The Green Belt and Road refers to the environmental dimension of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched by Xi Jinping in 2013 as a transcontinental infrastructure and investment program spanning Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. As criticism mounted over coal plants, deforestation, and biodiversity impacts financed under BRI, Beijing introduced a series of policy documents to "green" the initiative.
Key milestones include the 2017 Guidance on Promoting Green Belt and Road jointly issued by China's Ministry of Environmental Protection, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, NDRC, and Ministry of Commerce, and the establishment of the BRI International Green Development Coalition (BRIGC) in 2019, which brings together Chinese ministries, UN Environment, and partner-country institutions.
The most consequential shift came at the UN General Assembly in September 2021, when Xi Jinping pledged that China would stop building new coal-fired power projects abroad and step up support for green and low-carbon energy in developing countries. This announcement effectively ended Chinese overseas coal finance, which had been a major source of pipeline projects in Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and South Africa.
Operational tools associated with the Green BRI include:
- Green investment principles (2018), a voluntary code signed by major Chinese and international banks.
- Traffic-light classification systems developed by BRIGC to categorize projects by environmental risk.
- Increased lending by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and China Development Bank toward renewables, rail, and transmission.
Critics note that the framework is largely voluntary, that host-country regulation remains the binding constraint, and that gas and large hydropower projects continue. Supporters argue that the 2021 coal pledge, combined with China's dominance in solar PV, batteries, and EV manufacturing, is reshaping infrastructure pipelines across the Global South. For MUN and research purposes, the Green BRI is often discussed alongside the EU's Global Gateway and the G7's Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) as competing connectivity strategies.
Example
In September 2021, Xi Jinping told the UN General Assembly that China would not build new coal-fired power projects abroad, a pledge widely treated as the operational core of the Green Belt and Road.
Frequently asked questions
It is not a separate program but a policy overlay introduced from 2017 onward to steer BRI financing away from high-carbon and environmentally damaging projects, formalized through documents like the 2017 Guidance on Promoting Green Belt and Road and the 2019 BRI International Green Development Coalition.
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