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Environmental challenges for the Belt and Road Initiative

Nature Sustainability volume 1, pages 206–209 (2018)Cite this article

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The Belt and Road Initiative will greatly influence the future of global trade. However, it may also promote permanent environmental degradation. We call for rigorous strategic environmental and social assessments, raising the bar for environmental protection worldwide.

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Fig. 1: Main trade corridors (Silk Road Economic Belt and twenty-first-century Maritime Silk Road) from and to China and some of the most important infrastructure and ports built or planned with Chinese investment in the BRI.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cátedra Infraestruturas de Portugal em Biodiversidade, CIBIO/InBio, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, Universidade do Porto, Vairão, Portugal

    Fernando Ascensão & Henrique M. Pereira

  2. CEABN/InBio, Centro de Ecologia Aplicada “Professor Baeta Neves”, Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Fernando Ascensão & Henrique M. Pereira

  3. Department of Conservation Biology, Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC), Sevilla, Spain

    Fernando Ascensão

  4. Geomatics and Landscape Ecology Laboratory, Department of Biology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Lenore Fahrig

  5. Western Transportation Institute, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA

    Anthony P. Clevenger

  6. Center for Integrative Conservation, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Menglun, China

    Richard T. Corlett

  7. Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University Montreal, Montréal, Quebec, Canada

    Jochen A. G. Jaeger

  8. Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Cairns, Queensland, Australia

    William F. Laurance

  9. German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, Germany

    Henrique M. Pereira

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  1. Fernando Ascensão
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  2. Lenore Fahrig
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  3. Anthony P. Clevenger
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  4. Richard T. Corlett
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  5. Jochen A. G. Jaeger
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  6. William F. Laurance
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  7. Henrique M. Pereira
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Correspondence to Fernando Ascensão.

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Ascensão, F., Fahrig, L., Clevenger, A.P. et al. Environmental challenges for the Belt and Road Initiative. Nat Sustain 1, 206–209 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0059-3

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