Zhang Guangdou has not been soul-searching alone. Recently, Chinese media, which often creates a big fuss for any launching of important water management and hydropower projects, have also raised environmental and ecological issues surrounding some of the large-scale dam projects.

Fighting the projects

The media campaign started with the news about the Zipingpu-Yuzui Water Control Project.

In August, Guangzhou-based Southern Weekend revealed that the project's proposed dam could threaten an age-old engineering marvel in Sichuan.

Under the terms of the proposal, a 23-metre-high, 1,200-metre-long dam will span the Minjiang River at a site only about 1,300 meters upstream from core areas of the historical Dujiangyan irrigation and flood-control system.

Only 57 kilometers from Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, Dujiangyan is a massive irrigation and drainage system completed more than 2,200 years ago. Ever since, it has irrigated the vast Chengdu Plain and protected it from droughts and floods.

One of the oldest man-made engineering projects in the world, the waterworks network has been recognized as a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The proposed dam project risks damaging both the beauty of the ancient waterworks and the ability for the piping in place to function as an effective irrigation and flood-control system.

When journalists and researchers investigated, they uncovered a few more projects that they claim would cause environmental and ecological damage.

In fact, Fan Xiao, a geologist, and 31 other scientists and scholars from such fields as geology, geography, environmental sciences, ecology, economy, culture and tourism in Sichuan Province wrote a joint report in August this year, expressing their grave concern for several waterworks projects now under discussion or planning.

They suggested that extra consideration should be given to the possible environmental and ecological effects before any large hydropower projects are launched in Sichuan and all of west China.

They pointed out in their report that big power companies have competed with each other to carve up the hydroelectric potential from almost all of the river systems in west China.

So far about 76,000 hydroelectric projects and 9,270 reservoirs, most of them small, have been built in Sichuan Province.

In the drainage basin of the Daduhe River, one of the main tributaries of the mighty Yangtze River, 356 hydropower stations are proposed.

On the Jinsha River, the upper section of the Yangtze River, 14 large hydropower stations have been proposed.

Fan told China Daily that many are in ecologically fragile and sensitive areas.

Without serious consideration and concrete measures to ensure the preservation of the ecology in the surrounding areas, these projects may endanger wildlife and cause land erosion, among other environmental damages, Fan said.

The hydroelectric exploitation plan of the Nujiang River has also become the subject of media focus. The debate centers around the question of whether a free-running river should be preserved.

Rising in the Tanggula Mountains, the Nujiang River passes through China's Tibet Autonomous Region and Yunnan and flows into the Indian Ocean from Myanmar where it is known as Thanlwin (or Salween). It runs through the Three Parallel River area (including Jinsha, Nujiang and Lancang rivers) in northwestern Yunnan, which was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in July this year.

With more than 20 per cent of the country's alpine plants and over 25 per cent of wild vertebrates, the Grand Nujiang Gorges is in the heartland of one of the world's 25 bio-diversity hot spots known as the "Mountains of Southwest China." It is probably the most biologically diverse place in the world's temperate areas.

Besides that, the river is one of only two dam-free rivers in the country, the other one being Yarlung Zangbo River.

The project encountered widespread criticism among scientists and environmental conservationists. Several symposiums opposing the project have been held in Beijing and Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, since September.

The researchers and scholars opposing the project maintain that the proposed hydropower works will inevitably spoil the ecological integrity of the area, causing disastrous results to species native to the region. They call for more transparency and public participation in the decision-making process for the project.

Fan said that he and the co-authors of the report are encouraged that their voices are being heard in the media.

Some of the proposed projects, such as the Muge-tso Lake dam and the Renzonghai Lake dam in the western part of Sichuan Province, have been postponed as a result of this campaign.

Balancing act

Finding a way to balance the need to develop hydro-electric power with the need to preserve the local ecology and environment is a thorny issue that will continue to challenge decision makers, hydraulic engineers and environmentalists.

"It has been of vital importance to the country, especially to the west, to develop hydropower," Ma Hongqi, chief engineer of Yunnan Lancang River Hydropower Development Co Ltd, said in a telephone interview with China Daily.

The country is still facing serious power shortage, which has led to widespread limits on the power consumption this winter.

Compared with thermal power, the power source most often used in the country, Ma said, hydropower is regenerative and much cleaner and has a bigger development potential.

China's hydropower exploitation potential ranks first in the world, but its utilization ratio is still very low at about 20 per cent.

"In developed countries, the figure is often more than 60 per cent and even amounts to 80 percent," he said.

More than 80 percent of the country's hydroelectric sources are scattered in west China, he said. But the exploitation ratio is below 10 percent of its potential.

Compared with other regions of the country, the western regions have a smaller population and areas of farmland, Ma said. So hydroelectric exploitation in the western regions will cost less than that in the other regions.

"Also compared with all of the other ways to narrow the gap between the western and eastern regions, I think it is the most realistic way," said Ma.

"The Nujiang area is one of the most undeveloped areas in Yunnan," he said. "The project will certainly improve the economy and infrastructure in the region."

As a developer of hydropower stations, he said that raising environmental awareness and the Chinese press' growing interest in environmental protection in the past decades have actually helped bring about great advances in the design and construction of various hydropower and water management projects.

"While designing and constructing a hydropower station, we have paid more and more attention to environmental issues," he said.

"In the 1960s and 1970s, we didn't consider environmental protection. In the 1980s, we launched the construction of a project first and then conducted work related to environmental protection," he said.

"Since the 1990s, we usually complete this work during the construction phase," Ma said.

An often sited example is the Xiaolangdi Dam, also in Central China's Henan Province. The workers, in co-operation with local farmers, have turned the almost barren hills into woods and pastures.

Zhang Guangdou has also called for extra care to be given to any water management works and schemes.

"Utilization of water resources is related to flood control, use of water, pollution treatment and environmental and ecological protection, and all of those affect the lives of the people and the interests of all social sectors," he said.

"If we don't do it well, the results will be unthinkable," Zhang said.

(China Daily December 20, 2003)