China is the world's second-largest economy after the United States with more than 60% of the value of its trade being transported by sea. Therefore, China looks for short, safe, and inexpensive trade routes (both land and maritime) to reach Europe, Africa, and the Middle East countries. In doing so, China has taken the One Belt-One-Road (OBOR) initiative intending to develop a cost-effective transportation network ensuring timely and secure delivery. The objective of the OBOR strategy is to enhance Pakistan's infrastructure through the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Therefore, this chapter aims to examine the implications of CPEC trade routes in terms of cost and delivery between China and other regions (i.e., Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Angola, Oman, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates) via Gwadar Port, Pakistan. The results demonstrate a significant reduction in cost and delivery time via the CPEC route in comparison with traditional trade routes.
TopIntroduction
The concept of “Sustainability”, which refers to the integration of social, environmental, and economic concerns, has gained significant value after the Paris climate summit presented a binding agreement (Coyne, 2020) that helps the nations to meet a common cause to start fruitful actions for fighting against the climate issues (Mahapatra & Ratha, 2016). The concept of sustainable transportation is essential to sustainable development because it seeks to achieve the goals of universal access (Oswald Beiler, 2012) such as improved safety and efficiency, lower environmental impacts, and increased resilience (Garceau et al., 2013; Reza et al., 2020; Mubarik et al., 2021). Consequently, it is crucial for the success of the Paris agreement on climate change and the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development (Shah, 2016). These goals can only be attained by developing an interconnection between Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and sustainable transportation and their respective targets (Hong, 2016; Abdel Warith et al., 2019). Transport networks have a major impact on society, economy, and environmental sustainability (Zheng et al., 2013; Alam et al., 2020; Mubarik et al., 2021) and it is essential for fostering connectivity, economic progress, trade activities, and employment (Parton, 2013). Likewise, besides offering mobility services and infrastructure, sustainable transportation is a game-changer in many aspects (Litman, 2007) for example it has the potential to accelerate progress toward other essential goals, such as eradicating poverty in all of its forms, empowering women, decreasing inequality, and dealing with climate change effectively (Mubarik et al., 2020; Menhas et al., 2022).
The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Chinese 'One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiatives are two global development frameworks that have emerged since 2013 (Shah, 2016). In China, there is a massive rise in sustainable development planning due to increasing concern about worldwide environmental issues and the nation's dependency on oil imports (Maizland, 2021) and OBOR could be the first regional effort to execute the SDGs (Shah, 2016). China plans to foster massive economic expansion in Europe, Asia, and Africa by initiating the OBOR plan (ZHANG & ZHANG, 2016) which is a vast multinational trading network with various trade corridors spanning around sixty countries (Menhas et al., 2022). The OBOR plan was firstly introduced in 2013 by President Xi Jinping, which intends to further link Europe, Asia, and Africa through the expansion of land and sea infrastructure (Anwar et al., 2017). The OBOR initiative consists of two components; One Belt, which is also known as the “Marine Silk Road” intends to link China’s coastline with Africa and Europe through Southeast Asia while One Road, also known as the “Land Silk Road”, aims to connect the mainland of China with Europe and Central Asia as shown in figure 1 (Hosain, & Hossain, 2019).
Figure 1. OBOR Routes (Hosain, & Hossain, 2019)