Jianqing Chen ◽  
Adam Grydehøj
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Global Public Goods ◽  
Island States ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Belt And Road

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a project conceptualized and developed by the Chinese state, aims to enhance international cooperation, address issues of shared regional and global concern, and create opportunities for foreign direct investment in struggling economies. The BRI can be seen as a system for supplying global public goods, including sustainable development within which issues related to climate change sit. A great many small island states and territories are participating in the BRI, particularly in its constituent 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. However, the BRI has not yet placed sufficient focus on climate change adaptation or issues specific to small islands. Furthermore, the BRI’s conceptual basis in rhetoric of mutual dependence and a community of common destiny have not always been evident in the individual activities that have been carried out within the BRI. If the BRI’s goals are to be taken seriously, it must do more to focus on the needs and perspectives of island communities, particularly with regard to climate change adaptation. This paper presents a framework for action to strengthen the BRI’s approach to islands and climate change adaptation in terms of information sharing, scientific and technological cooperation, financial support, and capacity building within a global governance framework.

scholarly journals The Belt and Road Initiative and Global Governance in Transition

2017 ◽  
Vol 03 (02) ◽  
pp. 175-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhang Chun
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Ethical Standards ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Global Public Goods ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Common Destiny ◽  
The Belt And Road

As protectionism and isolationism rise against globalization, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) provides strong momentum for advancing the transformation of global governance. First, the BRI strengthens the awareness of building a community of common destiny for mankind and promotes the evolution of epistemology in global governance. Second, it offers more sustainable global public goods, thus improving ethical standards for global governance. Third, the BRI combines the top-down and bottom-up approaches to encourage voluntary actions in global governance. Fourth, the BRI draws on China’s own experience in integrating reform, development and stability, which helps balance the economic, social, ecological, and security dimensions of global governance, so as to foster common development among countries and regions along the routes and ultimately create a new equilibrium between South-South and North-South cooperation. Promoted through consultation to meet the interests of all, the BRI will make both tangible and intangible contributions to the transition of global governance by delivering public goods and enhancing the notion of compatible justice in a deglobalized world.

scholarly journals A road to island sovereignty and empowerment? Fiji’s aims within the Belt and Road Initiative

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrien Rodd
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Contested Space ◽  
Island States ◽  
Global Engagement ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
The Belt And Road

Though peripheral to China’s policies of global engagement, the small island developing states (SIDS) of the Pacific are becoming an annex to Beijing’s project for a 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Traditionally part of the West’s exclusive sphere of influence, the Pacific Islands have become a contested space, seeking to benefit from the rivalries between the major powers. Among the foremost of these small island states is Fiji, whose Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama has enhanced Fiji’s engagement with China. His government has sought to raise Fiji’s profile on the international stage, seeking to be a regional power among the small states of the Pacific, and to carry the latter’s voice and interests to global fora. Though on significantly different scales, both China and Fiji have embraced a form of ‘go global’ ambition. This paper examines the concrete and theoretical aspects of China’s involvement in Fiji within the BRI and what Beijing and Suva each hope to achieve from this partnership. It will consider potential long-term trends, and whether this initiative may be empowering for Fiji and will discuss whether a SIDS can repurpose to its own advantage a much more powerful state’s initiative, despite the latter’s relative lack of interest in remote small island countries.

Making Infrastructure ‘Visible’ in Environmental Law: The Belt and Road Initiative and Climate Change Friction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Sanja Bogojević ◽  
Mimi Zou
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Infrastructure Project ◽  
The Belt And Road ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract Infrastructure is often viewed through global and promotional lenses, particularly its role in creating market connectivity. However, infrastructure is heavily dependent on and constitutive of local spaces, where ‘frictions’, or disputes, emerge. Drawing on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a case study, we examine in detail two cases of BRI-related climate change litigation – one in Pakistan, and one in Kenya – that shed light on the frictions arising from what is deemed the most significant transnational infrastructure project of our time. In doing so, this study demonstrates how infrastructure can be made more visible in environmental law and how environmental law itself provides an important mechanism for stabilizing friction in the places where infrastructure is located.

scholarly journals Climate change adaptation as a development challenge to small Island states: A case study from the Solomon Islands

2020 ◽  
Vol 107 ◽  
pp. 179-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Leal Filho ◽  
Michael Otoara Ha'apio ◽  
Johannes M. Lütz ◽  
Chunlan Li
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Solomon Islands ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Island States ◽  
Small Island States

scholarly journals Silk Road archipelagos: Islands of the Belt and Road Initiative

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Adam Grydehøj ◽  
Sasha Davis ◽  
Rui Guo ◽  
Huan Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Silk Road ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Mediterranean Islands ◽  
Island States ◽  
Island Communities ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
The Belt And Road

The concept behind the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI; formerly ‘One Belt, One Road’) began to take shape in 2013. Since then, this Chinese-led project has become a major plank in China’s foreign relations. The BRI has grown from its basis as a vision of interregional connectivity into a truly global system, encompassing places—including many island states, territories, and cities—from the South Pacific to the Arctic, from East Africa to the Caribbean, from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. Islands and archipelagos are particularly prominent in the BRI’s constituent 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) and Polar Silk Road or Ice Silk Road projects, but little scholarly attention has been paid to how the BRI relates to islands per se. This special section of Island Studies Journal includes nine papers on islands and the BRI, concerning such diverse topics as geopolitics, international law and territorial disputes, sustainability and climate change adaptation, international relations of autonomous island territories, development of outer island communities, tourism and trade, and relational understandings of archipelagic networks. Taken together, these papers present both opportunities and risks, challenges and ways forward for the BRI and how this project may impact both China and island and archipelago states and territories.

scholarly journals Growing hope: Island agriculture and refusing catastrophe in climate change adaptation in Fiji

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-155
Author(s):  
Delilah Griswold
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
National Development ◽  
Adaptation Strategy ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Agricultural Modernization ◽  
Island States ◽  
Neoliberal Development ◽  
Adaptation Practices

In both media and policy, climate change is broadly framed as the promise of catastrophe for small island states such as Fiji. This framing is often used to attract adaptation investment in islands, the targets and directives of which are frequently market-based and oriented toward economic-growth development models. In Fiji, this takes the form of land tenure policy and efforts to attract investment to support agricultural modernization. Such a pattern is the source of scholarly and activist critique that climate change adaptation is nothing more than a repackaging of neoliberal development. This paper seeks to situate such critique alongside parallel attention to climate change adaptation practices emerging from alternative, hopeful frames and aimed at less national development driven efforts. In doing so, it centers adaptation as a space of unsettled struggle and asks, in what ways do climate change adaptation practices in Fiji align and conflict with dominant framing of island vulnerability and climate catastrophe, and how might they suggest alternative adaptive interventions that renegotiate these frames? Specifically, this paper focuses on efforts to promote ‘traditional’ agriculture throughout Fiji as an endogenous and hopeful form of adaptation, and one consistently opposed to efforts at agricultural modernization as an adaptation strategy.

scholarly journals Financing Climate Change Adaptation: International Initiatives

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6515
Author(s):  
Govinda R. Timilsina
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Least Developed Countries ◽  
Island States ◽  
Small Island States

Climate change adaptation is one of the main strategies to address global climate change. The least developed countries and the small island states that lack financial resources to adapt to climate change are the most vulnerable nations to climate change. Although it would be more economical to adapt to climate change compared to the anticipated damage of not doing so, the demand for capital is estimated to range to hundreds of billions. The crucial question is how to manage investments to adapt to climate change globally. This study provides an overview of existing international provisions on climate finance for adaptation. It includes provisions through international financial institutions, United Nations agencies, bilateral and multilateral channels, and the private sector. It also explores how private sector finance can be further attracted to invest in climate change adaptation.

The Belt and Road Initiative and Sino-Russian economic cooperation: Is there one more chance for us?

2019 ◽  
pp. 47-71
Author(s):  
Petr M. Mozias
Keyword(s):  
Regional Integration ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Flexible Framework ◽  
The One ◽  
International Transactions ◽  
The Belt And Road ◽  
Current Stage

China’s Belt and Road Initiative could be treated ambiguously. On the one hand, it is intended to transform the newly acquired economic potential of that country into its higher status in the world. China invites a lot of nations to build up gigantic transit corridors by joint efforts, and doing so it applies productively its capital and technologies. International transactions in RMB are also being expanded. But, on the other hand, the Belt and Road Initiative is also a necessity for China to cope with some evident problems of its current stage of development, such as industrial overcapacity, overdependence on imports of raw materials from a narrow circle of countries, and a subordinate status in global value chains. For Russia participation in the Belt and Road Initiative may be fruitful, since the very character of that project provides us with a space to manoeuvre. By now, Russian exports to China consist primarily of fuels and other commodities. More active industrial policy is needed to correct this situation . A flexible framework of the Belt and Road Initiative is more suitable for this objective to be achieved, rather than traditional forms of regional integration, such as a free trade zone.

Future climate change and its impacts over small island states

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 179-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Lal ◽  
H Harasawa ◽  
K Takahashi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Island States ◽  
Small Island States
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