China - Qinba Mountains Poverty Reduction Project (Vol. 1 of 4)

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT FOR THE CHINA QINBA MOUNTAINS POVERTY REDUCTION PROJECT Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences September 1996  . Implementing Agency: Chinese Research Academy of * Environmental Sciences Legal Person: Chen Fu Project Manager: Chen Fan Technical Examination: Xia Qing Final Report Compilation Chen Fan, Tian Rensheng Researchers: Bao Quansheng, Li Min * Chen Xiaoxia, Huang Suiliang Deng Fushan, Chen Yanqing . 0 . .  EIS FOR THE CIIINA QINBA MOUNTAINS POVERTY REDUCTION PROJECr CRAES 1996 CONTENT Overview 1 * Chapter 1 Introduction 2 1.1 Significance of the Poverty Reduction Project 2 1.2 Basis of the Report Compilation 3 1.3 Assessment Classification and Focal Points 3 1.4 Scope and Standards of the EIA 4 1.5 Goals of Pollution Control and Environmental Protection 6 1.6 Rules and Method of the EIA 6 1.7 Description of the EIA 7 * Chapter 2 Overview of the Loan Project 9 2.1 Overall Planning of the Loan Project 9 2.2 Feasibility of the Project Implementation 22 Chapter 3 Environmental Situation of the Project Area 23 * 3.1 Geography 23 3.2 Environment 23 3.3 Conditions of Environmental Quality 24 Chapter 4 Environmental Impact Prediction and Assessment 27 4.1 Environmental Impact Assessment of the Project of Exploiting Lands and Developing Agriculture 27 4.2 Environmental Impact Prediction and Assessment of the Rural Enterprises Development 48 E 4.3 Environmental Impact Assessment of Rural Infrastructure Construction 48 4.4 Environmental Impact Assessment of Labor mobility and Small Loans 50 Chapter 5 Assessment on the Environmental Impact of the Rural Enterprises 52 * 5.1 Analysis of the Main Environmental Impact of the Rural Enterprises 52 5.2 Preliminary Environmental Impact Assessment on Rural Enterprises 54 5.3 Mitigation Measures for the Environmental Impact by Rural Enterprises 58 5.4 The Analysis of Typical Cases of Environment Impact Assessment on Rural Enterprises 58 5.5 The Analysis of Typical Cases of Environment Impact Assessment on Rural Enterprises 75 5.6 Develop the Total Quantity Control of Pollutants Discharge from Rural Enterprises 76 I  EIS FOR THE CHINA QINBA MOUNTAINS POVERTY REDUCTION PROJECT CRAES 1996 Chapter 6 Cost and Benefit Analysis of Environmental Economy 78 6.1 Project Investment 78 6.2 The Benefit of the Project 78 623 Environmental Protection Investment of the Project 83 Chapter 7 Plan of Environmental Management and Environmental * Monitoring and Control 85 7.1 The Environmental Management Mechanism 85 7.2 The Plan of Environmental Management and Supervision 86 7.3 The Plan of Monitoring 86 * Chapter 8 Public Participation 90 8.1 Way and Content of the Public Participation 90 8.2 Working Procedure of Public Participation 90 8.3 Conclusions of Public Participation 90 Chapter 9 Conclusion and Suggestion 94 Photo of project area * Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 . . . . II .  EIS FOR THE CHINA QINBA MOUNTAINS POVERTY REDUCTION PROJECr CRAES 1996 Overview Chapter 1 Emphasize on significance of the poverty reduction project, basis of the assessment report compilation, and rules, scope, category, and stresses of the assessment; Summarize the laws, legislation, and environmental standards that must be abided by in complementing the project; * Describe assessment units and organization. Chapter 2 Explain the orientation and designation of overall planning, investment scale and progress of its complementation; Describe the technical strategy and content of labor mobility, loans in small amount, rural infrastructure, land and farmer development, rural enterprises * development, institution building, and the project and poverty monitoring in detail; Analyze environmental impacts of the project and environmental protection measures in brief to demonstrate feasibility of the project. Chapter 3 Describe terrain and geomorphology, climate, water resources, minerals, animals, plants, and social and economic conditions of the project area to explain difficulty and urgency of the poverty reduction project. Chapter 4 Predict environmental impacts of the Qinba project. Assessing mainly on emphasis * of soil erosion, fertility of soil and utility of lands. Giving out the environmental protection countermeasures for agriculture pesticide, fertilizer and plastic film pollution. Chapter 5 Introduce briefly the technological procedures of major products in rural enterprises, which were divided into 12 categories to assess their impacts on environment; Choose 16 rural enterprises as representatives which have large discharge and some impact on environment to describe them in details on such aspects as the environmental conditions, technological procedures of projects, pollutants discharge and prediction of its impact, and pollution control measures. e Chapter 6 Evaluate the project comprehensively with respect to investment and benefit; Analyze benefit and loss of environmental economy taking the poverty reduction project of Luobo village, Longquan town, Yihan county, Sichuan province as example. Chapter 7 Present environmental administration, monitoring system, organization, stuff * arrangement and planning requirement. Chapter 8 Analyze statistically the results of public participation. Chapter 9 Affirm feasibility and benefit of the project relating to environmental protection. . 1 .  EIS FOR THE CHINA QINBA MOUNTAINS POVERTY REDUCTION PROJECT CRAES 1996 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Significance of the Poverty Reduction Project The Daba Mountain Area of Qin Mountain (Qinba Mountain Area) is one of the rural areas where 0 having large amount of poverty people in China. Disadvantages of this area include over 10 million of poverty population, many high and steep hills, more sloping lands and less arable lands, heavy erosion of surface and loss of soil with 700-1600 mm annual precipitation, and low agricultural output. Xihaigu Area in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is a region where mainly populated with Hui people and locates in the West of Yellow Plateau. There are frequent natural X disasters there and nine years of drought out of ten. In both areas, residents earn less than 320 RMB yuan per year with little infrastructure and poor education. The poverty peasants could not stop the vicious cycle of "low income-light development-heavy damage to resources" in the production pattern. There is no positive push or influence on the areas no matter how rapid the national economy develops. This is because: Firstly, the peasants have no surplus traditional farm * products (grain and livestock products) for low output and worse relationship between human being and land. When their price rise with development of the national economy, they have to pay more money to buy necessary products instead of selling them. Secondly, when new farm products demanded the peasants have no money to develop them and thus to increase their income. And 0 finally, the local second and third industries development are so slow that the peasants have few opportunities of employment, while such opportunities in other places cannot be shared by them for lacking information and fearing risk. Facing to the absolute poverty population with shortage of natural resources, Chinese government * has formulated the Eighth Seven-Year National Plan of Poverty Reduction aiming at making the poverty population get warm and well fed. During the seven years from 1994 to 2000, labors, funds, and materials from both the governments and society will be centralized to implement in poverty areas projects of land integrative development and utilization orientated by ecological principles and the market economy to improve agricultural production efficiency. Town industries will be developed and rural infrastructure will be improved. At the same time, surplus labor will be organized for labor mobility. By these measures the self-closed pattern of poverty areas should be broken and they could join in the development cycle of the national economy step by step. * According to our actual demands and based on successful implementation of the Southwest China Poverty Reduction Project loaned by the World Bank, the Leading Group of Poverty Reduction under the State Council applied for listing the Qinba Mountain Area Poverty Reduction Project in the loaning plan from the World Bank (National Development Document [1995] No.15) in March 1995. After consultations of the State Planning Committee and the Ministry of Financial with the * World Bank, the project was approved to list in the Three Years Loan Plan of Chinese Government from the World Bank. 2 .  EIS FOR THE CHINA QINBA MOUNTAINS POVERTY REDUCION PROJECT CRAES 1996 1.2 Basis of the Report Compilation * 1.2.1 Infonnation on Feasibility Study 1.2.1.1 Report on Feasibility Study of the China Qinba Mountains Poverty Reduction Project (March 1993). 1.2.1.2 Individual Report on Feasibility Study in Three Provinces 1.2.2 Technical Guidelines 1.2.2.1 The World Bank Operational Manual - Operational Directive 4.01: Environmental Assessment issued by the World Bank in July 1992. 1.2.2.2 Environmental Assessment Sourcebook, the World Bank Technical Paper No. 139 (October 1993). 1.2.3 Assessment Documents 1.2.3.1 Environmental Assessment Outlines of the China Qinba Mountains Poverty Reduction Project (Revision), Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences(June 1996). 1.2.3.2 Report on Environmental Assessment in Three Provinces, the China Qinba Mountains Poverty Reduction Project. * 1.2.4 Examination and Approval Documents 1.2.4.1 NEPA Reply Letter of the Advice of Examination and Approval on Environmental Assessment of the China Qinba Mountains Poverty Reduction Project, National EPA, Environmental Monitoring Construction [1996] No.147. 1.2.4.2 Evaluation Result of the Environmental Assessment Outline of the China Qinba Mountains Poverty Reduction Project, Center for Evaluation of Environmental Engineering Project at National EPA, State Environmental Evaluation Center Document [1996] No.079. 1.3 Assessment Classification and Focal Points 1.3.1 Classification for the Environmental Impact Assessment * Class B was set to the overall environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the China Qinba Mountains Poverty Reduction Project based on the memorandum of investigation on Three- province projects by the project-discrimination group loaned by the World Bank. Among 807 projects, there are 10 projects in Sichuan province, 2 in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and 6 in Shaanxi province those with heavy pollution and some impact on environment and the detailed 3  EIS FOR THE CHINA QINBA MOUTNTAINS POVERTY REDUCTION PROJECr CRAES 1996 EIA should be done for all of the projects. * 1.3.2 Stress of the EIA Natural environment: Surface water, environmental acoustics and air quality. Ecological environment: Soil erosion, forest cover and soil fertility. Social and economic environments: Income per capita, rural industrial structure, employment, social technical ability, land and labor productivity. Among 6 categories of projects EIA emphasis, there are two categories that are the land and farmer development and rural enterprises development should pay special attention. For land and farmer development, EIA emphasis is on agricultural ecological environment, fertilizer and chemical, plastic film, capacity of water resource. For rural enterprises development, EIA emphasis is on cleaner production (CP) technologies and * end-treatment of town enterprises, and on the explore of local resource potentials and economic benefit of the projects. Typical examples are chosen from sub-projects. Please refer to Chapter 5 for detail information on stress EIA standards relating directly to CP technologies and end- treatment standards. 1.4 Scope and Standards of the EIA 1.4.1 Scope of the EIA * The EIA scope includes social and economic situations, conditions of natural environment and ecosystem, and the environmental impact after the projects implementation in 2941 villages of 361 towns in 26 counties (cities) in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Ningxia provinces covered by the Qinba Mountains Poverty Reduction Project. See Figure !-1. 1.4.2 Standards of the EIA 1.4.2.1 All kinds of economic activities in the Project must follow the laws, legislation, and rules of the People's Republic of China on environmental protection. For example, resources must be * reserved during developing; water and soil must be prevented from loss; living and ecological environments should be improved; Species must be protected; and lands should be used reasonably. 1.4.2.2 Environmental Standards include existing standards relating to environmental quality and * pollutant discharge in the People's Republic of China. 4  EIS FOR THE CHINA QINBA MOUNTAINS POVERTY REDUCTION PROJECT CRAES 1996 * .2' XVoS NINGXIA ~~~i I . |PROGJXECTr f, AREA j NINGXIA\ Khj * ., .r#*r B7gr- .......... . SHAANXI |-4 PROJECT E.i * AREA