Today is a public holiday in South Africa – Human Rights Day. There’s a certain irony in spending the day focusing on China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vladimir Putin, knee-deep in a human rights disaster.
What one makes of the Ukraine crisis increasingly maps on where one lives. This is made clear by a remarkable new set of polling data recently published by the European Council on Foreign Relations ...
Category: Sustainability
Will a Chinese Green Hydrogen Project in Egypt be a Blueprint for Africa?
Egypt and China are seeking to consolidate economic and investment cooperation in various areas of common interest, including clean energy. The China International Energy Group (CIEG) intends to establish a $5 to $8 billion project to produce green hydrogen in the ...
Undercutting the Amazon? Deregulation in the Wake of South America’s Chinese Investment Boom
By Rebecca Ray As Brazilians head to the polls at the end of this month for a presidential runoff between current President Jair Bolsonaro and former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, one of the many issues on the table is ...
Netting Investment Flows? Why Aquaculture Has Been Slow to Catch on in Chinese Overseas Investment
By Rebecca Ray China’s demand for imported seafood is booming, projected to double by 2030. Domestically, consumer demand is primarily satisfied by aquaculture, the raising of aquatic plants and animals for food, but the sector has stagnated as the Chinese government ...
3 Ways to Mobilize China’s BRI for Energy Transitions
By Rebecca Ray A global consensus is forming: countries around the world must embark on energy transitions to mitigate climate change and protect the health of their own citizens. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) could play a key facilitating role, ...
Lights On: Prospects for Renewable Energy in Southern Africa Amid Pandemic and Debt Distress
By Cecilia Springer and Magalie Masamba A November 2020 report found the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region could achieve full energy access and 53% renewable energy (RE) installed capacity by 2040 with an investment of nearly $53 billion.
Analysis from Cobus van Staden
Xi Bets on Global South in Moscow
3 Ways to Harness a Legacy of Environmental Cooperation with China
By Cecilia Springer Despite recently increasing and legitimate grievances, environmental cooperation has been a key bedrock for successful collaboration between China and Western countries, starting with the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden.
Building a Shared Future for All Life Along the Belt and Road Initiative
By Rebecca Ray This Sunday, May 22, marks International Day for Biological Diversity, and this year the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has chosen a theme of “building a shared future for all life.” China’s role ...
New Guidelines Puts Green Development at the Heart of the BRI
China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the most powerful state body overseeing economic planning, released a new set of guidelines on Monday that will shape the Belt and Road Initiative over the next decade. These guidelines put green development at ...
Outlier or New Normal? Trends from the 2022 China’s Global Energy Finance Database Update
By Cecilia Han Springer 2021 saw persistent economic impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic, narrowing borrowing capacities in developing countries, and a global trend towards phasing out coal. These factors converged in a shocking finding from the 2022 release of the China Global Energy Finance (CGEF) Database, managed ...
New Report Isn’t Optimistic About Chinese Development of Wind and Solar Power Projects in Africa… At Least For Now
Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke at length last week during his keynote address at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation conference in Dakar about the need to promote green energy development in Africa. The continent lags far behind the rest of the world in the use ...