China continues blazing a trail across the Wider Caribbean through large capital flows, loans, and investment. In the last two years alone, more than a dozen Caribbean nations have signed on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative—even as some still recognize Taiwan, perhaps the only remaining sticking point preventing further signatories. The deepening of relations did not happen overnight, but it is only recently that the Belt and Road Initiative has drawn attention to China’s strategic investments and growing political bonds with Caribbean island nations.

The United Nations has laid the foundation for negotiations to begin on the world’s first legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution. At the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi earlier this month, the parameters were set for a future treaty, including hard-won provisions to address the full life cycle of plastics and tackle waste in all environments, not just the ocean.

Farmers in the United States and China who grow strawberries, melons, and other fruits and vegetables often face the same arduous challenge—after harvesting they must gather up and dispose of the plastic mulch used to increase production. After months in the hot sun, the plastic sheeting starts to shred and break apart, leaving fragments behind in the soil. 

In Nairobi this month, the world’s governments will discuss the path towards the first global treaty to tackle plastic pollution. But with multiple proposals on the table, the scope and ambition of a potential treaty hangs in the balance.

As northeast China freezes with the onset of winter, cranes fly south to Poyang Lake, China’s largest freshwater wetland sanctuary, along with hundreds of thousands of migratory wildfowl. For birds that feed on tubers of submerged aquatic plants, such as the critically endangered Siberian Crane, the threatened and declining Swan Goose, and thousands of Tundra Swans, Poyang’s food-rich winter wetlands are key to their survival. However, dams along the Yangtze River and growing floods are disturbing the natural rise and fall of water levels that are needed for Poyang’s aquatic plants to thrive. Poorly regulated and expanding sand dredging in the Yangtze River and Poyang Lake is increasing turbulence in the water, limiting light reaching the aquatic plants that migratory birds rely on. 

Pakistan is just one of 142 countries that has signed on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but is arguably the flagship partner among the group. BRI is an infrastructure investment project and aims to bring between $1 to $8 trillion dollars in development initiatives to global railways, highways, power plants, hydropower dams, and ports under the BRI umbrella. However, since the two governments formalized the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a framework of infrastructure connectivity, there have been strong concerns from the Pakistani public about the social and environmental costs of Chinese investment. 

Criss-crossing the expansive nation from the icy northeast to the dry deserts of the far west and into the mountain jungles of the south, China is constructing the world’s largest ultra-high voltage power grid, connecting distant coal, wind, solar, and hydro to energy-hungry east coast cities. Beijing recently ordered vast numbers of batteries to be connected to the grid—batteries that can store excess wind, solar, and other renewable power, and then dispatch it as needed. This “New Energy Cloud” provides the flexibility in the power grid that is required for finally dethroning old king coal. However, zapping coal power long distances doesn’t exactly solve the climate problem. 

U.S. efforts to reclaim its climate change leadership, as demonstrated at COP26 in Glasgow, will be undermined if the country does not also step up and accelerate action on reducing plastic waste. Plastic is packing a serious carbon punch along its entire supply chain, from oil extraction and manufacturing to disposal. According to Beyond Plastic’s new report, The New Coal: Plastics and Climate Change, the U.S. plastic industry’s contribution to climate change will exceed that of coal by the year 2030.