Ecotourism Chinese Style

A really interesting article appeared in the Guardian (UK) this past weekend looking at the 'green shoots' of ecotourism taking hold in China. The author mainly pottered around the ecotoursim 'hotspot' of Yunnan Province for the article, and talks fairly glowingly of some of the community efforts to kickstart western-style ecotoursim in the area.

Trekking around Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and visits to Lijiang seem to be fairly high on his list. Interesting to note the author went to Wenhai Lake Ecolodge, where we also went last summer.

But of most interest are some comments toward the end of the article. A Chinese ecotour operator says 'Chinese tourists don't yet understand the concept of ecotourism. They like modern hotels with plenty of TV channels, not a Naxi village with chickens running around. They want access by road, not foot'. This is certainly the impression that I got in the area too; most of the tourists doing the really strenuous hikes and staying in remote lodges were westerners, not Chinese.

Dam renovations....

The Chinese government has admitted ( see articles here and here) that many of their dams are in a sorry state and are desperately in need of renovations. One spokesman even says the dams built during the Mao era may be 'congenitally deficient' and of poor design, caused by the 'times' and lack of objectivity when they were built.

So how many dams are in need of repair? Well, of approximately 87,000 dams in China, more than 37,000 are said to be in a risky or dangerous state. That's a lot....and of course repairing these dams will cost a lot of money and take a long time. so how much are they throwing at the problem? Well, the graphic at rightfrom China Daily sugests it will cost 51 billion Yuan (anout US $ 7 billion) to repair just over 6,000 dams. Not sure what will happen to the other dams, but a government spokesman indicates that the budget for repairing small dams will not be as large.

These dams are a major part of the flood control strategy for the Chinese government. Even with all of these control measures in place, flooding killed over 1,100 Chinese this past summer. A major dam collapse in 1975 killed over 100,000 people from the combined effects of the flood and subsequent famine and disease. China doesn't have the best record in the world with dams, and I think it will take a lot more money and effort to bring them up to a safe standard.

Resettled with dignity!

An article appears on the front page of China Daily today outlining some of the success stories behind the Three Gorges relocations. Part of the article focuses on people who have been sent to far-away places such as Shanghai or Guangdong, and the other part talks of local resettlement. Granted the article does talk of some of the difficulties that people have faced, but there is of course an overall rosy hue to the piece.

You know, I've travelled quite a bit in these areas and have certainly seen what I feel are better conditions than much of the western press portrays. But, where the western press sets its scope on the negatives, the Chinese press obviously on the positive, you have to think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Perhaps closer to one side than the exact middle, but the overall need to take both sides with a grain of salt is paramount. Any time you move 1.3 million people to far away areas, often with poor land and few job opportunities, you will have those that succeed and those that don't. The one part of the story that never seems to go away is the level of corruption on the part of the local governments responsible for the relocation.

Oh, and news just in that the water level will rise to 175m asl this coming September.

Tiger Leaping Gorge development cancelled!

More on this development later, but according to the Guardian, the plans for damming the gorge have been suspended. Fantastic news!

Oh yeah, congratulations to our friend Sean at Walnut Grove (in the Gorge). He's been fighting this for ages!

CNN's Three Gorges piece

Even CNN has jumped on the Three Gorges catastrophe bandwagon. And I don't use 'bandwagon' in its usual negative sense here, but there are a lot of news agencies starting to report this kind of information. But, I put this one up here because it's a video report, not just the usual few lines in print. The landslides angle seems to be the recent focus of most stories.

Three Gorges in the news again...

News articles concerning the impacts of the Three Gorges dam are appearing with increasing regularity in the major news providers. The BBC recently had an article outlines serious problems with landslides around the reservoir and even some reservoir-induced tremors. The article states that the landslides are caused by the 'huge weight of water behind the dam and fluctuating water levels'. Sure, I'll buy the fluctuating water levels theory, but the weight of water has nothing to do with landslide development. It's more like the banks becoming saturated and losing cohesive strength at and below the water level. There are even reports of a landslide near Badong burying a bus and killing 30 people. Hmmm, I'd be sceptical of attributing any landslide the didn't originate at or very near the water line to the influence of the reservoir. Still, sounds very ominous and of course the potential for large wave from the landslides is huge. The Economist has a recent article outlining the impact of a landslide about 17 km upstream from the dam that happened in April. I must admit that I was in the are in June, keeping an eye out for landslides and didn't see anything in that area (it seems like it is soil cracking, not complete failure so that would be hard to spot from the riverbanks).

There is also lots of talk, some of it from official sources, about moving another several million people from rural areas into cities, primarily within an hours drive of Chongqing, in order to 'protect the ecology of the reservoir area'. This is supposed to be completed by the year 2020. I note that the population of Fengjie county is supposed to drop by over 40%....to bad, it's a nice place! (see photo)

More Chinese dams...

Dams in China are in the news again, with China Daily reporting that the blocking of the river has begun to allow for construction of the Xiluodu Dam in the Jinsha River near the Yunnan - Sichuan border. Construction on what will be the second largest dam in the country began in late 2005 and is one of four hydropower stations planned for the Jinsha River, a tributary of the Yangtze. The total energy output from the four dams will be twice that of the Three Gorges Project.

While this project hasn't attracted worldwide attention (and condemnation) accorded the Three Gorges dam, it was postponed in 2005 after the builders tried to defy and order from the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) to conduct a mandatory environmental impact assessment. Apparently SEPA gave the $5 billion project the green light in late 2005.

Another interesting article I came across discusses the 'dam fever' gripping southwestern China, and many of the sometimes successful efforts by NGO's to bring it under control.

On a side note, there are apparently many small 'cottage-industry' dams being constructed across China on smaller rivers for local power generation. The photo is of one under construction near Emei Mountiain in Sichuan that I stumbed across while hiking in 2006.