To get around this legal barrier, the Three Gorges Corporation asked the State Council to redraw the zone’s boundaries to exclude the stretch of the river between the Xiluodu and Xiangjiaba dams (see Map 2). The State Council agreed to the request in April 2005, redesignating the protected fish zone to an area downstream of Xiangjiaba.
While the new dam, Xiaonanhai, sits in the experimental rather than the core zone (see Map 2), Cao Wenxuan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and senior researcher at the Academy’s Wuhan-based Institute of Hydrobiology, points out that the backwater of the dam’s reservoir extends to the buffer and core zones, thus posing a serious threat for the area’s rare fish. Feasibility studies for building the Xiaonanhai Dam have been conducted, but according to one expert commenting on the study, the Xiaonanhai report was poorly done and did not explain how the dam’s construction would affect the environment and particularly rare fish.Experts fear that the endangered Chinese sturgeon, for instance, may quickly follow the fate of the baiji dolphin, declared functionally extinct in 2006.
MEP Responds
On Jun 11, 2009, China’s MEP announced a decision to temporarily suspend the approval of two nearby dams, Ludila and Longkaikou. The announcement came after the MEP discovered that construction on supporting infrastructure for Ludila and Longkaikou had already started, blocking the flow of the Jinsha River, without the necessary EIA approval from the MEP. The Chongqing government promised to conduct an EIA, but it is unclear when this would be completed.
While the suspension is welcome news to scientists and river advocates, many critics wonder whether this action taken by the MEP will be as short-lived as the last one, when the MEP solved the conflict by simply redrawing the reserve zone boundaries. Civil society is thus staying vigilant and urging the government to suspend all projects on the Jinsha and to improve the approval process, including making sure that companies make their EIA reports public prior to approval (see NGO statement). If this doesn’t happen, says Chinese NGOs, “the living environment for many of the area’s unique and rare fish species will be destroyed, the beauty of spectacular canyon landscapes will be lost and the farmland and gardens of local people will be flooded.” No amount of money could compensate for this loss.