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Infrastructure development, especially of roads, has already disturbed pristine ecosystems across the globe (see map). What China鈥檚 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) consists of is unclear: the project has no official map and lack detail. The 鈥渂elt鈥� originally referred to new overland links traversing the historic Silk Road across central Asia. The 鈥渞oad鈥�, confusingly, is a shipping route from ports in southern China to Western Europe via South-East Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal.

The original Silk Road was a network of overland trade routes passing through ancient, romantic-sounding cities such as Samarkand, Bukhara and Constantinople. It outlasted the Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad and Mongol empires, but fell into decline in the 18th century. The vision behind its reboot, launched in 2013, is to hyper-accelerate trade and development across Eurasia and beyond.

Western critics often see BRI as part of an attempt by China to build a new, Sinocentric world order. Its ambition is certainly unprecedented: some 7000 projects in 70 countries with a projected cost of $8 trillion by 2050. The belt has now expanded to six development corridors radiating out from China. South America and Africa have their own programmes (see map).

The potential cost to nature of BRI is incalculable. in Nature Ecology and Evolution earlier this year, 鈥淏RI could have disastrous consequences for biodiversity鈥�.

Last year, conservation group WWF published the results of of the initiative鈥檚 land-based development corridors and warned of a litany of threats. The corridors collide with numerous protected areas, wildernesses and biodiversity hotspots. They slice through the ranges of 265 threatened species, including 81 endangered and 39 critically endangered ones. Among these are tigers, snow leopards, saiga antelopes, Amur leopards and giant pandas. As yet, nobody has assessed the impact of the maritime silk road.

China has repeatedly pledged to make the Belt and Road a . Xi makes frequent reference to his vision of turning China into an 鈥渆cological civilisation鈥�, with sustainable development a priority. He has extended this sentiment to the Belt and Road, in 2016 to 鈥渄eepen cooperation in environmental protection, intensify ecological preservation and build a green Silk Road鈥�.

Conservation biologist Bill Laurance of James Cook University, Australia, accepts that China is making genuine efforts domestically. But its warm words about the Belt and Road Initiative are 鈥渁 gigantic bunch of greenwash鈥�, he says. Evgeny Shvarts, director of conservation policy at WWF Russia and co-author of a on the risks of BRI to Russia鈥檚 environment, warns that the initiative is in part a sleight of hand to export environmentally damaging activities from China to other countries.

The view from inside China is more nuanced. A conservation biologist who works for the Chinese government, and who asked not to be named, says Chinese biologists are very aware of the project鈥檚 environmental risks and are being given large amounts of funding to investigate and mitigate them. But they are also expected to toe the party line that the initiative is China鈥檚 鈥済ift to the world鈥�.

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Paved planet
Infrastructure projects around the world, including China鈥檚 Belt and Road initiative, threaten remaining pristine forest ecosystems

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A 鈥撎�The Maritime Silk Road, part of the Belt and Road Initiative, stretches into the heart of Europe. The Italian ports of Ravenna, Venice and Trieste, along with Koper in Slovenia and Rijeka in Croatia, have formed the North Adriatic Port Association to take advantage. The association has begun work on a giant platform off Venice to load and unload huge cargo ships from the Suez Canal

B 鈥撎�Russia鈥檚 far east contains vast tracts of undisturbed forest and wetland home to Siberian tigers and Amur leopards 鈥� a biodiversity success story threatened by the Belt and Road Initiative

C 鈥撎�Expansion of coal industry infrastructure on Australia鈥檚 east coast, partly in response to Chinese demand, threatens ecosystems both inland and offshore on the Great Barrier Reef

D 鈥撎�The new Malaysian government cancelled a planned high-speed rail link from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore earlier this year 鈥� the first major setback for this strategically crucial arm of the Belt and Road Initiative

E 鈥撎�The Belt and Road Initiative will make inroads into Africa, but the continent also has at least 33 other development corridors planned, which would add 53,000 kilometres of road and fragment vital wilderness areas such as the Congo basin

F 鈥� South America was recently invited to join the Belt and Road Initiative, but already has its own equivalent. The Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure is a $38 billion plan to forge closer ties between the continent鈥檚 economies. Improvements to the road from Caracas in Venezuela to Manaus in the Amazon basin in Brazil is a major conservation worry

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This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淧aved Planet鈥�