Ecology and environment of the Belt and Road under global climate change: A systematic review of spatial patterns, cost efficiency, and ecological footprints

Zhang, Dawei; Wu, Lingling; Huang, Siqi; Zhang, Zongyan; Ahmad, Fayyaz; Zhang, Guolong; Shi, Ning; Xu, Hui

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2021.108237

Cited by 31 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 130 publications

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“…It is a brand-new and grand initiative that has attracted worldwide attention 3 , 4 . Due to the main portion of the B&R being located in arid or semi-arid areas or sub-humid ecologically fragile zones, with the sensitive, fragile and weak self-recovery ability of the eco-environment, its response to intensified global climate change and human activities will become more sensitive 5 , 6 . Thus, its sustainable development issues have attracted worldwide attention 2 , 7 .…”

Section: Background and Summarymentioning

confidence: 99%

Database of human well-being and eco-sustainability under planetary pressures of the Belt and Road 1990–2018

et al. 2023

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The Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative is considered as closely aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and could have a huge global impact. Its sustainable development issues have attracted worldwide attention. However, both the existing research and data accumulation on this aspect are seriously insufficient. Starting from the logic of the ultimate goal of sustainable development (namely within the ecological limitations, maximizing human well-being with minimum ecological consumption and minimizing the planetary pressures with maximum resource utilization efficiency), we have constructed a comprehensive evaluation method on sustainable development, namely the Consumption-Pressure-Output-Efficiency method in our previous study. Based on it, we provide a database with five datasets, which includes four core datasets (ecological consumption, planetary pressures, human well-being outputs and ecological well-being output efficiency) and a related dataset (biocapacity, ecological surplus/deficit, population), covering 61 B&R countries, B&R regional average and global average from 1990 to 2018. It can be used for further comprehensive research on sustainable development under planetary pressures and others of B&R.

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Section: Background and Summarymentioning

confidence: 99%

Database of human well-being and eco-sustainability under planetary pressures of the Belt and Road 1990–2018

et al. 2023

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“…Most of the countries in the Belt and Road region are developing countries in semiarid and arid areas with relatively lower income levels, high rural poverty and heavy environmental threats, making its vegetation highly sensitive to climate change and anthropogenic activities over multiple timescales [ 52 , 55 , 56 , 57 ]. Climate change dominates the overall vegetation coverage change in Belt and Road region, with warmer temperatures and droughts the likely main causes of the greening to browning shifts [ 52 , 58 ]. Moreover, anthropogenic activities such as deforestation, agricultural cultivation, and unplanned urbanization have dramatically changed vegetation at short time scales [ 57 ].…”

Section: Ecological Environment Status In Belt and Road Initiative Re...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Status and Prospect of Ecological Environment in the Belt and Road Initiative Regions

Qin

Huang

2022

IJERPH

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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.

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“…In fact, the B&R region has a complex and fragile ecosystem, which mainly includes arid, semi-arid and sub-humid regions. Moreover, its response to intensified global climate change and human activity is predicted to become more sensitive [ 6 , 11 ]. Consequently, it is understandable that economic and social development may generate some inevitable influences on the ecological environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatio-Temporal Changes in Ecosystem Quality across the Belt and Road Region

Wei,

Cheng,

Yang

et al. 2023

Sensors

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The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative (BRI) proposed in 2013 by China has greatly accelerated the social and economic development of the countries along the Belt and Road (B&R) region. However, the international community has questioned its impact on the ecological environment and a comprehensive assessment of ecosystem quality changes is lacking. Therefore, this study proposes an objective and automatic method to assess ecosystem quality and analyzes the spatiotemporal changes in the B&R region. First, an ecosystem quality index (EQI) is established by integrating the vegetation status derived from three remote sensing ecological parameters including the leaf area index, fractional vegetation cover and gross primary productivity. Then, the EQI values are automatically categorized into five ecosystem quality levels including excellent, good, moderate, low and poor to illustrate their spatiotemporal changes from the years 2016 to 2020. The results indicate that the spatial distributions of the EQIs across the B&R region exhibited similar patterns in the years 2016 and 2020. The regions with excellent levels accounted for the lowest proportion of less than 12%, while regions with moderate, low and poor levels accounted for more than 68% of the study area. Moreover, based on the EQI pattern analysis between the years 2016 and 2020, the regions with no significant EQI change accounted for up to 99.33% and approximately 0.45% experienced a significantly decreased EQI. Therefore, this study indicates that the ecosystem quality of the B&R region was relatively poor and experienced no significant change in the five years after the implementation of the “Vision and Action to Promote the Joint Construction of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road”. This study can provide useful information for decision support on the future ecological environment management and sustainable development of the B&R region.

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Ecology and environment of the Belt and Road under global climate change: A systematic review of spatial patterns, cost efficiency, and ecological footprints

Cited by 31 publications

References 130 publications

Database of human well-being and eco-sustainability under planetary pressures of the Belt and Road 1990–2018

Database of human well-being and eco-sustainability under planetary pressures of the Belt and Road 1990–2018

Status and Prospect of Ecological Environment in the Belt and Road Initiative Regions

Spatio-Temporal Changes in Ecosystem Quality across the Belt and Road Region

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