The Belt & Road Initiative HKTDC Research This week the World Bank published the policy research working paper I had the privilege of contributing a bit to: “Reducing Environmental Risks from Belt and Road Initiative Investments in Transportation Infrastructure” by Elizabeth Losos, Alexander Pfaff, Lydia Olander, Sara Mason and myself. The working paper outlines a number of risks associated with the ambitious plan to connect Asia via new transport corridors, as well as outlining methods of mitigation.
In the fall I had the opportunity to visit Duke Kunshan University in Kunshan, China for a conference on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—a major foreign investment plan by the Chinese government intended to connect Asia and increase trade and economic growth in the region. The conference—officially titled the “Duke-DKU International Symposium on Environmentally and Socially Responsible Outbound Foreign Direct Investment”—brought together representatives from the Chinese national planning commission as well as academics from China, Southeast and Central Asia, Europe and the United States.
Update: this study is now published! The final version is now available (open access) in World Development.
Agroforestry—planting trees on farms—has a lot of benefits for the world at large: trees prevent erosion, store carbon, and provide refuge habitats within the agricultural landscape. And agronomists have reported that trees can support soil health and increase soil organic matter, improving the long-term sustainability of farming systems. But is agroforestry good for the farmer’s bottom line?