One of the strongest concerns in BRI countries is about the environmental impacts of the projects, which are transforming the landscape in dozens of nations. The conservation group WWF reports that the main BRI connections between Asia and Europe cross through 1,739 areas that have been identified as important for biodiversity conservation, affecting 265 threatened species, including 81 endangered species such as the saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica), tigers (Panthera tigris) and giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca).
One project that has environmentalists worried is a planned 350-kilometre, $3.8-billion Hungary-to-Serbia railway. This has also attracted the attention of EU authorities and is still awaiting regulatory approval. In addition, China has not ratified the Espoo Convention, which requires member states to assess the environmental and health impacts of development projects at an early stage.
Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physicist at Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan, says that few — if any — of China’s scientific collaborations are evaluating the environmental impacts of BRI infrastructure projects. “There’s a real lack of research on a regulatory framework for the BRI projects themselves and this leads to the rest of us having to make guesses as to what is happening and what the impacts might be,” he says. “There needs to be research on these questions, too,” says Hoodbhoy. “Without environmental safeguards in place, there are risks of exacerbating environmental problems, putting pressure on dwindling natural resources and displacing communities,” agrees Aban Marker Kabraji, Asia director at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Bangkok.
