China’s one-belt-one-road initiative (OBOR) brings significant economic, political and environmental impacts to over 60% of the world’s population, and is under increasing international demand to be aligned with sustainable development and UNSDGs. An academic workshop was hosted by Tianjin University and Institute of Green Development of China in order to discuss the environmental standards of infrastructure investment, international trade and supply chain management during the development of the OBOR initiative, and to provide policy implication and managerial insights to key decision makers.
Invited speakers of the workshop also included Tao Hu (China Director of WWF), Oran Young (Prof. at University of California, Santa Barbara), and Daniel Guttmann (Prof. at Shanghai New York University).
“Academics and policy-makers in and out of China are discussing how to make the rules and standards ‘legally and morally good’, but what has been missing in such conversation is the implementation of those rules and standards.”, said Dr. Liu, “We need to think about not only a thousand giant, state-owned enterprises, but also 10 million small and medium enterprises whose businesses are influenced by OBOR, and they will need proper guidance and regulations. It is crucial to bring the public sectors together with the private sectors, and apply standards that are or aren’t PPM (Processes and Production Methods) accordingly, towards different scenarios of investment, trade and product management.”
The one-day workshop will generate a white-paper report which will be submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China.