by Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
"What we are seeing is not development. This is exploitation." — Ahmed Manjang, Gambian biologist, Yahoo News, March 30 2021.
In addition to the fishmeal factories, China's distant water fishing fleet is depleting the fish stocks of Western Africa, adding to the pressure on supply....
"Across the globe, on nearly every continent, China is involved in a dizzying variety of resource extraction, energy, agricultural, and infrastructure projects — roads, railroads, hydropower dams, mines — that are wreaking unprecedented damage to ecosystems and biodiversity." — Professor William Laurance, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia, Yale E360, March 28, 2017.
"Chinese-backed hydropower projects along the Mekong River – which spans Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam – have seen dams cause river flow changes and block fish migration, leading to a loss of livelihood for communities there which live-off the river. Fish stocks have declined in recent years due to hydropower dams built upstream in Cambodia and neighbouring countries." — World Wildlife Fund.
The WWF listed more than 1,700 critical biodiversity spots and 265 threatened species that would be adversely affected by the BRI.
The Chinese Communist Party is also using BRI "to perpetuate the use of coal and other fossil fuels – pretty much everywhere BRI touches... And that means increasing greenhouse gas emissions". — Yale Climate Connections, February 17, 2020.
"Most of China's energy financing goes toward non-renewable sources. Between 2014 and 2017, 91 percent of energy-sector loans made by six major Chinese banks to BRI countries were for fossil fuel projects.... In 2016, China was involved in 240 coal plants in BRI countries, a number that has likely grown." — Council on Foreign Relations, March 31, 2021.
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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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