INSERT FIGURE 1 HERE
3. Literature analyses
We understand that the BRI currently is at the early stage, which is
still undergoing a global expansion progressing (Hughes et al., 2020),
as more countries continue to join the program. In this review, we
considered that the potential BRI developments and the resulting impacts
are predominantly located across the ECs, given that these regions are
mainly composed of developing countries that need urgent economic
development and infrastructure construction. In line of this respect,
Sixty-six countries were involved in the BRI program that are located
among the E and SE Asia, the “Association of Southeast Asian
Nations ” (ASEAN), W Asia, S Asia, C Asia, Russia and surrounding
countries and C and E Europe (Figure 1). A bibliographic search of
relevant literatures was conducted in June 2020, in prior to analysing
the desertification patterns in these countries.
The literature search was conducted via “Thomson
Reuters© , Web of Science , and Google
Scholar through using the key words “Desertification ” +
“BRI ” and “Desertification ” + “Each of the BRI
countries ”. Based on a preliminary search, we found that the number of
journal articles about the topic was relatively limited for the BRI
region, suggesting that the desertification along the BRI has not
received sufficient research attention, a similar situation to
desertification research on wider dryland areas (Martínez-Valderrama et
al., 2020). In order to obtain as much information as possible for a
comprehensive review, we extended the search to include books, grey
literature, newspapers and official webpages. As a result, we initially
retrieved 185 items. A further check of each of the items was then done
and only those directly relevant to desertification and its control in
the BRI region were included in this study. Finally, we found 163 items
for a further analysis, including journal articles (103), books and book
chapters (16), conference papers (20), grey literature (e.g. policy and
governmental documents, 19), newspaper (3) and webpages (2) from 1980s
to 2020. The searched literature covers studies that are relevant to
desertification over the BRI countries.
We found that between the years of 1980 and 2001, the number of
literatures related to desertification in the BRI countries remained at
low numbers (no more than 3 items per year) (Figure 2). However, between
the years of 2001 and 2020, there was an increase in the concerns about
desertification, reflected by the amount of publications and research
outputs. The number of publications keep on staying at a high level
between 2018 and 2020, over which about 10 items were published per
year. All the selected literature was carefully checked to collect the
information relevant to the aim of our study, the information was
summarized into tables (i.e. Tables 1-5) to facilitate an in-depth and
unbiased analysis and comparison. Research progress and future research
need were then described and discussed.