Our colleagues, Dr. Agnieszka Nitza-Makowska and Dr. Kerry Longhurst, recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Pakistan. This trip was part of the NCN-funded research project, “Environmental Diplomacy as a Soft Power Instrument: China and the Belt and Road Initiative”, financed under the SONATA program by the National Science Centre.

Dr. Longhurst and Dr. Nitza-Makowska visited universities in Lahore and engaged with Think Tanks and research centers in Islamabad. They discussed China-Pakistan relations, particularly focusing on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an essential component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Key points of their journey included participating in local academic events, such as the seminar “CPEC’s Environmental Toll: Implications on the Society” organized by the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of the Punjab, and the debate “The CPEC Journey: Economic Growth and Environmental Challenges” at The Black Hole educational center in Islamabad.

For more insights, the recording of this debate is available on The Black Hole’s Facebook profile.