CHINA STUDY CENTER
Background
The China Study Centre at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) was established in August 2018. It is a broader initiative to bridge the research-policy gap on the issues of global relevance such as energy, trade, technologies, climate change, tourism, business, finance, and Pakistan-China relations. The Centre strives to foster research, knowledge, and expertise on China, profoundly relevant to our engagement with China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). With a large network of universities, government bodies, business and civil society organizations, the Centre aims to promote collaborations, capacity building and technology transfer based on lessons learnt and experiences of China, attributed to their scientific knowledge and policy instruments.
With advancements in Green and sustainable development under the Belt and Road initiative (BRI), the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) emerged as a pivotal mechanism to advance Pakistan's green development agenda. It has emerged as a game-changer for both Pakistan and China, heralding a new era of economic prosperity and green growth. This encompasses critical sectors such as energy, infrastructure, and agriculture. With strong support from the Chinese government for Pakistan’s green endeavours and "Clean Green Pakistan" initiative, it becomes apparent that the green cooperation and response to the two-fold challenges of environment and climate change, is a mutual aspiration of both countries. This is evident through China’s increased investments in the renewable energy sector of Pakistan since 2020.
SDPI has made significant strides in greening of CPEC. One of the key milestones is the formulation of the Green CPEC Alliance, Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) and Pakistan-China Institute (PCI) have jointly established the Green China (CPEC) Alliance with members from both countries’, governments, investors, and developers, as well as civil society, to support, accelerate, and promote this transition within Pakistan and the BRI. The Alliance was founded with the vision of promoting sustainable development by redirecting investments from high-emission, fossil-fuel based infrastructure towards green and renewable energy projects, in line with Pakistan’s ambitious goal to transition to 60% renewable energy by 2030.
Over the years, the Green CPEC Alliance has worked to promote sustainable development within the CPEC by advocating for green financing, supporting renewable energy investments, building local capacity, and fostering international collaboration, all aimed at reducing carbon emissions and ensuring a just transition.Key activities included facilitating dialogue and policy development, supporting green infrastructure investments, building capacity and green investment pipelines - The Alliance has focused on strengthening the capacity of both governments and local stakeholders to evaluate, plan, and implement green projects. This includes addressing the risks associated with stranded fossil fuel assets and ensuring a just transition for communities affected by these changes.
International Collaboration - The Green CPEC Alliance has worked with a wide range of international stakeholders, including multilateral banks, financial institutions, and civil society organizations, to share experiences, scale successful strategies, and promote green investment opportunities within CPEC and beyond.
Under Green CPEC Alliance, we are expanding our membership for “Green B2B Alliance” to advance clean energy transition. The alliance aligns with the second phase of the CPEC, which emphasizes the development of business-to-business (B2B) links as crucial for sustainable economic growth. Promoting B2B cooperation has emerged as a priority for the government of Pakistan, particularly in the context of the CPEC 2.0. Entities like the Board of Investment (BoI), as part of CPEC’s Working Group on Special Economic Zones, initiated measures to facilitate joint ventures and identified suitable locations for setting up Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Alongside these efforts, policies are being formulated to liberalize, deregulate, and streamline business procedures, aiming to create an attractive environment for foreign direct investment. The overarching objective is to enhance collaboration between Chinese and Pakistani businesses and facilitate private Chinese investment in Pakistan.
CHINA-PAKISTAN ECONOMIC CORRIDOR GREEN DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM (CPEC-GDP)
In the above-mentioned backdrop, in 2022, CPEC-GDP program was launched with following tailored objectives
Promote Green Growth and green GDP. To engage and support different stakeholders to exchange information (research) on the opportunities in the development priorities of CPEC to help achieve common sustainability goals.
Facilitating the Constructive Dialogues between the Chinese government and investors to lead and support CPEC green development roadmap towards delivering the SDGs, and climate targets while ensuring socio-economic development in Pakistan. Replicating Best Practices from China, from China to Pakistan in terms of knowledge sharing, capacity building, technology transfer, and science for policy
Executive Director
Visiting Fellow
Senior Research Associate/Lead Energy Unit
Research Fellow
Research Associate
Research Associate
The Centre for Learning and Development (CLD) at SDPI is aimed at strengthening the capacities of civil society organizations, private sector organizations, academia, and policy research institutions for sustainable development. The Centre believes in participatory and interactive approaches for mutual learning about institutional capacities, building strategies for transforming human resources, applied research, and good governance to improve systems for durable solutions. Any activity aimed toward mutual learning helps to ensure a combination of knowledge management and action research through reflective learning experiences, which may or may not be successful. This is very important in how institutional leadership transforms learning processes for organizational capacity development to reflect improved results for the desired impacts.
The SDPI Centre for Learning and Development has achieved the unique status of transforming institutional leadership for quality enhancement through multi-dimensional learning methodologies. Effective assimilation techniques are part and parcel of SDPI’s learning and development programs. CLD has achieved another milestone by launching an international training program in collaboration with International Development Research Centre (IDRC), a premier Canadian Government supported Canadian Institute. CLD-SDPI is now an official partner of IDRC for conducting international training workshops on leadership, change management, impact evaluation, quality assurance, governance, and other relevant areas for the world’s top-ranked think tanks working across Southeast Asia and the Pacific Region.
Since its inception, till date, CLD has conducted more than 1500 training workshops, trained more than 15000 professionals in various categories from more than 650 development organizations, academia, research institutions, industry, and the corporate sector. Conducted many of customized workshops on research quality, faculty development, leadership, and team building, organizational performance, community development and change management, research and proposal writing, project management and impact evaluation, and many other relevant areas for research and academic institutions, as well as national, international and UN organizations, including, Fred Hollows Foundation (FHF), Australia, United States Educational Foundation, Pakistan (USEFP), British Council, DFID, USAID, UKAID, USAID, GIZ, UNESCO, UNODC, UNDP, UNICEF, and many other similar organizations. A brief summary of the relevant organization is attached in Annexures.
Vision
To be a centre of excellence in generating and disseminating research based knowledge to strengthen SDPI’s brand and to remain relevant to our beneficiaries.
Mission
To become a quality training organisation through a high performing team to contribute and for the successful attainment of SDPI’s mission.
Objective
To design, conduct and market at least 20 short training courses (generic, research based and specialized) every year by addressing the needs of potential clients.
https://criterion-quarterly.com/corridors-competition-cooperation-perspectives-southern-asia/
https://www.slideshare.net/vahmed/china-pakistan-economic-cooperation
https://www.slideshare.net/vahmed/next-wave-of-china-pakistan-cooperation
https://www.slideshare.net/vahmed/rise-of-china-india-implications-for-asia-pacific
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