E2221 v1 Public Disclosure Authorized World Bank Loan Project Public Disclosure Authorized Environmental Impact Assessment for Shandong Ecological Afforestation Project Public Disclosure Authorized (SEAP) Public Disclosure Authorized EIA Agency: Shandong Academy of Environmental Science July 2009·Jinan CONTENTS PREFACE ············································································· 1 CHAPTER1. INTRODUCTIOIN ·················································· 3 1.1 BACKGROUND……………………………………………………………………………………3 1.2 COMPLIANCE WITH RELEVANT POLICIES ·························································· 4 1.3 ASSESSMENT SCOPE AND FACTOR ··································································· 6 1.4 FOCUS OF ASSESSMENT ·················································································· 8 1.5 RELEVANT POLICIES AND REGULATIONS ·························································· 8 1.6 EVALUATION CRITERION ··············································································· 10 1.7 EIA EXPERTS TEAM....................................................................................................................10 CHAPTER 2 PROJECT DESCRIPTION ······································· 11 2.1 PROJECT INFORMATION ················································································· 11 2.2 SELECTION OF FOREST TYPES AND TREE SPECIES ············································· 13 2.3 AFFORESTATION MODELS ·············································································· 14 2.4 PLANTING TECHNOLOGIES ············································································· 15 2.5 PROJECT COST AND FINANCING ······································································ 17 2.6 PROJECT CONSTRUCTION PERIOD AND YEALY PROGRESS ································· 17 2.7 TRAINING AND TECHNOLOGY PROMOTION ······················································ 17 CHAPTER 3 BASELINE NATURAL AND SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTS 19 3.1 NATURAL CONDITIONS ·················································································· 19 3.2 ECOLOGICAL STATUS AND ASSESSMENT………………………………………………….36 3.3 SOCIAL CONDITIONS ······················································································ 44 CHAPTER 4 PUBLIC CONSULTATION. ····································· 45 4.1 TECHNICAL APPROACH AND CONTENT OF PUBLIC PARTICIPATION ···················· 45 4.2 INVESTIGATION RESULTS OF PUBLIC PARTICIPATION. ······································ 49 4.3 INVESTIGATION CONCLUSION OF PUBLIC PARTICIPATION ································· 51 4.4 PUBLIC SUGGESTIONS ···················································································· 51 2 CHAPTER 5 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ANALYSIS. ·················· 52 5.1 NEGATIVE IMPACTS ······················································································· 52 5.2 POSITIVE IMPACTS ························································································· 54 5.3 ASSESSMENT OF THE IMPACT ON SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT · 60 CHAPTER 6 ALTERNATIVE ANALYSIS ···································· 62 6.1 GENERAL INTRODUCTION ·············································································· 62 6.2 ANALYSIS ON IMPACT OF PROJECT AND NON-PROJECT ····································· 62 6.3 ANALYSIS ON PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION DESIGN ··········································· 63 CHAPTER 7 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND MONITORING PLAN ················································································· 67 7.1 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT OF WB FOREST PROJECTS IN SHANDONG PROVINCE ························································································································ 67 7.2 RESPONSIBLE UNIT AND DUTY FOR THE ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT ········· 68 7.3 COUNTER MEASURES ····················································································· 70 7.4 ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING PLAN ····························································· 76 7.5 ENVIRONMENTAL TRAINING/REGULATION ENFORCEMENT PLAN ······················ 80 CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSIONS ··················································· 83 8.1 PROJECT INTRRDUCTION. ··············································································· 83 8.2 COMPLIANCE WITH RELEVANT POLICIES ························································· 83 8.3 Baseline of NATURAL AND SOCIAL ENVIRONM ··················································· 83 8.4 PUBLIC PARTICIPATION ·················································································· 84 8.5 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ANALYSIS ······························································ 84 8.6 ALTERNATIVE ANALYSIS ··············································································· 84 8.7 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND MONITORING PLAN ······························· 84 8.8 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS ················································································ 84 3 Preface Shandong Province is one of the ten coastal provinces in China, lying in the lower reache of the Yellow River. Shandong Province is located between longitude 114°19'53″ and 112°43' (a range of 8°23′07″) east and latitude 34°22'52″and 38°15' 02″ (a range of 3°52′10″) north (with some islands reach to 38°23'). It is 700km long from east to west, and 420km wide from north to south. 139 counties/cities/districts of 17 prefectures are affiliated to Shandong Province.Shandong is mostly flat in terrain. The northwestern and western parts of the province are all part of the vast North China Plain. The center of the province is more mountainous. The east of the province is the hilly Shandong Peninsula extending into the sea. Shandong's topography is complicated and interwoven with nine types of landform, including plains, basins, hills, terraces, deltas and mountains. Plains and mountainous area account for 55% and 15.5% of the province's territory, while hilly areas are 13.2%, lowlying areas are 4.1%, lake areas are 4.4% and other areas are 7.8% of the province's territory. The total forest area in Shandong Province is 2.93 million hm2 and the timber storage volume is 82 million m3, forest coverage percentage is only 13.44%, ranking low among the China‟s provinces. According to the statistics data of 6th national forest resources survey, only less than one third of 82,384km2 water & soil conservation area is covered by forests. Due to the low forest coverage and fragile ecological environment, the natural disasters, such as soil erosion, drought, desertification and flooding are frequent problems in Shandong Province, which not only leads to low agricultural productivity, affecting living conditions of local people and but also degrades the qualities of nature resources. Shandong government has invested a lot on planting trees and afforestation to improve the status of forest resources to some extent. However, these new forests are mainly high-yielding forest plantations planted on lands with better soil condition. Recent years, people are paying more attention on environment. Thus the main task for forestry has transferred to construct public welfare forest in the land areas with low productivity and put sustainable development as the focus of future efforts. In compliance with the government planning, the proposed project will construct lots of regional ecological forests in Shandong Province to improve local ecological environment and provide more public service to the society This project involves 30 counties of 9 prefectures, i.e.Weifang City, Taian City, Jining City, Weihai City, Rizhao City, Laiwu City, Dongying City, Binzhou City and Linyi City. The proposed project will construct ecological afforestation covering a total area of 65972.6hm2, including re-vegetating of 38343.5 hm2 degraded mountainous areas, accounting for 58.1% of the whole project; and stabilizing 27629.1m 2 saline coastal areas, 41.9% of the whole project. The implementation period for this project is 6 years. In terms of < THE LAW ON ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESMENT OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA> and World Bank requirements, EIA for Shandong ecological afforestation project (SEAP) is categorized as B. Shandong PMO consigns Shandong Academy of Environmental Science (SAES) to conduct EIA report for the project. SAES started the work in accordance with relevant EIA requirements and prepared a draft working plan. On a basis of the on-site visit and investigation, SAES completes this EIA report for SEAP. During the preparation of the EIA report, sincerely thanks would go to xperts and officials of relevant authorities for the great supports and assistance. 2 Chapter 1 Project introduction 1.1 Background Forestry in Shandong is transforming from conventional forestry to modern forestry, and intensively managed forest plantation focusing on the timber production is steadily replaced by the protection forests. Ecological and green Shandong Province is undergoing and stepping into a key stage. According to statistics of the 6th forest resources survey in 2002, it is shown the percentage of forest cover is only 13.44%, ranking 22nd among China‟s provinces. And the areas and stock volume of forest in Shandong Province rank 24th and 26th respectively in China. Forest coverage per capita is 0.023 hm2 in Shandong Province, only 17.31% of the national average level of 0.13hm2, and 3.5% of the world average level at 0.644hm2. Based on the investigation of barren mountains in 2008, 3,750,000