Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
common trend worldwide, where dam-resettlement programs often underestimate the num-
ber of potentially displaced people, which can be especially problematic when budgeting
ordinated the resettlement effort, with households classified into five types: those resettled
in villages outside the reservoir region; those resettled in villages within the reservoir re-
gion; those resettled into nearby cities and towns; those who could remain in their villages
with a new allocation of farmland; and those who could remain in their villages and did
not require farmland reallocation. Some of the most productive paddy fields with intens-
ive irrigation systems were inundated, resulting in decreased yields of rice and other staple
grains, forcing local people to shift to the production of maize, sugar cane, and other dry-
land crops.
The per capita incomes of resettled households in the Manwan area quickly fell to less
than half of the provincial average, which already represented some of the lowest income
levels in all of China. Many residents turned to wage-earning jobs outside their home com-
munities in construction, tourism, and related industries, sending remittances back to their
families. Ironically, chronic electricity shortages continue to plague the area adjacent to the
Manwan Dam, which is geared primarily toward sending electricity to the booming cities
of Guangdong Province under the Send Western Electricity East policy. Although every
resettled village has been connected to the power grid, local residents can purchase electri-
city supplied by the Manwan facility for RMB 0.9-1.5 per kilowatt-hour, which is several
times more expensive than the electricity previously supplied by a micro-power station on
a small tributary, a facility that was inundated by the reservoir and is now inoperable.
Dr. Guo Jiaji, of the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, led a longer-term study on re-
settlement for the Manwan Hydropower Station, with the goal of providing suggestions to
government authorities on how their policies and practices could be improved. Faced with
an inundation area that affected more than one hundred villages, the research team selec-
ted three representative villages—to which they gave the pseudonyms Dam Village, River
Village, and Cliff Village—as in-depth case study sites. Guo's study provided, for the first
time, the data necessary for a direct comparison between the objectives of the resettlement
program and its actual outcomes.
The Yunnan provincial government, in cooperation with Huaneng Corporation, commit-
ted to invest 50 million yuan to address the social and economic problems associated with
resettlement. These funds, according to government reports, would be allocated to accom-
plish an ambitious set of goals that included building or renovating 100 schools; building
100 village sanitation clinics; establishing 100 village cultural centers for recreation; sub-
sidizing educational training programs for 1,000 rural teachers; subsidizing the tuition of
1,000 high school graduates to attend technical school; paying tuition for 1,000 elementary
andmiddle-schoolstudentsfromdesignated“povertyhouseholds”(
pinkunhu
);subsidizing
a potable-water-development project that would provide clean drinking water to approx-
