OBOR’s environmental costs continue to mount after a decade

FORUM Staff

In the decade since Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping announced his One Belt, One Road (OBOR) infrastructure scheme, growing evidence shows that the program’s expansive projects often harm the environment.

Through OBOR — Xi’s vision to increase the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) reach throughout the Indo-Pacific, Africa, Latin America and Europe — Beijing has distributed more than $1.3 trillion to build roads, railways, dams, power plants and other infrastructure. The PRC funds the projects largely through loans that leave the borrowing nation saddled with debt, and many of the plans have been criticized for causing environmental damage. Some communities have fought OBOR development, putting projects on hold and forcing others to be scaled back in the wake of concerns over air and water pollution, soil erosion, and displacement of residents.

In Indonesia, for example, environmental groups have scrutinized China-based Sinohydro Corp. Ltd.’s construction of a hydroelectric dam on the island of Sumatra, saying the project will endanger the livelihoods of nearby villagers and threaten an endangered orangutan species. Landslides and tunnel collapses at the Batang Toru construction site have killed 17 people since 2020, according to Mongabay, a United States-based conservation and environmental science news platform. Norway announced in July 2023 that it would exclude Power Construction Group of China Ltd., Sinohydro’s parent company, from its pension fund investments, citing environmental concerns.

The influx of OBOR megaprojects in Laos has exacerbated social and environmental issues, according to a working paper from Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center. Safeguards intended to mitigate the impacts of these developments have often been ignored in the interest of expediting “priority projects,” including the high-speed railway from Laos’ capital Vientiane to Boten, on the border with China. Implementation of compensation laws and communication with affected villagers have been inconsistent, critics say. Deforestation and increased development could disrupt habitats of pathogen-carrying bats and spark another pandemic, Reuters reported.

To avoid criticism, the PRC has tried to shield its involvement by using foreign companies as intermediaries. In one instance, state-owned Power Construction Co. of China hired Egyptian contractors to build Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere Power Station, which is expected to be completed in 2024, reported Yale E360, a publication of Yale University’s School of the Environment. Environmentalists said the project will harm the Selous Game Reserve, a United Nations World Heritage Site, and impede flows to the Rufiji River Delta. UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee in 2020 called on the Tanzanian government to abandon the project, citing insufficient research on the dam’s social-environmental impact, and in 2021 the International Union for Conservation of Nature recommended deleting Selous from the World Heritage List because of environmental damage from the dam’s construction.

In July 2023, the Indonesian government suspended PT Dairi Prima Mineral’s mining license while it investigated potential environmental damage, Voice of America reported. The company, which is majority-owned by China Nonferrous Metal Industry’s Foreign Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd., is now barred from mining zinc in Dairi regency in North Sumatra.

In Debrecen, Hungary, meanwhile, China-based Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. recently announced it will reduce the size of a $7.9 billion electric vehicle battery factory by 13% after the community protested the plant’s construction on agricultural land and its potential risk to the water supply.

“This is progress, this is the future?” resident Eva Kozma said. “Pouring concrete over nature while we know how polluting the factory is going to be?”