 Hello, all, and welcome to our panel. We'll just be getting started in a couple of minutes. Good morning, everybody, and welcome back to the 2021 Epic Symposium. We will now progress to the panel, Buckling the Belt, Environment Development, and the Belt and Road Initiative. My name is Arjun Padalkar, and I am a fourth year student in this year's Epic class, majoring in quantitative economics and international relations. I'm joined by my fellow co-moderator, David Zhang, who is a second year student in this year's Epic class. In today's panel, we look forward to discussing China's environmental policies and climate leadership at home and abroad. We will be discussing how China will factor in environmental standards into one of the most ambitious infrastructure development projects in world history, the Belt and Road Initiative. China accounts for roughly 28% of global carbon dioxide emissions, which is roughly the same as the next three emitters, the United States, the European Union, and India. To remedy this, President Xi Jinping has embarked on an impressive mission to be carbon neutral by 2060. The CCP has set ambitious goals to peak carbon emissions well before 2030 and aspires to radically cut down carbon funding. However, China's vast and expansive Belt and Road Initiative that has been signed by two-thirds of the world's countries has been heavily criticized for accelerating ecological damage in host countries. This panel will delve into the nature of the relationship between China's environmental leadership and the Belt and Road Initiative. Can China's development and environmental goals be harmonious? What does the situation look like on the ground in some of the BRI signatory countries? I'd like to introduce David Zhang. Thanks, Sergeant. Before I introduce our panelists, I want to explain how the panel will run. For the purposes of encouraging as much discussion as possible, each panelist has been asked to give opening remarks of five minutes, and then we will open the panel to discussion among our speakers and then open it to the audience for questions and answers. We have a distinguished group of panelists today, and we will give a brief introduction about some of the work they have done in the context of our panel. In the chat, you will find a link to the symposium program with their full bios. We begin with Dr. Joyce Massouya. Dr. Joyce Massouya is the Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environmental Program. Ms. Massouya has more than 20 years of extensive experience in international development strategy, operations, knowledge management, and partnerships across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Prior to joining the United Nations Environment Program, Ms. Massouya served as Advisor to the World Bank's Vice President East Asia and Pacific Region in Washington, DC. Welcome, Dr. Massouya. Thank you very much, David, and thank you, Arjun, and good morning, the panelists. I'm in Nairobi, Kenya, so it's afternoon here. I'm really delighted to be invited to this panel, but let me start my opening remarks with actually a personal, a bit of personal perspective. I grew up in a country called Tanzania in the 70s, and even then, as a child, I did see firsthand the challenges of having intermittent electricity, water shortages, bad roads. I can go on and on and on. I have also lived in China, in South Korea, and now I'm in Kenya. What I'm coming to realize with my global experience, so many communities in the world, and I would actually dare to say communities in the 60 or so countries that are part of China's Belt and Road Initiative, they will tell you the same thing, that they wish for the same thing, better roads, better electricity, more reliable source of energy. They want a decent supply of water, so their kids could go to school rather than go and fetch water. They want the roads and railways that can connect and promote trade across countries. So I've seen this personally, but I've also seen it as part of my job, both in my previous employer, the World Bank Group, and now with the United Nations Environment Program. But we all know that there is a dark side to the expansion of HUD infrastructure. Done badly, the environmental and social cost can tremendously be high. Big infrastructure projects often go hand in hand with pollution, waste, and in the greenhouse gas emissions that fuel the climate crisis. So the critical question becomes, how do we provide, excuse me, for the basic needs of people without having humanity's long-term ability to flourish as a species? We all know that the planet does not have a vaccine. With the global population expected to grow by two billion people within 30 years and with a triple planetary crisis of loss of natural diversity, pollution, and climate intensifying. Answering this question is one of the biggest challenges we face. How we finance the infrastructure projects of tomorrow is a central part of the answer. And China's Belt and Road Initiative provides a powerful example of some of the opportunities, but also the challenges that lie ahead. Warringly, the largest share of the BRIs energy investments are going on power plants that burn coal, the dirtiest form of energy, and science has spoken. In fact, about 85% of BRI projects are linked to high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. If built, this would eat up a significant amount of the carbon budget. We have to keep temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius. But there are positive signs that things are improving. China's overseas investments in clean energy have generally been on the rise. Its Ministry of Ecology and Environment has begun to classify BRI projects based on their environmental impact. Projects involving coal and hydropower, for example, face stricter controls and regulations and could end up being excluded altogether. China and its international partners have also established a green investments principle, some of China's biggest policy banks have signed up to these principles. These are welcoming moves, but much more needs to be done. More BRI investments must be channeled into low carbon and inclusive infrastructure projects that boost resilience and strengthen nature's ability to improve human being. The incentive to do so is there. Investing in energy efficiency and renewables generate five times more jobs than equivalent investments in fossil fuels. This is particularly relevant given the current context. With the right type of green financing, the BRI has the power to play an incredibly, incredibly positive role in how countries recover from the economic and social harm caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. So to a larger degree, the BRI mirrors what we see with infrastructure investments around the world. High level commitments to sustainability with mixed results on the ground. This is not good enough if we are going to meet the Paris targets and the sustainable development goals. A massive scaling up of investments in sustainable infrastructure is badly needed. With the recovery stimulus packages, currently being put in place, governments have a real and unique opportunity to turn commitments, aspirations into action. They must not waste it. So I'm really excited to having a discussion as part of this panel. Thank you, David. Thank you for your remarks. Next, we have Dr. Rishikesh Bandari who is a post doctoral scholar at the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts. He is an expert on climate finance and international climate negotiations. His research focuses on how developing countries mobilize finance from different international sources. His current work revolves around the deployment of renewable energy through the Belt and Road Initiative. Welcome, Dr. Bandari. Great, thank you so much. First of all, thank you for organizing this panel, David and Arjun on this very important topic. And thank you, Taijil, for hosting these epic symposiums which I know we all look forward to. So let me just start by, you know, framing the discussion a bit in terms of the basic point that I want to make here today, which is, you know, often in the press, you'll hear calls on China to change its investment policies. And so in a sense, you could describe these calls as focusing on the supply, right? Sort of the supply of Chinese investments going out. And the point that I would like to make here today is that in addition to this very important, you know, discussion on supply, we also have to focus on the other part of the picture, which is the demand. Because if you do not think about the supply and the demand together, we are not going to get a comprehensive picture of what exactly is happening on the ground. So what does a demand-based perspective tell us I would like to make sort of three general points on this. The first point is that we really need to focus on updating energy planning in developing countries. Most of the cold build out that we are seeing or that we have seen in the last decade of the 2010s, that largely reflects the policy thinking, planning thinking that went into effect in the early part of the decade, right? So of course, policymakers were thinking about the economics of renewables versus coal based on what the prices were almost 10 years ago. And so if we are to make sure that we truly reflect the advances that have been made over the last 10 years, there has to be a systematic effort to update these plans. Of course, some of these are already being done in the course of the new round of pledges under the Paris Agreement. However, there has to be a very clear focus on the energy side and the energy planning as well to make sure that these plans are truly up to date. Now, the second aspect is that we have to focus explicitly on renewable energy. And what I mean by that is yes, there are extremely important calls for there to be a phasing out of coal-fired power plants. However, the assumption that is often found in those discussions is that simply stopping financing from going towards coal is somehow going to automatically jump towards renewables. And that assumption I think is a little too strong and often is under the surface, but I think needs to be brought to the surface to be really examined critically because it may be true in certain instances where there is the fungibility of money that goes from coal to move over to renewables. But I would argue that it's not automatic and therefore there is substantial room for countries that host these investments to actually change their policies so that they consciously tilt the scale towards renewables away from fossil fuels. So a very conscious and intentional effort in focusing on renewable energy policies would be my second point. And finally, and this is what I will close on is we really need to foreground what the needs really are, right? Because we're talking about developing countries that have, as was mentioned earlier in this panel, that have really real infrastructure, energy, drinking water, a whole array of needs that really need to be filled. And so I think thinking about what the needs are first rather than what the sources are and a pretty dichotomous debate around whether it's Chinese or American or any other source of money, I think would really help us to think about how can we exactly meet these needs? What would these sources of finance be? Therefore would be a derivative or a sort of a secondary question once you foreground what exactly needs to be done on the ground. And so I think it's important for us to capture the nuances in a holistic way. And I think really thinking about what exactly are the needs on the ground really has to be the starting point, I think, for these discussions so that we're able to think about these sources in a way that actually truly reflects what countries need on the ground. So I'll stop there. Thank you, Dr. Bondari for your remarks. Our third panelist today is Dr. Elizabeth Losses, who is a senior fellow at the Nicholas Institute. She is currently exploring how to plan for and optimize the environmental impact of infrastructure expansion in Asia, Africa, and Europe that is stimulated by China's new Silk Road Initiative. Welcome, Dr. Losses. Thank you, David, and thank you all for having me join you. This is a wonderful opportunity and great panelists to be speaking with. The topic of your symposium is incredibly timely and anybody who has been reading the news in the last couple of days knows that the tensions between particularly the US and China are hitting a boiling point. And often the environment is seen, particularly climate, is seen as one of the sort of potential bright spots out there where there actually might be some global cooperation that moves us in a very positive direction as compared to many of these other tough issues that the world is facing. And what I wanna argue today is that with my points is that we actually may be at an inflection point sort of building on the last two speakers and what the next speaker is gonna say, this actually could be an opportunity on one hand. We could sort of, China could continue with the Belt Road and business as usual where they double down on a lot of the investments already being made as we heard investments in coal and otherwise, or this really could be the moment when there is a shift towards a lot of the types of investments that we just heard about in the last two talks. So what I wanna do is talk about three points. Briefly, the first one is that actually China has already started to do a revision of the Belt Road. They've already sort of looking at 2.1. The second point is that there is a global movement which might present an opportunity with the build back better in this post-pandemic moment. And then finally that there are some unique opportunities that exist that might allow this movement. But first let me give a little bit more background on the Belt Road. The Belt Road has been around since 2013. It was really the development of infrastructure lending that China was already doing, but then became coalesced as the Belt Road. And from the very beginning, there was this piece of the Belt Road which is called a Green Belt Road and a movement. China was promoting the movement towards eco-civilization which is embedded in China's five-year plan. And the Belt Road was gonna be this wonderful people-to-people cooperation to reach that. And President Xi has actually been very supportive of this. There was an analysis by Bloomberg Intelligence Services that showed that by 2015 his speeches to the Party Congress already used environment, the term environment more than economics or economy, which is sort of extraordinary. And indeed, beginning in say 2012, there were a whole series of guidelines and decrees and corporate social responsibility standards around specifically the Belt Road and we're generally overseas lending that really put out aspirational environmental and social goals that if they were actually followed through would probably represent the most progressive environmental global agenda the world had ever seen. But what we know and what we've heard from previous speakers and we'll hear from the next is that on the ground, that actually hasn't happened. There's a big disconnect between the rhetoric at the highest level and what's actually happening through Belt Road on the ground. There are some bright spots, but there are a lot of issues, whether it's all the coal plants that are being financed or dams such as in Indonesia that is risking the Banteng Toru hydropower project that is risking extinction of orangutan subspecies or resource finance agreements and Ghana that link infrastructure with the development really unsustainable and very harmful both from a environmental and health perspective of block site mining whole range of these opportunities. And why this discrepancy occurs we can talk about but I would say the Chinese expression the mountains are high and the emperor is far away sort of sums it up that even though the central party is pushing this and it's really present and she's agenda those that are taking the action on the ground don't really feel compelled most of these guidelines are in fact that guidelines. So we can talk about that more but I wanna mention these three points which make one thing that this could be an inflection point first of all China has greatly pulled back in its investment the central policy bank which does most of the lending their infrastructure lending has dropped by more than 90% since 2016. This has been done quietly China doesn't talk about this but there's really been a retrenching there's much more discussion of quality infrastructure rather than the initial push to just get infrastructure out. And right now of course then COVID came along and these loans diminished even more. And so now what you see is this moment where BRI is likely to pick back up again but perhaps in a different venue. Second of all the global environment has also changed build back better which was started by the UN in the Sendai forum right now is seen there's a broad consensus that infrastructure lending should move in this direction. And the Biden administration in particular is behind this and interestingly the Biden administration is focusing more on loans through this newly Trump created development finance corporation which sort of matches the BRI whereas China in the last few years have focused more on assistance and just put out an important white paper this year which sort of matches Western lending. So there's this moment where Western whether it's the EU's Green Deal South Korea's new Green Deal the US has built back better are beginning to sort of come into alignment in a way that China which already has this green BRI blueprint could easily join in this. And then my final point is that this is a big year for the environment on the international stage. The UN environment program has just in their recent environmental assembly put out some best practices for sustainable infrastructure. We have of course the global climate talks and finally and importantly China is actually hosting the biodiversity talks and we should not get so focused on energy that we don't see a lot of the impact on the environment and a lot of the health and human relations from ecosystem services. And so in Kunming which is coming up this fall China has a real opportunity to take that moment and really grab the global stage. So happy to go into any of these points more but I will cut off there. Thank you Dr. Losis for your remarks. Our last panelist but certainly not least today is Dr. Jennifer Turner who is the director of the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center where she researches and leads dialogue about the energy and environmental challenges especially relating to water, energy and green civil society issues. Welcome Dr. Turner. Hey there, thanks so much for having me. I love having conversations with smart folks like this. Yes, as you mentioned I'm at the China Environment Forum and I'm very lucky cause I have a kind of a front row seat working with Chinese NGOs, government researchers who focus on domestic greening issues but also the Belt and Road. Gonna start out with a story, okay? A little bright light like Elizabeth was pointing out. So a couple of years ago in July 2018 a Chinese environmental lawyer named Zhang Jingjing she appeared in a court in Ecuador to support the Canari-Kitra indigenous community that was trying to stop and close a mine that a Chinese company was building inside the Cajus Nature Reserve which was actually illegal to build in a nature reserve but let's move on. Now it ended up being a historical decision. The Ecuadorian judge ordered the company to halt their mining activities because they had not consulted with the indigenous communities and obtain their permission. Now the judge made the decision because Zhang Jingjing she's kind of like the Aaron Brockovich of China she did a lot of cases in China against polluters and you know, mapped down companies now she's taken it onto the road. Now the judge made his decision because she argued in court and this is the first time someone ever succeeded in doing this was that Chinese law requires companies abide by both international treaties and Chinese domestic law. And Zhang noted that China has signed the UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples and China has their own environmental regulations on environmental impact assessments prior consent of communities and none of that was done. So boom the mining company couldn't had to stop. Now this highlights kind of an environmental victory for a project that was poorly located in terms of environmental and social impacts but it also highlights kind of a growing trend I've seen over the past, you know since actually since Belt and Road even before Belt and Road started about really 10 years ago where Chinese environmentalists, lawyers, researchers and NGOs have been getting involved in kind of being watchdogs for China's overseas investments but also empowering the communities where the investment is going. Today Zhang Jingjing has been working with some environmental lawyers in Zimbabwe around what's called the Sunhua coal plant which is gonna be I think one of the largest in Zimbabwe and some of the issues here is that in terms of inadequate environmental impact assessment coal-fired power plants the ones that China's building are not as high-quality as the ones in China. The ones in China are ultra super critical coal-fired power plants that you are 40% more efficient use less coal, less water but this one in Zimbabwe is gonna be one of those thirsty plants. Well, there isn't enough water nearby so of course the Chinese can conveniently build a water transfer project that would be taking water from a trans-boundary reservoir breaking laws left and right, right? So Jingjing's working on this space but there are other organizations I'd like to just, there's one group that who I've worked with over the years called the Global Environmental Institute, Beijing NGO, kind of a think tank NGO and they do the same kind of things like a lot of US and European groups that are looking at China's Belt and Road they do research, they're kind of tracking the investments but it was unusual to have a Chinese NGO that they're also tracking what is China doing in terms of coal-fired power investments how clean or dirty are these plants but also their first project was in Africa where they were working in Cameroon, Congo, Uganda, Mozambique and they were doing journalist trainings and exchanges bringing journalists from the region to China to learn about how to be better environmental reporters and wanting them to focus on China, Africa, timber issues because there was a lot of cases a lot of China's BRI investments building roads, building trains opens up forests and then the timber companies can come in they also were doing research on export import laws and practices that were being violated in this kind of timber trade and they've done other works in other sectors in terms like in Southeast Asia they've been building the capacity of NGOs there to kind of be watchdogs for certain projects but the nice thing is with this group and there's some others in China that are also helping to build the capacity and understanding of the Chinese government of the environmental impact so it's one of the bright lights that Dr. Lois was talking it's a different bright light I wanted to shine is that there is this kind of like bottom-up movement and in terms of like another renewable energy WWF China and a Chinese group Green Innovation Hub they've been doing assessments in Southeast Asia of what's the potential for renewable energy because Dr. Bondari said these renewable energy projects aren't getting out, right? Well, they're looking at some of the obstacles and identifying opportunities so in some ways it's really exciting for me to see the kind of roadmap that Chinese NGOs are doing something that I could go into a little bit more in the Q&A but I'll highlight here is that a lot of the problems with BRI problems is that there's a lack of transparency agreements are made very quickly so you don't have the environmental impact assessment statements, there's not continued community engagement and there's even I think that I'm sure Dr. Bondari you prior frustrated with this there's no good database on what even are the BRI projects and there's a lot of like Boston University and WWF all these people are gathering them but the Chinese government itself doesn't maintain a list that shows who's bid, where is it? Is there an environmental impact assessment? And that kind of transparency is gonna be crucial if we really wanna green that Belt and Road. I will stop here and let's open up for questions. Thank you Dr. Turner for your remarks. Now I'll pass it over to Arjun. Thank you so much Dr. Turner and the rest of the panelists, your remarks were so insightful and I'm sure that the audience would be racking their heads to get questions in the chat but while we prepare for that we would encourage any comments or questions between the panelists and themselves. We encourage any questions or comments on what the other panelists have mentioned or any other interesting facts. Feel free to come off mute as well. If not, I also have an introductory question that we can get the ball rolling with and it's something that connects it with the recent times as well. So China has recently announced its 14th five year plan which involves significant changes to the economic roadmap of the country but that also has significant impacts for how the climate considerations involves. So my question to the panelists is that considering development which is a high priority for the Chinese government how can they involve environmental impacts into their regulations? Can I jump in kind of related to that? So the 14th five year plan was there's been talk that there's a little bit of disappointment in that it doesn't seem as kind of aggressive on climate as they would want but what is notable is that the 14th five year plan still continues the war on pollution because that's been and which is linked to the climate problem if coal and car emissions are a big source of air pollution but also source of climate emissions. And one area that I thought that China's still emphasizing that wasn't brought up yet today but green ports have you guys heard about this that starting back in 2015 China was having big problems because they're the number one Shanghai the busiest port in the world. So lots of air pollution and of course there's diesel so that is also greenhouse gases. And so China kind of they started an action plan and so they're having like a war on pollution from ports and they've done amazing work sometimes also work like Shanghai works with the port of LA to work on greening their port not only shifting away the requiring low sulfur fuels from boats, they have stricter standards on what type of fuel that these boats can use they monitor it very well. They also have more and more of their ports of what's called shore power where when boats come in they kind of like picture a giant plug they plug their boat in so they're not spewing diesel out again cleaner and greener. And one question that I've been kind of pondering and I'm starting to talk with people at the Ministry of Transportation like how do you take this good this is a good practice, right? They're greening their ports the air quality is getting better which has a good climate impact. How do you take this on the Belt and Road? And that so I'm answering your question with the question but it's just there are other examples of this in China too. They've been pushing building energy efficiency why aren't they taking that on the road? You know, so that there's a lots of opportunities kind of like, you know Elizabeth I was thinking that that's another kind of opportunity where China could take some of their domestic practices besides renewables onto the Belt and Road. So I will mute here and let other people say things. Ajun, if I may come in I would like to build on the previous speaker by giving two perspectives. I think one of the areas that probably we have not touched upon in this panel is the role of BRI countries recipient. I mean, we've talked a lot about what China can and should do, but I think we should not lose sight of the fact that BRI is a financing mechanism. And from what you see including in literature particularly in developing countries the recipient BRI countries do have a role to set the guardrails when it comes to regulatory environment to negotiate on the kinds of financing tenure they want. And we see this by the way with traditional donors what others call traditional mature donors and China when it comes to financing particularly infrastructures they're really a new kid on the block. What we are seeing for example in some developing countries where you have sensible, sustainable BRI investments the recipient country have a role to play in setting what the regulatory mechanisms should be what the terms of financing should be including environmental and social standards according to international. So we should not lose sight of the role of BRI recipient countries. And most of them I think the previous actually you Arjun alluded to it comes to the tension between development and climate. You have limited budget. For example, I mean, you look at a country like Kenya or a number of middle income countries they have quite a significant poverty population. The inequality story is just daunting and not to mention now that COVID hit and the economics have slowed down there are other multi-dimensional challenges. So when it comes to actually making choices we have to keep on working with the recipient countries to actually help them build on good international standards. You mentioned the fourth year of five plan and the previous speaker talked about a pollution. I would absolutely agree with her I would actually give a specific example I moved to China Beijing in 2011 with my kids and then I can assure you even letting my son goes out to play soccer was a daunting proposition because everything was very heavy when it comes to PM 2.5 indicators they were really off the chart. But fast forward now as part of deliberate five year plans there have been improvements but the scale of improvement and the pace of improvement has not been as fast. In 2019 we hosted our world environment day celebration global celebrations in China because of the progress that was made based on scientific data in a place where like Beijing where in 2011 the story was very, very different. What I'm trying to say here is improvements in environmental dimensions particularly the transitional costs from they take time. In Kenya for example, what we are seeing the cost of renewable energies with all good intention of upper middle class wanting to buy they just can't afford it because it's still very, very high. So there is a cost implication of clean energy and that's where again, we can come and help to see how can we lower the cost so the demand and supply can actually be aligned. I'll stop here. Could I ask Joyce a question? Well, or anyone on the panel. I was the Asian society published a report I was an advisor on it a little bit. A report on the Belt and Road navigating the Belt and Road. And one of the recommendations was to kind of goes on with this need for transparency but they had suggested and I think they're suggesting to the Chinese government that they create a BRI project preparation fund so that they could that would award grants and other support to less develop BRI applicant countries that would enable them to kind of either conduct or commission kind of a needs and feasibility analysis reports. So that way that it would because of course the Chinese companies will come in and said, we've done an assessment, right? And so this way to kind of create a third party mechanism and I was kind of intrigued with this proposal because I'm like, hmm, so the Chinese government because maybe they wouldn't recommend that they do the Chinese project but I thought it was a kind of an interesting example of building the very from the before the project starts building the capacity of the host country to ensure that the projects are appropriate, bankable and sustainable. Is this kind of a crazy sounding idea? I mean, I don't think it's gone anywhere but have you heard anyone talk any of you heard anyone talk about this about? I mean, this is like before the Chinese company could even start the project there has to be a grant to help them make sure that this is what the country wants what they need, Dr. Bandari, right? I mean, if I could, I mean I wouldn't say it's an off the chart idea I think what I would say is one has to look at what are the I think one of Dr. Bandari mentioned demand and supply because frankly, even developing countries and emerging economies you have quite a bit of diversity you have, for example, countries that have matured and they're comfortable dealing with international financiers including development financing financial institutions that actually invest in infrastructure so they do have in-house if you like capacity of doing EIAs environmental impact assessment or social impact assessment even before the project concept idea has been matured but you have other countries for example, fragile states that just don't have the capacity and that's where the grant mechanism would actually help to finance capacity building in recipient countries I think the regulatory dimension the laws and practices that are put in recipient countries are equally important but not just the laws the laws are great but even better the compliance because you can have the laws on the books but if dams are built communities are affected environmental standards are not followed then you do need to take people to court what we are doing in UN environment for example, we're working with the court system in different countries to try and strengthen the legislative experience we do also convening we do convene meetings between developing countries so they can learn because most of the environmental international standards now, I mean, they're quite well known and there is track record from different DFIs over to you so if I can jump in here briefly I think this notion of a project preparation facility makes a lot of sense when finance is distinct from the actual project and in many of these BRI cases that's not the case where oftentimes they already have the finance there and then, so in a sense it's far more bundled in terms of who does the procurement and who is going to finance so I feel like this kind of bundling is not necessarily the case how commercial finance operates more broadly speaking but I think in the Chinese context it's a bit different maybe this will be applicable as the participants sort of broaden and in a bit mature sort of direction have a different sense of exactly how they would sort of do the commercial financing but I think where and this goes to Joyce's point about the importance of regulatory capabilities I think there certainly is a case to be made for equipping these countries to be able to really enforce existing laws because we've seen in so many cases and I can give you some examples for example in Indonesia where the coal-fired power plants yes, they did an EIA on the books but it wasn't really an EIA that you would really sort of be confident about and so I think and a large part of that is because of the lack of compliance of existing policies these aren't necessarily new policies but this is existing policies on the books and so I think some kind of a support facility to strengthen and enable the regulatory teeth if you will the countries have would I think make a big difference but in terms of bankability because financing works a little bit differently than sort of the bread and butter DFI financing I'm not convinced that there is a case to be made for bankability as sort of the way to get the financing facility to contribute So I will jump in now there's a lot said there and I have a lot to respond but I just wanna make four points I think in response to all of these various comments the first is something that is implied by many of these points is that early stage upstream planning is critical whether it's the coming up with an energy plan or strategic environmental assessment that perhaps is across borders and a lot of these issues if there was good planning ahead of time would help put in place what needs to happen and actually making it happen isn't always the case but if you don't have early planning you're not likely to get there and that is definitely a role that whether it's multilateral development banks or UN agencies or bilateral programs even, I mean, this can be something that China can take on for example, China and Brazil have put together a list of infrastructure that Brazil wants that China might be willing to finance if there's actually a plan ahead of time with well thought out regardless of what sector you're in and ideally it's done cross sector you're really much more likely to end up where you wanna be and how that's done there are lots of options one possibility is there's actually a fund a facility that was initially set up by the World Bank and is housed under the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank an endowment that whose mandate is essentially this although I don't think it's really doing much yet at this point but that might be one place to really help do this planning my second point which is kind of going down at a much lower level and I think following on Jennifer's original points is part of the problem and part of the problem with regulatory enforcement is that a lot of these countries are not as familiar with Chinese projects and investments even though they've been going on for a while there are cultural differences there are language barriers and there's just not an understanding the multilateral development banks have spent 30 years developing a system of safeguards and procedures and transparency to a large degree it works sometimes it doesn't always work but it's pretty clear what the process is and it's more opaque with these Chinese grants it's not that loans investments, aid all sorts of things and it's not necessarily that China is trying to be I mean at some levels there is a degree of opacity that is desirable but a lot of it is these state-owned enterprises just they have no background with working with NGOs working with a group like some of these various local NGOs in country or local governments where they work from the beginning they hold participatory many of these companies are perfectly willing to do this it's just this isn't in their wheelhouse and they also that English might be the language of communication but you're working in South America say where you've got native Chinese speakers, native Spanish speakers and just a difficulty in the exchange so there's a whole level of trying to bridge that gap perhaps with a stronger development of helping build up the capacity both in China but also in these many of these BRI countries to share experiences, to build up a community of practice to build up ability to learn from each other and then my final point is just going back to the original question the original question I think was based more on domestic activities and as you go, China goes abroad a lot of the controls, a lot of the Chinese regulations don't apply for what Chinese companies even state-owned enterprises are doing abroad but one level which I think has the opportunity to really move forward is through the industry associations which have actually developed some very progressive social responsibility guidelines but they're not enforced many of the member companies don't even know about them but to work through the Chinese industry associations might be one way to really get some of these SOEs on board. Thank you so much panelists for your really invigorating discussion between yourselves and I think that's been perfect time for adding the questions into the mix as well and a lot of the students are particularly interested with the impacts on the recipient countries so I think we can begin with that as well so our first question is from an Epic student Carlos who asks, does the BRI provide tangible increases in social capital in the countries where it is present and to what extent do the Chinese train and hire locally and please feel free to get off mute and answer the question. Sorry, can you repeat the second part of the question Arjun? Yes, absolutely. The question asks, to what extent do the Chinese train and hire locally in the recipient countries of BRI investment? Okay, thanks. So let me tackle the second one, the second beat of the question. It goes back to my point about regulation. I can tell you a number of countries that I know in Asia but also here in Africa because they have very stringent labor regulations like for example for most companies if you go to China and you want to invest you have to do joint ventures, you have to employ X number of Chinese so some of the BRI recipient countries in their laws have actually put that. Rwanda is one of the countries for example where they do require actually locally made local job creation if you like as part of some of these initiatives. On the social capital part it depends how you define it. I mean, you look for example in a number of middle income countries you see quite significant inward investments especially on roads, energy plants as well as dams that are being discussed as part of the bilateral financing program. And I think there were lots of questions about transparency and it's a valid point because a lot of data is a bit patchy sometimes actually you have to obtain the data from the BRI recipient countries. But I think what also one has to be mindful of a number of countries even pre-Cold War era there have been relations between China and for example, some African countries. I mean, I remember in 1976 China financed Tanzania Zambia railway even then despite the language and it wasn't packaged as BRI but it was a massive infrastructure investment that actually covered two countries so to speak. So there is three history that now is evolving based on what we are seeing. We also see a number of problematic sports for example, a couple of years in Ghana because again the government then the Ghanaian government then signed some of the mining contracts which were not very transparent or clean. The local communities including indigenous communities were up in arms against Chinese laborers who were actually brought into the mining and really what that demonstrated was the importance of the BRI recipient country to drive the laws, the compliance as well as to communicate to the masses what is in it for them especially if there are laborers that are coming from other countries. I'll stop here. Thank you so much Dr. Masiya and another question also looks to ask what are the sort of incentive structures that could be used to help allow the host countries to transition to a more green partnership in that and the question is sent in by Elliot who's also part of the Epic class. I'll just jump in just kind of just speaking broadly because I know we don't have a lot of time. I mentioned about the Chinese NGOs that have been doing work in other countries should also note that you have World Resources Institute, WWF a lot of the big international NGOs the BINGOs right there. They have been doing projects in some of these host countries in certain areas to also build capacity. I'm just kind of giving a broad brushstroke here and also doing, you know and again like the Chinese NGOs doing kind of watchdogging kind of work because again a little bit of naming and shaming of Chinese companies but also sometimes telling good stories. I remember a number of years ago Friends of the Earth did a big report early on in the Belt and Road Initiative and was very surprised that there were some companies like there are some companies that went to Latin America and didn't build in nature reserves. And so I think that the role of researchers and NGOs think tanks to get out the message that some of that is actually getting to Beijing. I mean, just at the beginning how Dr. Lowe's talked about how the Chinese government has a growing awareness that it's not just bad press it's also that they're discovering that when these projects go off the rails sometimes literally that it's an economic cost, right? It's this mining company that had to close. I mean, just think about all the money that went into that and there's rumblings within China that we got like particularly I think after COVID like we got the Chinese public a little bit of growing awareness and it would probably help if there was more that this Belt and Road Initiative is maybe a little costly and needs to be done better. If I can jump in on this point. So in regards to incentive structures I think the most important thing would be for the recipient countries to be very clear about their own policies, right? They're explicitly green. And now to give you an example I did interviews in Indonesia and what one policymaker said was if we ask for coal they as in the Chinese will sell us coal. If we ask for solar, they'll sell us solar, right? So I think the first step is to figure out well, if you're going to very consciously be encouraging sort of green growth then I think that's the first step to making sure that whatever is coming in through the BRI very much supports your own objectives as well. Thank you so much for that panelist. I turn it over to David for asking a question. So this is a question from Carlos, member of our class. So could the environments be an area of cooperation between the Biden administration or subsequent American administrations and China? That was sort of part of the point I was trying to make but maybe did it rather rapidly. In my earlier remarks, this really is a moment and there are the Biden administration has really committed to build back better domestically but the same policies with John Kerry head of the essentially on climate for all sorts of national security and other issues abroad really has this moment but the EU is right there. South Korea has their new deal but also the important thing is all these countries are looking at trying to look at the post COVID recovery and lower income countries are really suffering. And if you look at where even though there's an understanding that green recovery is important these lower income countries are not putting money into that right now because I think generally they don't have it. And so it really could be a moment. It is almost a face saving because China has been so vocal about the green belt road and eco civilization. It is not, it's something that everybody went it's a win-win on the geopolitical side. So if it's only about politics there's a clear opportunity, the problem is sometimes economics there are a lot of other issues out there but it's a real potential win-win if the parties decide to go that direction. If I can thank you Liz, you teed up something I wanted to say, build on that. So the China environment for them and as I mentioned I've been there 21 years and kind of an ongoing theme we've had is this cooperative competitors on energy and climate between the US and China and under the Obama administration I mean the bilateral government stuff was like a fantastic ping-pong match. I mean so many exchanges work together on renewable energies, water energy nexus and it was kind of exciting but underneath that and supporting it for many years there's been ups and downs in our relationship US NGOs, think tanks, universities have also been doing a lot to work with China building their capacity. I mean a lot of the big international NGOs have offices in China and even the Energy Foundation has an office there and so there is, even under the Trump administration there was still those groups the non-governmental groups continued during the work in China a little slower but I've been hearing from people in China saying that well, I think you're right Liz but there is an opportunity but I think that it's gonna be important that the US has to, Biden and Harris administration have to show that we're walking the walk talking the talk on climate and the talks are going on with China right now they're not exactly warmly embracing each other yet because of the politics but I'm the eternal optimist I think that it could end to be that we have to kind of instead of just two maybe we probably might be coming together more with the Chinese in multilateral forms but yeah, I'm optimistic at least we're all moving kind of in the same direction on that but... Thank you so much for that and going off that same wave of optimism we have another question from our epic class Ben McLean who asks China gives off domestically the appearance that they're a little bit hesitant about climate change but touted internationally you have detailed however that this isn't the case with the Belt and Road Initiative how has this affected how any nations view China's legitimacy when it comes to being a leader in the fight versus climate change? Well I'll jump in here on this and just sort of reflect on the international climate politics aspect which is China is very acutely aware of its share of global emissions and so therefore I think within the political groupings such as the group of 77 in China I think China is very much aware and conscious of this and therefore very much sees its responsibilities international responsibilities they are taken very seriously and so I think as developing countries sort of think broadly about what exactly is the architecture going forward I think there definitely is a very strong role needed for China but at the same time I think there's also an awareness of China's unique position where maybe identifying as a developing country in certain ways but at the same time also aware of its own carbon footprint it gets placed in a very unique position but I think it's very much aware of this and therefore has been able to take on these commitments that in many ways have actually broken the gridlock in the international climate politics and therefore have actually helped to sort of keep the process moving which is maybe what was one of the most sort of critical meetings before the Paris Agreement was the US-China deal and so I think there have been these instances where China self-conscious of its impact has sort of moved faster than what was I think expected Yeah, just if I could I would absolutely agree with the previous speaker I think also China has learned from some of the not so good media coverage on its own reputation I mean I can give you three very specific examples that we have seen some shifts explicit shifts in policies aimed at greening the BRI progress is a bit patchy but at least the policy actions are there one is the green investment principles for the BRI were actually created by Chinese and international partners in the finance sector including the city of London in the World Economic Forum the second is the China's climate finance guidance which addresses the climate impacts of BRI investments and they have a website the data is still evolving but it's out there and then December last year the green BRI coalition backed by the ministry of the college and environment released a three-tier traffic system for BRI projects which I alluded to in my opening remarks in terms of identifying segmenting the risks and ways to mitigate them over to you Arjun Can I interject one thing that's great that I'm glad you mentioned that Joyce that because early on in the Belt and Road Initiative the ministry of you could well then it was ministry of environmental protection was tiny role and it's another encouraging sign I'm glad you brought that up and I just want to also point out something I don't think we said this explicitly but the Belt and Road isn't actually a real thing it's sort of anything that China wants it to be as far as overseas investment lending and the fact that they don't have that list that Jennifer spoke about is actually purposeful that there isn't a set of guidelines this is what makes the Belt and Road project and this is what doesn't and so therefore it can be kind of malleable and in fact right now the Belt and Road is being used to help address COVID and help infrastructure and even PPE so it can be used in a way that is helpful and hopefully that will include helping these countries with transitioning their economies thank you I turn it over to David for a question about more regional impacts of the Belt and Road Initiative yes so I want to go in a bit more specifics we have a question from Julia from the international delegation from Brazil what do you think is the importance of the BRI to Latin America considering its reality in context can you also discuss a little bit about how you think the BRI will impact the environment of this region I can answer that quickly it's a really interesting question in fact Brazil is a huge partner with China and probably I think does get more BRI BRI money than any other country Venezuela of course also but it is a little less there's no coal investments right now in Latin America there are different types of investments a little bit more transportation certainly hydropower so it's distinct and it's also distinct in that a lot of the lending say in Southeast Asia has is linked with a very long-term relationship between China and these neighboring countries so the relationship with Latin America is a bit distinct with certainly the Asian BRI countries and also even African and so I think it's become more it's really been a real growth area it wasn't initially considered part of BRI but now it's one of the fastest increasing areas and it's pulled back again a little bit in the last couple years but it is it's it's a very important relationship particularly being in the backyard of the United States thank you thank you so much for that answer and we also have a question regarding Africa the same way we did with Latin America so since Zara from the Kellyan delegation asked since the announcement that Lamu Island is said to be the location for Kenya's first coal plant as part of China's export coal industry the implementation has been met with a backlash from the environmental organizations such as Greenpeace is the United Nations environmental program also a part of that opposition movement and she would like to know a little bit more about what they are doing about it thank you thanks so I will answer your question in two ways thanks for the question one is as you know we are we are headquartered in Kenya since 72 I think and our secretary general bigger picture from the UN side has talked about zero tolerance for fossil fuels building of new plants I mean the message is very clear the science is very clear since Kenya is our host country and a member of UNEP because UNEP is any international organization we have member states meaning governments we pass on the same message in our bilateral programs are we out and about in Lamu and demonstrating like Simon Geo's no because we have a policy dialogue engagement with the government and very very regularly so that has been our message which is consistent with what the science speaks over to you so we have a question from professor Rockford whites of the Fletcher maritime studies program so he asked do you think China's polar silk road strategy adding an Arctic belt in road to the maritime belt road will result in a significant increase in Arctic infrastructure developments of ports port to land intermodal transportation links etc or is it mostly a public diplomacy effort to engage Russia and other Arctic countries but won't result in much actual investments I'll briefly answer that first of all yeah thanks Rocky for that question I think there could very easily be you know a third option which is China simply diversifying its transportation routes so that we know most of it's not passing through certain choke points in certain regions of the world right so I think there's also a different set of motivations that are shaping Chinese actions in regards to the Arctic as well want to just jump in here just should note that the Wilson Center has a polar initiative and they look broadly both at the Arctic and Antarctica about some of the environmental impacts of the development and should note that a few years ago that China did support the creation of a marine protected area in the Ross Sea which is one of the largest marine protected areas to date but then just last year China and Russia both opposed expansion of southern Antarctica marine protected areas and that's in great part because China sees you know they do a lot of cruel fishing in southern Antarctica and so it's China's going to be really you know it's kind of tangential maybe to that question but I think it's China is very active and in terms of you know because of their interests in fisheries and I think in both north and south poles but if you're interested should go to the Wilson Center's polar initiative because they're the ones fluent on this topic Thank you so much Dr. Turner for that response and David and I are cognizant of that fact that we have five minutes before we can conclude this panel so we have one final question which can be considered as a concluding question sent in by Yanis from the Greek delegation he asks considering that one of the BRIs fundamental goals is securing energy resources like oil and natural gas and with China making huge investments in fossil fuels in regions like the Middle East Africa, Central Asia and the Arctic do you think that the BRIs current goals are in contradiction with the government's official environmental targets and this is something that is we wanted to bring out as a conclusion of our panel as a binding question that we wanted to bring out so happy to hear responses from all of the panelists as well I'll break the ice here because I'm never shy so I think that I mean in some ways that's the whole premise of first of all I should note I do love the title of our event the Buckling the Belt and I'm totally going to steal it just so you know for one of my future meetings I think that that is the real challenge that he talked about that you know that it's Xi Jinping has stated he wants to he you know for years he wants to be the green leader the climate leader but there is this inherent contradiction but I think that across the panel today a number of us have talked about how China is starting to pull there's other things that are driving it to maybe pull back but you know they are you know they are the world's factory they are they're heavily resource hungry but you know I'm kind of I'm hoping that this year will be the year of the carbon neutral ox and that as they're reforming their you know they're working more on you know domestically that they're going to you know the pressure on them to to to to walk the climate walk overseas is going to be greater here I'll just jump in quickly to add that I think something we haven't sort of you know discussed is that the pledges under the Paris Agreement right there are territorial emissions so their emissions arising from your you know sovereign territory not from your investments in other parts of the world and so I think we see this disjuncture in this debate mostly because of this conflation of you know how the Paris pledges are structured versus what the expectations are now there of course is right up there in article two of the Paris Agreement you know making all financial flows aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement so I think the next step in this process really is to shift the debate towards greening all financial flows regardless of you know whether they're in your territorial emissions or not so I think you know the next sort of step in the process really has to be thinking about your emissions in totality consumption production and everything so not just you know your own territorial emissions so I will chime in I think as some of the speakers mentioned I am also I mean eternal impatient optimist so as some of the speakers have mentioned I think there is a bit of contradiction but I'm also optimistic if you look at President Xi Jinping's announcement I think it was from October 2020 on the targets of carbon neutrality for China I mean they'll have to walk the talk for their own reputation globally that's one bit that gives me hope I think second is if you look at the BRI recipient countries there are lessons and there are shifts a number of speakers have talked about international NGOs that are located in developing countries but I can assure you they're equally if not more important domestic NGOs that are watching this space when it comes to BRI and for example on the impact on climate change but also on indigenous communities as well as others I think we've not touched the dimension of the job the evolving job market in China the labor rates going up and some literature including from Justin Lin former chief economist of the World Bank Group have suggested that as China is moving into the service sector they will be looking for opportunities to actually bring the low-income jobs outside China for job creation purposes so sometimes I wonder what is the impact of that on BRI and therefore climate change but I am optimistic because of the exposure the transparency as well as the lessons over the last seven to 10 years over to you I'll make some just I guess I get the final remarks I think at the end of the day there is a conflict between the geopolitical and the economic games it's pretty clear I think from what we've said that China has a lot to gain in soft power and international leadership to take this route but there are clearly other factors at play some of them economically aligns for example the development of renewable industries within China clearly there's a lot to gain but there are trade-offs and at the end of the day this has to be at the highest level of priority for the central government and they have to be willing to work with international partners to put in the mechanisms so that way out there in with their SOEs negotiating it's very clear that this is very high priority and and then there's a real chance but there's a lot of factors at play so we'll see what happens Thank you so much Pamless for your really insightful remarks David and I would like to thank you for your time we really appreciate the opinions and the ideas that you brought up here especially as all of you mentioned this is a critical time in the history at least in our fight against climate change and rapid deterioration and I'm glad that we could convene this and speak with these issues we would like to thank the Institute for Global Leadership as well and the entire staff the Epic students all family and friends that had the chance to join us today David so to our audience so the next panel will begin at 12 p.m. Boston time and we'll address China's rise in the technology sector so the information on the panels in the chat and we look forward to see you at 12 Thank you so much Thank you Thank you