China must consider environmental effect and economic fragility for belt and road projects, study says

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The lion’s share of Belt and Road Initiative investment should go to countries in southern and southeast Asia because they have fewer environmental issues to threaten economic development, according to a new study in China.

The study led by Professor Fang Chuanglin argued that some countries in the land-based Eurasia economic belt such as Iran and Afghanistan were poor and in desperate need of economic development, but their fragile environment could collapse in rapid growth. Fang is a senior adviser to the Chinese government with the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research in Beijing