Yesterday's Silk Road could be environmental superhighway in future: new study

The Belt and Road Initiative could be a superhighway of environmental progress, according to a new study by Michigan State University, detailed in this month's edition of Ecosystem Health and Sustainability.

The Belt and Road Initiative, which refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, brings together countries in Asia, Europe and even Africa via overland and maritime networks.

A group of sustainability scholars in the United States and China point out that the ambitious initiative, involving more than 100 countries and international organizations, also could create routes filled with opportunity.

"The Belt and Road Initiative could be built to guide great progress in global cooperation," said Jianguo "Jack" Liu, Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability at Michigan State University, in a statement.

The authors of the report "New road for telecoupling global prosperity and ecological sustainability" use the new integrated telecoupling framework, which allows scientists to understand and govern the interconnections of socioeconomic and environmental issues that span the globe. That would allow factoring the changes that ripple across the lands, accounting for what otherwise might be unforeseen and unintended consequences.

The group of sustainability scholars stress that an enterprise as sweeping as this initiative demands new, more holistic ways to understand its effects.

The stakes are particularly high with environmental concerns such as climate change, air and water pollution and food security demand immediate solutions, said Liu, director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS).

"Environmental challenges like climate change; biodiversity loss; desertification; air, water, soil, and ocean pollution; and natural disasters rarely honor man-made borders, so now is the time to start building mechanisms to create environmental wins. But this also requires a sophisticated way of understanding the impacts that come with change," he said.

The scholars believe that the Belt and Road Initiative will touch international organizations and countries even if it doesn't physically flow through them.

Among the group's suggestions, they recommend that groups like the United Nations could and should have roles to smooth progress in areas in which all share a fate, such as climate adaptation and mitigation and poverty alleviation.

Environmental problems flow over boundaries. The authors say new ways are called for to share both challenges and opportunities. They suggest innovative research to create realistic cost-benefit understandings across distances.

The group also suggest to build infrastructure that pulls the many nations together to allocate people, resources and energy equitably and efficiently; boost technological transfer with cultural and religious exchanges,etc. Enditem