In May 2025, the Interim General Assembly of Members (GAM) of BRI International Green Development Coalition (BRIGC) was held in Beijing. BRIGC Co-Chair and Governing Board Member Mr. Marco Lambertini, Vice President Ms. Kate Hampton and Vice President Mr. Erik Solheim shared their views on the future development of BRIGC and the Green Silk Road. The highlights of their remarks are summarized as follows.

Mr. Marco Lambertini, BRIGC Co-Chair and Governing Board Member, Convenor of the Nature Positive Initiative

I would like to thank the BRIGC team for the work progress report, and emphasize the importance of the existence and work of a body like BRIGC particularly at a time when we are facing pushback from short-sighted political and corporate actors against the transition to the net-zero and nature-positive economy and society. I commend China’s unwavering commitment in sustainability. More than ever, we need sustainability champions like China committed to taking decisive action.

Ms. Kate Hampton, Vice Presidents of the BRIGC Governing Board, Chief Executive Officer of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF)

China is a leader in clean technology and a supporter of multilateralism and a consequential provider of finance and expertise. As part of this, I'm so excited that BRIGC is going to play such an important role as a unique connective platform. Looking ahead, BRIGC can lead efforts to facilitate exchange and make huge progress across climate finance, clean energy investment, trade, and supply chains, especially in the context of South-South cooperation.

I worked on improving safeguards for multilateral development banks and also improving accountability for companies that were negligent or had accidents or were trying to avoid clean up. I know that BRIGC can play a thoughtful role in providing recommendations to all partners on much stronger risk mitigation.

We’ve already seen examples where China is engaging on the country platform approach to drive clean investment. The Brazilian climate and ecological investment platform, which was highlighted in the recent China-Brazil Joint Statement, has shown strong connectivity between the work of BRIGC and BRI more broadly. Through Green Investment and Finance Partnership (GIFP), BRIGC has been working with other partners to improve financial flows to green development projects, especially in Southeast Asia, and also in Africa and Latin American countries. CIFF will continue to support China and BRIGC to work in this space to align longer term or concessional financing with national investment priorities and opportunities via the country platforms. China’s own journey is a crucial story for others and collaboration with China will benefit countries that want green value addition. BRIGC is a core platform and has already made important contributions at a number of international conferences. There are more opportunities, like BRIC Summit and COP30, for BRIGC to engage with the international community and help shape what comes next in terms of international commitments.

CIFF will continue to facilitate exchanges between CIFF networks and BRIGC and look forward to exploring future areas for cooperation with BRIGC.

Mr. Erik Solheim, Vice Presidents of the BRIGC Governing Board, Co-Chair of the Board of the Europe-Asia Center

China is the leader for green transition. 150 nations are in one way or the other related to the Belt and Road. The Belt and Road green platform is a fantastic platform for replicating Chinese technology and best practices to the world. We need to make that platform more efficient. Let’s be as practical as we can. The spread of technology and investment happens in business by companies and on the ground by people. The more we can establish platforms which are actually helping out in different nations, the more effective we will be. I believe we should particularly focus on sharing the idea that there is no competition between ecology and economy, and ecology and economy goes hand in hand, to let other countries to learn from the development in China.