Yunnan province is a very beautiful place indeed.
And it is here that the Chinese government voluntarily put the brakes on Energy policy and the attendant economic development.
Yes – verily – they stopped it in Yunnan.
That is a first ever.
At least, they did so by placing a moratorium in the Hydro Energy sector, in Yunnan, even though they have all the power to do whatever they see fit with the rivers and the dams for hydro power development. But the decision came from up high. From inside the standing committee of the Politburo. From the wise elders….
To understand the extent of this vast Energy Policy turn around one must know the background of the hydro power projects in Yunnan and the Green Capital involvement in the Private Equity financings there. A bit of this has become public but the majority of the deal is sealed….
However we can share with You this much: International and Chinese initial funding and financing for 9 of the 13 planned dams was already arranged, budgeted and allocated. With international project development finance and the state subsidies all spoken for and draw downs beginning this coming March.
Then Why this grand scheme didn’t go forth?
Obviously, there is more to the story than “authoritarian regime” [simpleton cause and effect children's] explanations. And if this is one example of a changing Energy Policy in China, there were many other changes that were missing from our global radar and that would also not match the usual foreign observer assumptions…
The Nu River area is a biodiversity hotspot and that made a difference to the central government and the Politburo. It is a UN designated World’s Nature heritage site and a singularly beautiful mountain gorges and rivers biosphere…
Specifically the kind of Energy Policy planning was done in the important ecological areas of the Nu river basin and al over scenic Yunnan without regards to an Environmental assessment. That is usual since change occurs so rapidly in China that is an unknown whether the Nu River is going to become like every other place or is it going to remain a special biodiversity zone and a great tourist draw… even though the Hydro power projects were given the Go ahead…
I know that the Nu would be dammed at some point and with good results, since this Energy Policy Change is a temporary moratorium and not a ban by any means. And that has led me there many times over and over again to assess on How to see the river and the watershed and the people and the plants and animals at risk before development proceeded, in a different light. Not the light of the Private Equity Green Capital investor but that of the Environmental Parliament Chair. And that was a revelation…
Policy on damming the Nu is still being hammered out in Beijing. But we have to know that Energy Policy and hydro power dam building and environmental protection are compatible in Yunnan province and that we are able to merge the two for a Win- Win all around.
Right now they are incompatible.
Yet that doesn’t mean they will remain so into the future. The original moratorium was stimulated by an outcry against the dams by the international and Chinese environmental groups and even the UN world heritage designation body. Naturally the local governments were completely against the moratorium for hydro electric power generation development. And if they had their way, they would do away with it today. But the central government, because hydropower development is something that is more closely controlled by Beijing than other aspects of conservation and development, had enough will, interest and applied the requisite political authority to make that moratorium effective and solid.
And guess what? The moratorium still holds.
The original plan was for 13 dams on the Nu River. Now that plan has been reduced to four hydro power dams to be built in the river’s course. The question is: will four dams do the same amount of damage as 13? And no one knows because the environmental documents that would answer that question are not available for public viewing. The good news is that the government is yet to act to replace the moratorium.
And we know that they are working hard on an Environmental Review process for the specific river Nu.
Still one key problem moving forward is the severe lack of communication throughout China, south-east Asia and the third pole region. It’s a profound challenge to operate in an environment where people do not talk with each other. Hydropower development needs to be contextualized – it’s not just about what China needs, it’s about what the downstream countries need. They can’t have water diversions in Yunnan impeding the rice-growing sector in Vietnam or the agricultural sector in Laos and Cambodia. And until there’s a regional watershed-based conversation going on, progress will be difficult.
The campaign that led to the Nu construction freeze was a one-off original and it could provide a model for resisting other projects in China because the investors – Green Capital – and the environmental groups were in cooperation. But there is some story to fill in since the moratorium was put in place in 2007 after being first reviewed in 2004 and the project delayed. One is that China’s leaders are getting a greater sense of the importance of climate change and a green economy to combat climate change. And that is a deeply influential learning curve that was lacking when the moratorium was put in place.
And that learning has been going on for some time now. Back in 2004 Premier Wen Jiabao ordered a halt to the Nu river hydro power project and a full environmental assessment for the first time. That was a short-lived work stoppage. The environmental assessment was half way finished but was never released to the public; because the Nu is an international river. It is known outside China as the Salween and all the development plans still fall under state secrecy laws. Therefore the chances of anyone seeing the government’s Environmental assessment are rather slim.
Even then the project was scaled down from 13 dams to nine and eventually way down to only four, and preliminary work went ahead despite Premier Wen’s opposition. In March 2008, the State Development and Reform Commission published its five-year plan for energy development, which listed the dams on the Nu as key projects for the Chinese Energy Policy.
Today, the construction of a small dam on a tributary to the Nu, just south of the UNESCO Three Parallel Rivers World Heritage Site, is nearly complete.
In 2007, residents of Xiaoshaba, a village of some 120 families upstream from the city of Liuku, were relocated into newly built apartment blocks to make way for a power station. Meanwhile, in Burma to the south a planned dam project will produce electricity from the Salween [Nu], under a PPA [Power Purchase Agreement], for finance purposes, that will be sold back to China.
Since 2004, China’s civil society has also been granted more space to operate and some independent environmental assessments have been provided. There are more environmental groups today than in 2004 and there are more options for those groups to pursue in influencing the government to take a better environmental policy stance on dams or virtually all other aspects of China’s development as it befits the Environment.
In essence there are more citizens that care about the Environment today than ever before. And they are increasingly vocal…
Another key factor is that the Chinese middle class is also growing more rapidly than any middle class in history. Many scholars believe the Chinese middle class will be larger than the entire population of the European Union in five or six years. Historically, as a middle class grows, its political power also increases. People have money and time enough to care about the civil space that they may inhabit. The question is how much action will that middle class demand as they gain more voice and that remains to be seen.
That emerging middle class is also bringing more tourists to Yunnan with the usual impacts Most of the world tourist projections have China replacing the United States as the number one tourist force in the world economy some time seven or eight years from now. In Yunnan, in 2004, there were 61 million tourists. That is many more people than those who visit Paris, the number one urban tourist destination in the world. Of that 61 million, only one million were foreigners and 60 million were the growing Chinese middle class who now have the money and leisure time to explore the country.
In deep, rural, back-country Yunnan, the impact is still minimal. In some of the more developed areas, most obviously Lijiang, the number one tourist attraction in Yunnan, the tourist visitation is off the scale and continuing to grow. To deal with that rate of growth, they’re essentially growing out from the original core of the World Heritage Site, replicating the preserved traditional buildings in suburban satellite developments. All the satellites being constructed in 2008, 2009 and 2010 still qualify if they follow the architectural standards that the UN has placed on the initial World Heritage Site. It still counts, even though the buildings, instead of being 200 years old are two or three years old.
From an American or European perspective, we tend to have our nature set. Yes, we may protect it, but it’s still removed from the normal interaction with people unless you’re on holiday. Many Americans visit their national parks to get away from it all. In Europe it is a bit of both. Somewhere in the half way point between US and China’s approach to park nature and recreational countryside. Still we don’t have large numbers of people living inside US or EU park lands and natural protected areas. In China, the opposite is true. No expert even knows how many people live inside the boundaries of Chinese protected areas. The most dependable number I’ve seen is in the order of 30 to 70 million. And the Chinese are happy with that because it fits in with philosophies that people and nature are intermarried. With Pudacuo, Yunnan is experimenting with the national park model. What will this mean in the Chinese context is anybody’s guess.
That fine balance is being discovered as things move along. China’s protected-area model is based to a great extent on a United Nations import, let’s call it the biosphere reserve model, where humans are actively discouraged from visiting the core of protected areas. Think of it as a bullseye and the target is where everyone is kept out and as you move toward the periphery, more human use is allowed until finally at the edge you can build some hotels and create a tourist economy. When people are living in the core before the protected area is marked out, that model obviously has some very specific limitations.
So China is experimenting actively with the US national park model to see if that might be appropriate and the European, by protecting the core and allowing visitation and also allowing some development of tourist areas. Like anything in life, the model never quite matches the reality. The fact people are living everywhere in China’s protected areas is one reason why it might be difficult to have the national park model. It’s not just a matter of a protected area system, it’s a matter of the space that the native Peoples, agriculturalists & pastoralists, depend on for their livelihoods. You can’t just relocate them forcibly. Therefore, how are you going to continue to allow those people to get a living at a sustainable level, through grazing, fuel collection and all the things that it takes to maintain a household and a thriving native community while managing a tourist economy? And add to that the fact that if you dam the river, their culture, their tradition, and themselves will all disappear…
That is the giant Energy Policy challenge for Yunnan province and China - in general – and for the Nu river electricity power generation vs conservation in particular.
There are many unresolved issues, which is why China looks at this as a pilot project. If after a few years of experimentation, some of these on the ground problems can be resolved, then the central government might want to roll this model out to some other provinces as well. But I don’t see the government embracing the national park experiment until it has been proven several times over in different areas of China. That’s a good thing actually because China is taking it slow and maybe they’ll iron out some of these issues as they go along.
Another issue that many foreigners don’t quite get about China is the difference between what central government would like and what local governments can actually implement. Beijing may ask for it, but they won’t necessarily get it. An alternative path for China might be to let go of some of the conservation models that have been imported into the country from the west and focus more specifically on home-grown ideas that continue to be important in Chinese culture, many of which have their base in Confucianism. One of those ideas might be social unity, which is a key characteristic of Chinese social discourse. Social unity right now is a concept that’s not used well within Chinese conservation or within the government’s approach to sovereign state negotiations. If it was used more explicitly, that might create more transparent communications within the Chinese bureaucracy and between China and neighbouring countries.
Another example might be hydro development on the Nu River. The economy was explicitly hoisted over the environment in the original dam proposal and planning. But the local people were not going to benefit from that hydropower development, as was designed, since they already have all the electricity they need from coal factories and other plants.
The electricity generated by the Nu river dams to be built, initially was slated to be sold downstream, to power the economic growth of some other south-east Asian countries… who complain that the Mekong is illegally dammed for the sole benefit of the Han Chinese territories.
Vietnam had threatened hostilities against the Chinese dams back in January.
Could the turn around be an admission that the prior Chinese Energy Policy in regards to Mekong and the Nu river dams was misguided in it’s far reach?
Yours,
Pano
PS:
However with intelligent Energy Policy, things would look and be radically different:
If for example, you used “conservation with Chinese characteristics”, then the Chinese Energy Policy for the Yunnan province might be far more beneficial for the local Peoples.
Then you might build very very few dams and use only local resources and builders thereby creating local benefits from that development.
The same goes for the Electricity generated:
Instead of selling it off on the global electricity market, just scale it back and apply it as cheaper rates for local industry and regional development.
After all it is the people’s water resources we are damming…
This May, Premier Wen Jiabao, once again stopped the project until a full environmental assessment is completed.
The clouds over the Nu flowing free river are gathering.
It is increasingly clear that when the 67-year-old premier steps down in 2012, all forces will come to bear and full-scale construction will resume.
While environmentalists remain staunchly opposed to damming the Nu, the controversy is far from black and white.
China is hungry for energy and more than 80 percent of the country’s electrical supply is currently provided by dirty coal-fired plants.
We aim to change that…
Hydropower, which accounts for just 15 percent of China’s electricity, is a vastly cleaner and greener renewable Energy alternative…
