Tag: environment
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The Other Side of Agency
Last week I ran into a friend who’s a media studies scholar. We caught up about our work – she’s busy with a paper about the media representation of face masks. What am I working on? A paper on China’s provision of coal-powered electricity in Africa. Oh, ...
What Should Be on the China-Africa Environmental Agenda?
Environmental issues once featured prominently on the China-Africa agenda where leaders on both sides focused on the wildlife trade, conservation, and a wide range of sustainability issues. Not any more. Today, it's all about access ...
Ghanaian Rosewood is Showing Up in China But No One’s Really Sure How It’s Getting There
Ghana's former Lands Minister, Inusah Fuseini, acknowledged that despite the ban on rosewood exports that he imposed when he was in office, large quantities of the precious timber are being smuggled to China, but he just doesn't seem to know how traffickers are getting away with it. ...
When It Comes to Deforestation, There’s Plenty of Blame to Go Around
The NGO collective Forests and Finance released a new study today showing that investments by Chinese banks make it the world’s second-largest funder of projects linked to tropical deforestation. Analyzing data from financial databases and company publications, the study found that between 2016 and 2020, Chinese ...
The Pushback Against China’s Coercive Diplomacy
Although China has successfully leveraged its strengths in COVID-19 vaccine production to replenish its reservoir of goodwill in many developing countries, elsewhere Beijing is facing growing resistance to its increasingly assertive foreign policy agenda. The ...
Two Chinese Nationals Arrested in Ghanaian Army Crackdown on Illegal Mining
Ghanaian army troops fanned out across the country on Wednesday in a nationwide crackdown on illegal mining in river areas, arresting dozens, including at least two Chinese nationals. The pair have been taken to Accra where they will ...
Growing Civil Society Anger in Ghana About the Government’s Perceived Double Standard in How It Treats Chinese “Galamsey”
There's growing frustration in Ghana over the government's apparent refusal to crack down on Chinese participation in illegal gold mining, a practice known locally as galamsey. This is an issue that's been simmering for years, but recently activists and commentators have become much more vocal in denouncing ...
The U.S.’s Blue Dot Network vs. China’s Belt & Road Initiative
In the run-up to last Friday's U.S.-Japan summit at the White House, there had been a lot of talk that President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga would announce a new initiative to challenge China's Belt and Road Initiative.
Chinese Fishing Vessel Runs Aground in Mauritius, Sparking Fears of Another Environmental Disaster
Coastguard and security forces are racing to offload 130 tons of fuel and lubricants from a Chinese fishing vessel that ran aground off the coast of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. The incident took place on Sunday when ...
Hundreds of Thousands of Ghanaian Rosewood Logs Were Illegally Smuggled to China While This Man Was Lands Minister, Now he Too is On His Way to China… as Ambassador
During the time that Kwaku Asomah-Cheremeh was Ghana's Lands and Natural Resource Minister, an estimated 147,000 kilograms illegally logged rosewood was smuggled out of the country to China. And yet, not one person was ever arrested during Asomah-Cheremeh's tenure as minister. Now, he too is on his way ...
China’s Cutting Back on BRI Financing, But Not For Renewable Energy
China has dramatically cut back financing overseas infrastructure development initiatives, especially for carbon-intensive energy projects involving oil, gas, and coal. From 2016 to 2019, China's two major policy banks slashed lending by a stunning 85%. ...
China’s Confusing, Contradictory Environmental Agenda
While scrolling today I came across this great piece by the China expert and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, laying out the wider implications of China's much-discussed commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. Rudd points out that ...