Projects funded through China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) suffered from socioeconomic and environmental problems, according to civil society groups.
In a book titled “Belt and Road through My Village,” eight civil society organizations told tales of 100 villages affected by Chinese-funded projects through the BRI. The total population being affected by the projects is over 15 million.
The civil society groups said many projects across five countries — Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka — exhibited poor communication and transparency; unfair employment practices; and social and environmental impacts.
“Numerous books, studies, and research papers have been produced by governments, companies, economists, and investors about the BRI. The voices from the most important community, however, have not been heard,” Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD), said.
In the Philippines, the project that was featured in the book was the Kaliwa Dam project which is part of the New Centennial Water Source projects to provide
new water sources for Metro Manila and other nearby provinces.
The project involves the construction of a 600 million liter-per-day (mld) capacity dam (73m high) and a conveyance tunnel that has a capacity of 2,400 mld (27.70km long, 4m diameter, around 200m deep).
When the project begins, around 300 indigenous people will be displaced from their ancestral lands. If completed, the project will inundate a large part of Barangay Daraitan in Rizal and several areas, including Barangay Pagsangahan and Barangay Magsaysay in Quezon Province.
Residents of indigenous communities living along the banks of the Kaliwa River said they were not fully informed nor consulted about the project.
In other countries like Sri Lanka, fishing communities stand to lose their access to their primary source of livelihood because of a port project while in Bangladesh, residents are concerned about the pollution and health impacts of a coal-fired power plant that is being planned.
“Based on the interviews, renewable energy and road construction are among the most welcomed projects while lack of communication and transparency, especially with communities on the sites of the projects, unfair employment practices, and social and environmental impacts are among the most frequently raised complaints,” the civil society groups said.
The groups said total investments in countries where BRI projects are ongoing reached $117.31 billion, according to the 2019 China Outbound Direct Investment Statistical Report.
The report was recently released by China’s Ministry of Commerce, the National Statistics Bureau, and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.
As of end-2019, over 27,500 Chinese investors have established 44,000 direct investment enterprises in 188 countries and regions where BRI projects are located.
“People-to-people connectivity is supposed to be the ultimate vision for BRI, alongside policy connectivity, infrastructure connectivity, trade connectivity, and financial connectivity,” Xiaojun Wang, executive director of People of Asia for Climate Solutions, said.
The book project was led by PACS and APMDD, and supported by Asia Comms Lab, Philippine Movement for Climate Justice (PMCJ), Indonesia’s Koalisi Rakyat untuk Hak Atas Air (KruHA: People’s Coalition for the Right to Water), Coastal Livelihood and Environmental Action Network (CLEAN) in Bangladesh, the Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee (PKRC), and the Centre for Environmental Justice (CEJ) in Sri Lanka.
The book covered seven major BRI projects. They are the Kaliwa Dam in the Philippines; the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Rail in Indonesia; the Barisal 350 MW Coal Power Plant in Bangladesh; the Bahawalpur Solar Power Park and Sahiwal Coal-Fired Power Plant in Pakistan; and the Colombo Port City and the Colombo Highways in Sri Lanka.
Image credits: MWSS