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II.
Sustainable Development Goals and Key Performance Indicators
Undeniably these Sustainable Development Goals are all inextricably interwoven and each of them could contribute an invaluable perspective to our research. Nevertheless, given the limited space we have for analysis of environmental impacts, this paper shall prioritise goal number thirteen which focuses on ‘climate change’ as a key target. In order to evaluate the impact of the BRI on climate change, we will use carbon emissions as a major key performance indicator whilst keeping other targets and their indicators as supplementary to our analysis. Carbon emissions serve as a useful KPI for evaluating the impact of the BRI on climate change for two reasons. First of all, the reduction of carbon emissions is commonly cited as a significant subgoal within the aforementioned Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Secondly, carbon emissions are relatively more applicable than other indicators to our target audience, since developing and developed countries alike recognise the severity of climate change to the global ecosystem and every country’s economic prosperity and social stability, and the necessity to take synergistic efforts to combat climate change and reduce global carbon emissions through international cooperation. Developing countries and developed countries tend to disagree upon many other environmental issues and often debate about the right to development versus environmental protection. 196 Climate change has been held in international consensus since the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. In 2015 the Paris Agreement proposed to keep the increase in mean global temperature less than two degrees Celsius than the preindustrial levels, preferably only a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase. A 2019 report has shown that the Belt and Road Initiative and the development model it had promoted until 2021 196 Shyam Saran, “Paris Climate Talks: Developed Countries Must Do More Than Reduce Emissions”, the Guardian, (23 November, 2015) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/23/paris-climate-talks-developed-countries-must-domore-than-reduce-emissions
