Final Report - Asian Development Bank

TA 4721-PRC: Preparing the Shaanxi-Qinling Mountains Integrated Ecosystem Management Project
Final Report Appendix 15
system so that they can go out to the Mountains and be accessed easily; and 67 percent were worried
about the changes in their daily lives, their incomes, and psychologically to be caused by relocation. Quite a
few respondents indicated that they are worried about the potential impacts on the forest and wild animals
due to the increasing number of tourists. The extracted survey results are provided in Table 12.
Table 3: Public Consultation Survey Results
No. Survey Content Number of
Respondents
1 Channels of knowing
the project
2 Impact on the local
economy
3 Most concern issues
4 Suggestion to the
project and related
environmental issues
Percent
%
TV 90 74
Newspaper 57 47
Radio 70 58
Meetings 23 19
This Survey 9 7
Other 18 15
Beneficial to the whole Zhouzhi Country 98 81
Only beneficial to outside of the County 1 1
Negative impact or no impact 0 0
Road construction 90 74
Immigrating/relocation 81 67
Tourists increase 70 58
Disturbance with wild animals 7 6
Destruction of forest 36 30
Environmental pollution 23 19
Soil erosion 32 26
Reduction of farmland 38 31
Compensation to farmland reduction 63 52
To start the project as soon as possible 89 74
Pay attention to environmental protection 4 3
Pay attention to immigrants 10 8
50. Two workshops were held on December 15 and 16, 2006, respectively, with a panel of 47
participants including representatives from relevant departments of Shaanxi Provincial Government and
local governments including the development and reform commissions, agricultural bureaus, forestry
bureau, environmental protection bureau, tourism bureau, poverty reduction office. Leaders of the
townships and village in the vicinity of the PA, academy and NGO representatives, such as Xian Office of
WWF, were fully involved in the workshops.
51. Participants at the two workshops described some of the implications for a project design that
emphasizes biodiversity conservation. First, such a design requires a participatory approach, which ensures
that all potential stakeholders and beneficiaries, including less prosperous townships, villages and
households, are directly involved from the outset in project design and are fully engaged as participants,
investors, employees, suppliers and/or key interested parties in project implementation.
52. Second, biodiversity conservation would need to be addressed as the central goal in the
preparation of all project investments and other components. All tourism investments and interventions in
such areas as eco-tourism, home tourism and other resource based tourism, would need to be assessed
from the perspective of their impacts on the Project Area’s fragile ecology and their ability to serve the
central goal of biodiversity conservation.
53. Finally, many participants emphasized that biodiversity conservation, protecting the QM’s unique
physical and human environments, and tourism development should be seen as complementary not
conflicting objectives. For example, biodiversity conservation and restoration and environmental protection
is essential to the development, pricing, and promotion of low impact, high value added tourism products for
the eco-tourism, adventure, religious, cultural and other high income tourism markets; and for providing
higher more sustainable living standards and quality of life to the residents of the project area.
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