by Robert Williams for The Gatestone Institute - 15.04.23.
"Risks to marine habitats are most prominent in Caribbean island nations, such as the Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda, as well as coastal waters across Africa, most notably along Western and Central African coastlines.
In the Bahamas, Angola and Mozambique, more than 2,000 km2 of marine habitats face high impact risks." — bu.edu, December 6, 2022
"Across Angola, Fiji, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, more than 50,000 square kilometers of marine habitats are "facing low but non-negligible risks from nearby projects." — bu.edu, December 6, 2022
Ports built or financed by the Chinese, the study found, pose the greatest risks to marine habitats; the risks remain high even up to 30 kilometers from the port.
China's overseas infrastructure projects are not the only ones ruining marine habitats. China's enormous fishing fleet is simultaneously contributing not only to the severe devastation of marine ecosystems but also to the destruction of the livelihoods of local fishermen.
Chinese fishing boats are destroying the livelihoods of West African fishing communities on the West African coast. Due to illegal Chinese fishing, they could be losing more than $2 billion each year.
In Ghana... illegal fishing boats use Ghanaian flags, but, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation, 90% of those boats belong to Chinese owners.
"There is no fish in the waters. We used to catch up to 90 trays of sardinella fish a day and now we barely get five trays a day." — Dembo Touray, fisherman Bakau, Gambia's largest fishing community, aa.com.tr, 2020.
Even though, in 2019, Communist Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged that the BRI would become "green and sustainable," he did not say when.
"China says it will follow environmental guidelines, but history has shown these protections are nonexistent." — William Laurance, distinguished research professor of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, The Guardian, September 20, 2021.
Additionally, China already mines 70% of all rare earth materials, a situation that has made the world virtually dependent on it. The future of the African continent's environment, in short, looks anything but sustainable.
China's overseas infrastructure projects present high-impact risks to the environment, a new study has found.
The report -- conducted by researchers from the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, the University of Queensland, the University of California Santa Barbara, and Colorado State University -- focused on the risks to coastal and marine ecological systems posed by 114 of China's overseas development projects between the years 2008-2019.
According to the document, those 114 projects represent only 20% of all Chinese development finance projects in that time period, meaning that the results of the study are probably just the tip of the iceberg.
"Risks to marine habitats are most prominent in Caribbean island nations, such as the Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda, as well as coastal waters across Africa, most notably along Western and Central African coastlines. In the Bahamas, Angola and Mozambique, more than 2,000 km2 of marine habitats face high impact risks," the study noted.
Across Angola, Fiji, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, more than 50,000 square kilometers of marine habitats are "facing low but non-negligible risks from nearby projects."
Ports built or financed by the Chinese, the study found, pose the greatest risks to marine habitats; the risks remain high even up to 30 kilometers from the port.
"These ports are present in the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Cuba, Mauritania, Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Angola, Mozambique, Djibouti and Sri Lanka, and are a prominent driver of the regional hotspots of risk," according to the study.
Ports, however, are not the only infrastructure projects built by the Chinese that pose risks to the local environments.
"Several other types of development finance projects present high impact risks within 1 km of the project site, such as power plants, bridges, roads and other facilities," the report concluded.
It also disclosed that one fishing port, the Beira Fishing Port Rehabilitation project in Mozambique, poses "the single greatest mean impact risk to marine habitats within 10 km of all projects considered in the study."
China's overseas infrastructure projects are not the only ones ruining marine habitats. China's enormous fishing fleet is simultaneously contributing not only to the severe devastation of marine ecosystems but also to the destruction of the livelihoods of local fishermen.
A South African think tank, the Institute for Security Studies, recently found that Chinese fishing boats are destroying the livelihoods of West African fishing communities on the West African coast. Due to illegal Chinese fishing, they could be losing more than $2 billion each year.
In Ghana, for instance, illegal fishing boats use Ghanaian flags, but, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation, 90% of those boats belong to Chinese owners. Fishing towns in the West African country of Benin stand empty, as locals are forced to leave their fishing trade for lack of fish and seek work elsewhere.
One fisherman, Geoffroy Gbedevi, said that feeding his daughter and pregnant wife was getting harder: the number of fish are far lower than previously. "Nothing is going the way it used to," he said.
For the full article in pdf, please click here:
Robert Williams is a researcher based in the United States.
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Pictured: Tokeh Beach in Sierra Leone, near Western Area Peninsula National Park, part of which has been sold off to China, with critics calling that move a "catastrophic human and ecological disaster". (Photo by Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images)
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