Background on the Western Poverty Reduction Project
NOTE FROM THE WEBMASTER: The project discussed below has since been withdrawn from consideration by the Chinese Government. This was due in large part to the Students for a Free Tibet and International Campaign for Tibet, who brought international attention to the many negative aspects of this project.
"My authorities will sincerely welcome and facilitate site visits by legitimate parties concerned, including executive directors, diplomats, media people, parliament members, and even NGOs if they are not politically hostile and not challenging China's sovereignty"
Zhu Xian, World Bank Executive Director for China (as quoted in The Washington Post, August 19, 1999)
On June 24, 1999, the World Bank
approved a highly controversial loan to China that will resettle
some 58,000 poor Chinese farmers from eastern Qinghai Province to
western Qinghai's Dulan County, which is home to Tibetan and
Mongolian nomadic herders. The $160 million loan for the China
Western Poverty Reduction Project aims include developing
irrigated agriculture in an arid, high desert landscape for newly
resettled Chinese farmers, while reducing population and
environmental pressures in eastern Qinghai. Project opponents,
however, have argued that the Bank loan will legitimize China's
encouragement of population transfer that dilutes the Tibetan
population, and also heighten ethnic tensions in the region and
which is almost certainly part of a policy to make traditional
nomads become settled farmers. The project involves the
construction of a 40-meter dam and substantial conversion of a
sensitive desert ecosystem, and it violates World Bank policies
that are intended to protect the environment and the rights of
indigenous peoples and resettled populations, among others. As
such, it calls into question the Bank's commitment to it's
so-called "safeguard policies", which Bank management
contend are to be strictly complied with.
Prior to the Board vote, the project received unprecedented and
widespread opposition from the Tibetan exile community, human
rights organizations, environmentalists and members of the US
Congress. The project was denounced on the editorial pages of the
Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times.
During May and early June, grassroots activists from around the
world sent thousands of letters, faxes and emails to the World
Bank's President and Board of Directors urging them to stop the
project. NGOs also engaged in a series of meetings with bank
staff, senior management, and executive directors' offices to
voice concerns and question the violations of the bank's social
and environmental policies. On June 18, the International
Campaign For Tibet filed a claim with the World Bank Inspection
Panel alleging that violations of World Bank policies during
project preparation would cause serious harm to Tibetan and
Mongolian nomads in the project area. Among the complaints was
the assertion that important project documentation had not been
released to the public as required by Bank policies.
Despite these civil society concerns and efforts, the project was
approved by the Board on June 24, 1999, after a controversial
meeting and a rare vote in which the United States and Germany
voted against the project. President Wolfensohn and the Board
agreed, however, to delay implementation and withhold funds for
the project until after the Inspection Panel completed its
investigation and any necessary changes were made to bring the
project into compliance with bank policies.
When the Inspection Panel Report was finally completed and
formally submitted to Bank Management and the Executive Board on
April 28, 2000, it became clear that the concerns outlined in
ICT's Inspection Panel Claim were vindicated. However, the Report
is still confidential. Only an elite group of Bank and government
officials have access to the findings. According Bank policies
neither ICT, nor the Tibetan people in the project area have a
right to see the Report until the Board of Directors has made
their final decision on the fate of the project.