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Chinese President Xi Jinping’s flagship global infrastructure program was supposed to help expand Beijing’s global influence.

It did.

But rushed construction and poor planning have led to massive environmental destruction in mostly poor countries.

Some projects have degraded highly sensitive ecosystems and displaced scores of local communities.

Beijing says it’s now “greening” its Belt and Road Initiative. But is it?

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China is deploying low-carbon investments through its $1.3 trillion Belt and Road Initiative. But many of these projects come with risks of their own. Case in point: Two hydroelectric dams in Argentina could flood cultural heritage sites and harm one of the world’s largest glacial icefields.

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In a series of agreements between 2009 and 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping extended Argentina billions of dollars in infrastructure loans and currency swaps—allowing Buenos Aires to exchange Chinese yuan for pesos to meet debt repayment deadlines.

These deals deepened Argentina’s dependence on China, which was aggressively expanding its economic footprint in Latin America. The agreements covered a staggering range of projects: nuclear energy, telecommunications, South America’s largest radio telescope and a Chinese-run space station, over which Beijing secured control for 50 years.

The spending spree, analysts say, was fueled by China’s excess capacity at home, the need to create new markets abroad and geopolitical ambitions. As Chinese policy banks showered nations with generous loans, some recipient governments aligned their votes at the United Nations with Beijing, including a measure to block debate on China’s alleged human rights abuses at home.

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A coalition of nonprofits filed a lawsuit in 2015, questioning the Santa Cruz dams’ environmental impact assessment. A second lawsuit, filed by lawyer Enrique Viale, alleged that the government official who approved the assessment is the same person who earlier served as director of the contractor that prepared it.

That environmental impact statement, which is supposed to analyze all of the ecological risks of the dams, is “full of deficiencies,” said Cristian Fernandez, a lawyer with the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation, one of the nonprofits behind the 2015 lawsuit.

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In March 2016, China Development Bank sent Macri [center-right businessman Mauricio Marci replaced Fernandez de Krichner as president in 2015] a letter, urging him to restart operations. The bank drew Macri’s attention to a “cross default” clause in the loan agreement. Should Argentina cancel the Santa Cruz dams project, China had the right to cancel funding for railway revitalization in Argentina’s northern agricultural region. Losing that funding would undercut the ability to sell more soybeans, corn and beef—Argentina’s top exports and a source of badly needed foreign currency.

[...]

Since 2023, China has invested more than $100 billion in renewable energy projects overseas, even as overall spending under the Belt and Road Initiative has declined in recent years.

Human rights experts and conservationists worry this green iteration of the Belt and Road could mirror the environmental and social damage of earlier projects.

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Kenneth Roth, who led the global watchdog group Human Rights Watch for nearly three decades, said Beijing’s motivations haven’t changed.

“China’s trying to buy loyalty,” he said.

Lacking a democratic mandate at home, the Chinese Communist Party places high value on international legitimacy and is wary of formal condemnations from bodies like the U.N. Human Rights Council, Roth said. In 2019, Pakistan’s then-Prime Minister Imran Khan told Roth that his government’s reluctance to speak out about China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims, which included forced labor, forced sterilizations and re-education camps, was due to fear of economic repercussions. Pakistan, a majority Muslim country, is estimated to be Beijing’s biggest Belt and Road partner. Pakistan was one of several Belt and Road countries that blocked a U.N. rights council debate on the Uyghur issue in 2022.

“China has been trying to use the U.N. to basically dumb down and largely rip up international human rights standards,” Roth said. “It has globalized its censorship very successfully.”

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China’s guardrails around environmentally risky projects are beginning to catch up to lenders like the World Bank, said Rebecca Ray, an economist at Boston University who has written extensively about China’s activity in Latin America.

The difficulty, Ray said, is that many developing countries where China invests have weak environmental ministries and little political will to enforce social protections. China, unlike most development banks and Western governments, doesn’t condition its loans on governance reforms. “China doesn’t care about institution building,” Ray said. “They care about development.”

By 2021, China had environmental and social safeguards in contracts for 57 percent of its infrastructure projects, but only 18 percent showed clear evidence of efforts to reduce environmental and social risks, according to AidData, a university research lab at William & Mary in Virginia.

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[Javier] Milei, a Trump ally and climate-change denier, promised as a candidate to slash Argentina’s bureaucracy and stop all public works projects [work on the Santa Cruz River dams has been on hold since 2023]. To make his point, he waved a chainsaw in the air at rallies and declared in Spanish on social media: “THERE IS NO NEW MONEY!” He also made waves during his campaign by calling Chinese officials “assassins” and promising to avoid deals with “communists.”

In office, however, his stance changed. Among other things, he’s renewed Argentina’s $18 billion currency swap line with China, using some of the funds to meet IMF debt payments. The change in tone, analysts say, is because of the leverage China holds over Buenos Aires.

When Milei took office in 2023, Argentina again faced an economic crisis. That year, Argentina’s inflation broke 200 percent, its lucrative agricultural exports were imperiled by severe drought and Buenos Aires again struggled to meet its debt obligations. **After the International Monetary Fund and private bond holders, China is Buenos Aires’ largest creditor, holding about 13 percent of the nation’s debt. ** “If China calls Argentina’s loans, it will heavily destabilize Argentina’s economy,” said Albe, of the Atlantic Council.

And so, in late February, the same month Milei presented Elon Musk with a chainsaw on stage at a U.S. conservative conference, his administration sent Chinese officials a confidential message.

Argentina, it said, wanted to restart work on one of the dams.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/24390129

When the global population does decline sometime this century, it will be the first time since the Black Death, 700 years ago. But this time, it will be driven by human choice -- specifically, the choice of women globally to not have so many children.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said Saturday that between 10,000 and 100,000 people may have been killed following the 7.7 earthquake which struck near Mandalay, in the center of the country, on Friday and was felt in neighboring nations.

As of Saturday morning, the confirmed death toll topped 1,000 on Saturday with 2,376 injured, according to the country's military-led government.

The difficulty of movement around the country which is in the throes of a civil war have raised fears that the number of fatalities could jump significantly.

M U T U A L - A I D

China's glacier area has shrunk by 26% since 1960 due to rapid global warming, with 7,000 small glaciers disappearing completely and glacial retreat intensifying in recent years, official data released in March showed.

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As the important water towers continue to shrink, less availability of freshwater is expected to contribute to greater competition for water resources, environmental groups have warned. Glacier retreat also poses new disaster risks.

China's glaciers are located mainly in the west and north of the country, in the regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, and the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai.

Data published on March 21 on the website of the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, showed that China's total glacier area was around 46,000 square kilometres, with around 69,000 glaciers in 2020.

This compares to around 59,000 square kilometres and around 46,000 glaciers in China between 1960 and 1980, the study showed.

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The Tibetan plateau is known as the world's Third Pole for the amount of ice long locked in the high-altitude wilderness.

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The dramatic ice loss, from the Arctic to the Alps, from South America to the Tibetan Plateau, is expected to accelerate as climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, pushes global temperatures higher.

This would likely exacerbate economic, environmental and social problems across the world as sea levels rise and these key water sources dwindle, [a UNESCO report says].

Archived

Here is the report (pdf)

The world’s appetite for energy rose at a faster-than-average pace in 2024, resulting in higher demand for all energy sources, including oil, natural gas, coal, renewables and nuclear power, the World Energy Report published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) show.

• The report finds that global energy demand rose by 2.2% last year – lower than GDP growth of 3.2% but considerably faster than the average annual demand increase of 1.3% between 2013 and 2023. Emerging and developing economies accounted for over 80% of the increase in global energy demand in 2024.

• The acceleration in global energy demand growth in 2024 was led by the power sector, with global electricity consumption surging by nearly 1,100 terawatt-hours, or 4.3%. This was nearly double the annual average over the past decade.

• The sharp increase in the world’s electricity use last year was driven by record global temperatures, which boosted demand for cooling in many countries, as well as by rising consumption from industry, the electrification of transport, and the growth of data centres and artificial intelligence.

• 80% of the increase in global electricity generation in 2024 was provided by renewable sources and nuclear, as renewable power capacity installed worldwide rose to around 700 gigawatts, setting a new annual record for the 22nd consecutive year, and Nuclear power capacity additions reached their fifth highest level in the past three decades. Therefore, renewables and nuclear power together contributed 40% of total generation for the first time.

• Gas demand also picked up substantially, while oil and coal consumption increased more slowly than in 2023.

• CO2 emissions from the energy sector continued to increase in 2024 but at a slower rate than in 2023. A key driver was record-high temperatures: if global weather patterns in 2023 had repeated in 2024, around half of the increase in global emissions would have been avoided.

Here you can download the study (pdf)

A high number of climate change policies in China does not sufficiently translate to high policy intensity and strong actions, a new study suggests.

It analyzes 358 national climate policies published from 2016 to 2022 in China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. Especially in high-emitting sectors, China’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) targets (“objectives”) cover a relatively small number of actors and actions (“scope”), according to the study.

Summary:

• This is evident in sectors like energy, electricity and heating, which, despite being the largest emitters and having numerous policies, only have moderate policy intensity scores. This disconnect indicates that policy proliferation without policy strength may not effectively advance climate actions.
• A growing number of policy outputs in China are likely to signal increased government focus on specific climate-related issues, but the relevant actions may not be ambitious enough. For instance, the energy, electricity, and heating sector, despite being the largest emitter and receiving significant policy attention (high policy density), only achieved a moderate policy intensity score.
• "This disconnect underscores that policy proliferation without corresponding policy strength may not effectively advance climate goals," the study authors write.
• The lack of clear objectives and comprehensive scope in high-emitting sectors like transportation and buildings is likely to hinder the effectiveness of policy implementation, indicating a need for more targeted and ambitious policy design
• The findings reveal that higher policy density does not equate to stronger action. Significant variation also exists in alignment with China’s NDCs, especially in high-emitting sectors. Moreover, despite a relatively balanced mix of regulatory, economic, and informational instruments, this balance does not guarantee intensity.

China’s failure to meet a key carbon emissions target has raised concerns about its ability to achieve carbon neutrality, a potentially decisive factor in global efforts to avert the worst effects of climate change.

China’s carbon intensity – a measurement of carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) – fell 3.4 percent in 2024, missing Beijing’s official target of 3.9 percent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

China is also behind its longer-term goal of slashing carbon intensity by 18 percent between 2020 and 2025, as set by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in its most recent five-year plan.

Under China’s “dual targets”, President Xi Jinping has pledged to reach peak emissions before the end of the decade and carbon neutrality by 2060.

China’s progress is being closely watched around the world due to its paradoxical position as the world’s top polluter – responsible for about 30 percent of global emissions – and the world’s leader in renewable energy investment.

The country’s success or failure to meet its emissions targets will have major implications for the international community’s efforts to keep average temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, a benchmark set by the United Nations to avert “catastrophic” effects of climate change.

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There are 3 speakers in this.

University of Tasmania's Associate Prof. Booth as leader of Critical Collapse Studies hosts a critical collapse event with Australian collapsologist and co-founder of JustCollapse, Tristan Sykes, and with German Queer political scientist and climate justice advocate, Dr. Tadzio Muller.

Just Collapse: https://justcollapse.org/

Dr Tadzio Mueller: https://steadyhq.com/en/

Kollaps Camp: https://kollapscamp.de/

related article (since it wasn't mentioned in the article), but maybe some of you already know

It's your last chance to claim pandemic-era stimulus checks, the IRS says. Here's how

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/19792844

The risk of a CWD spillover event is growing, the panel of experts say, and the risk is higher in states where big game hunting for the table remains a tradition. In a survey of US residents by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 20% said they had hunted deer or elk, and more than 60% said they had eaten venison or elk mea

The movement of meat around the country also raises concerns of environmental contamination. CWD is not caused by bacteria or a virus, but by “prions”: abnormal, transmissible pathogenic agents that are difficult to destroy.

Today, as CWD spreads inexorably to more deer and elk, more people – probably tens of thousands each year – are consuming infected venison,

Well, that was a torrid read

Better surveillance to identify disease in people and game animals is more urgent than ever, experts say. Osterholm says the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to public health funding and research, and the US’s withdrawal from international institutions, such as the World Health Organization, could not be happening at a worse time.

I don't know, religious revelations nutters might be happy /s

**The clear signs of human-induced climate change reached new heights in 2024, with some of the consequences being irreversible over hundreds if not thousands of years, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which also underlined the massive economic and social upheavals from extreme weather. **

Here you can download the report and supplements.

WMO’s State of the Global Climate report confirmed that 2024 was likely the first calendar year to be more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era, with a global mean near-surface temperature of 1.55 ± 0.13 °C above the 1850-1900 average. This is the warmest year in the 175-year observational record.

WMO’s flagship report showed that:

• Atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide are at the highest levels in the last 800,000 years.
• Globally each of the past ten years were individually the ten warmest years on record.
• Each of the past eight years has set a new record for ocean heat content.
• The 18 lowest Arctic sea-ice extents on record were all in the past 18 years.
• The three lowest Antarctic ice extents were in the past three years.
• The largest three-year loss of glacier mass on record occurred in the past three years.
• The rate of sea level rise has doubled since satellite measurements began.

“Our planet is issuing more distress signals -- but this report shows that limiting long-term global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is still possible. Leaders must step up to make it happen -- seizing the benefits of cheap, clean renewables for their people and economies - - with new National climate plans due this year, ” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

“While a single year above 1.5 °C of warming does not indicate that the long-term temperature goals of the Paris Agreement are out of reach, it is a wake-up call that we are increasing the risks to our lives, economies and to the planet,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

https://archive.ph/Iw4Sk