Greening the Belt and Road Initiative: Evidence from emergy evaluation of China’s provincial trade with ASEAN countries

a. SJTU-UNIDO Joint Institute of Inclusive and Sustainable Industrial Development, School of International and Public Affairs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai

200030, China

b. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester MA 01609-2280, USA

c. School of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China

d. School of International and Public Affairs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China

e. Key Laboratory of Clean Energy of Liaoning, School of Energy and Environment, Shenyang Aerospace University, Shenyang 110136, Liaoning, China

f. Department of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Napoli, Italy

g. School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a central policy within China’s regional development and foreign trade strategy. Traditional trade has typically depended on economic valuation of resources, while the embedded environmental value is rarely considered. This situation exists in most BRI trade evaluations. To address BRI environmental sustainability issues, we consider the role of pivotal Chinese provinces and their key trade partners (ASEAN countries) as an illustration for the environmental value of resource exchanges. Emergy accounting is used as the valuation tool for a sample period of seventeen years. Key results include: (1) Emergy valuations show sustainability of sample provinces decreased over time; (2) ASEAN countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam play significant resource roles for provincial economic systems; (3) Diverse trends in trade between pivotal provinces and ASEAN countries resulted in an unbalanced trade structure from trade. Policy implications are proposed to promote a more globally sustainable and fair trade using BRI as an established trade policy.