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Resettlement Aims to Save Environment
The long distance migration of farmers from the Three Gorges dam area aims to protect the environment, experts said during a seminar.
Officials confirmed that there will be an exodus of some 125,000 locals from the future reservoir area of the mammoth Three Gorges Project, which will be the world's largest hydropower dam and is currently under construction across the Yangtze River, the world's third longest river after the Nile and the Amazon, China's top English news paper China Daily reported on September 18.
The people who are to be resettled will total 1.1 million by 2009, when the project is due to be completed. They will all have to say farewell to their ancestral homes and seek their fortunes elsewhere to make way for the huge reservoir.
A total of 125,000, however, will be selected to completely leave the reservoir area to go and make their living in economically developed provinces along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River or in China's prosperous coastal areas, said Guo Shuyan, deputy director of the Three Gorges Project Construction Committee under the State Council, which is the project's decision-making organ.
The dam project is designed to control flooding on the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze, generate electricity for East China and improve the navigation of the river.
The project's resettlement program is viewed as "the most difficult crux of the success of the project," by both of the government and the panel of experts that has been involved for decades in feasibility studies on the dam.
The government will not simply compensate those who are to be relocated with a one-time-only payment, as has been done in the past. The majority of the resettlement funds are instead to be invested in the local area to develop the economy and help exploit local resources in a rational way.
"The resettlement project is going as scheduled," Guo said, adding that 14.5 million square metres of housing, equivalent to over 40 per cent of the housing that will be inundated by the rising waters of the reservoir, has been built to house those who have had to move.
Moreover, many roads, harbors and communication facilities have been improved.
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