Pan-TPE programme: Assess the Impacts of Environmental Change and Policy Recommendations for Green Silk Road
Project period: 2018-2022
Funding Sources: Chinese Academy of Sciences
The Pan-Third Pole region covers an area of 20 million km2extending from the Tibetan Plateau-centered Third Pole to the west and to the north, encompassing the Tibetan Plateau, the Pamirs, the Hindu Kush, the Iranian Plateau, the Caucasus, and the Carpathians. In the last 60 years, the air temperature in the Pan-Third Pole region has increased by twice the global average. The melting glacier, snow, and permafrost in the cryosphere has led to critical consequences manifesting in extreme events, natural disasters, land degradation, and water scarcity, which are all crucial to livelihoods and sustainable development from a local to global scale. On the other hand, the intensifying human activities along with economic development have had more and more impact on the regional environment, such as from urbanization, enhanced agriculture, and deforestation.
The Pan-Third Pole Environment Programme for a Green Silk Road (Pan-TPE) is under the platform of the CAS Strategic Priority Research Program. It seeks to facilitate new knowledge and action plans towards green growth in Pan-Third Pole through the integration of basic science, applied science, and technology innovation as well as policy-advising. With a focus on water, ecosystem and human activities, the Pan-TPE program studies the mechanisms of environmental changes in Pan-Third Pole region under westerly-monsoon interaction.
UNEP-IEMP supports Pan-TPE programme’s international outreach and cooperation, especially with UN Environment and others. UNEP-IEMP is also conducting research tasks to “Assess the Impacts of Environmental Change and Policy Recommendations for Green Silk Road,” with these scientific objectives:
• To develop an assessment system for evaluating the impacts of environmental change and identify environmental vulnerable hot spots in regions along the Belt and Road countries
•To assess the socioeconomic vulnerability of countries and representative regions along the Belt and Road Initiative, and to further identify adaptation pathways that reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience
•To identify mechanisms and pathways through which environmental changes affect poverty and sustainable livelihood in environmentally and socioeconomically vulnerable regions
Policy objective
•To reveal the spatiotemporal pattern of environmentally and socioeconomically vulnerable regions, document good cases, build demonstration sites that show enhanced sustainable livelihoods, and provide policy recommendations
