(By People’s Daily Zhou Guomei)
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has yielded fruitful results and had a far-reaching influence upon the world since its inception. It has become a popular international public product and cooperation platform with exuberant vitality and broad development prospects.

By adhering to green development and promoting the construction of a green Silk Road, China is actively working with various parties to advance the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, striving to make green a defining feature of Belt and Road cooperation and bringing unprecedented historic opportunities for common development and shared prosperity to countries participating in the BRI.

In 2019, the BRI International Green Development Coalition was officially established. With languages and operating models recognized by various countries around the world, the coalition has carried out dialogues and exchanges, joint research, capacity building and other activities. It has attracted more than 150 Chinese and foreign cooperative partners from 43 countries and won positive response and widespread support from the international community.

Last June, 29 countries jointly launched the Initiative for Belt and Road Partnership on Green Development at the Asia and Pacific High-level Conference on Belt and Road Cooperation, which further manifested the international community’s recognition of and support for green development.

The Green Investment Principles (GIP) for the BRI, a set of principles released in 2018 for greening investment in the Belt and Road, has been joined by 39 large international financial institutions, witnessing a continuously growing number of driving forces for the green development of the BRI.

The pandemic has posed grim challenges to global economic, social, and environmental cooperation systems. In an effort to satisfy the needs of BRI countries in advancing economic recovery and green and low-carbon development after the COVID-19 pandemic, China has made continuous efforts to push forward with the construction of the BRI Environmental Big Data Platform, the Belt and Road Environmental Technology Exchange and Transfer Center, and the BRI Green Development Institute, and implement the Green Silk Road Envoys Program and the Belt and Road South-South Cooperation Initiative on Climate Change.

The country has also carried out in-depth research into hotspot issues of concern to BRI countries, including green investment as well as green and low-carbon energy development, and released a series of research reports including Green Development Guidance for BRI Projects Baseline Study Report.

China has trained for nearly 120 developing countries more than 3,000 officials and technical personnel for ecological and environmental protection and addressing climate change, and was thus praised as a role model in South-South cooperation by the UN Environment Programme.

In addition, China has actively provided effective support for BRI countries in their efforts to tackle environmental and climate challenges by offering them technologies, products, and knowledge and information services regarding green and low-carbon development.

(The author is an official with the Belt and Road Initiative International Green Development Coalition)