Assessment of Green Development Levels and Exploration of Regional Differences in Countries Along the Belt and Road

Green development is an important path to breaking the “growth-pollution” paradox and realizing the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Most of the countries along the “Belt and Road” are developing countries with fragile ecological environments, and the pressure of economic activities on environmental resources exceeds the global average, so the countries have a strong will to promote green development. Accurately grasping the level of green development and the dynamic evolution trend of BRI countries can help to explore the implementation effect of policies at a certain stage, and on this basis, exploring regional correlations and differences can help to provide data support for future regional cooperation and policy formulation. Based on this, this study comprehensively evaluates the level of green development in the BRI countries by constructing a multi-dimensional evaluation index system and then explores the correlation and regional differences of green development in the countries along the route by utilizing the Moran index and the Thiel index. The results indicate that the green development levels of BRI countries have shown an upward trend; the spatial association exhibited a fluctuating upward trend, with significant changes in local clustering characteristics. Overall disparities in green development levels were relatively small, with intra-group differences being the primary contributor to these disparities, and West Asia and the Middle East displayed larger variations in green development levels. This study provides policy recommendations for promoting green development in BRI countries.