Call for papers: Belt and Road Initiative - Sustainable Development and Law: Sino-Nordic Perspectives

Two day conference, 29-30 October, at Fudan University, Shanghai.

"Belt and Road" is a massive trade and infrastructure project that aims to link China — physically and financially — to dozens of economies across Asia, Europe, Africa, and Oceania. The main focuses of the "Belt and Road" initiative - also known as "One Belt, One Road" - are in infrastructure, transportation, and energy.

The undertaking of BRI presents new legal challenges and opportunities for China and the Nordic countries as they look to increase their cooperation in coming decades, especially as it takes place alongside the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It will encounter various interests from the Nordic region, some of them common to all five states, others particular to one or several.

The conference shall identify legal challenges, opportunities and solutions related to the BRI through a sustainable development lens in its three inter-related fields: economic development, environmental protection, and social justice. The goal is to explore ways for rule of law-based governance on sustainability in national, regional and global contexts.

The two-day conference shall focus on issues of BRI in the following four parts within a sustainable development framework: in the following four topics:

(1) Legal and sustainability significance of the BRI

(2) National, regional and global dimensions

(3) Specific fields of law and sustainability

(4) Practitioners´ legal perspectives: projects and cases.

The conference language is English. Selected papers of the conference will be published in English.

Deadlines:

June 11, 2018: Abstracts (500 words)

Sep. 15th, 2018: Draft paper for conference (5,000 to 10,000 words)

Abstracts should be sent to Maria Lundberg at the University of Oslo.