Rebuilding for a better and greener future

I visited Mianyang in Sichuan province as part of the UN Development Program's (UNDP) relief team in June 2008, just a month after the May 12 earthquake. I was saddened by the severity of the damage. But I was impressed by the people I met, by their courage in the face of disaster, their spirit and energy to rebuild their lives from scratch.

I visited Sichuan again in late September 2008, this time to jointly initiate an early recovery and reconstruction program with the State Council Leading Group Office on Poverty Alleviation (LGOP). It was designed to test out an effective integrated recovery model in 19 of the poorest villages in the quake-hit areas of Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces.

Last week, I revisited Makou, one of our pilot villages near Guangyuan, to see how our project was progressing. Big changes have taken place in the past 12 months. During my visits I was often asked about what the UNDP is doing differently in these villages. My short answer is: the UNDP seeks to work with partners to not only help villagers rebuild their lives, but also to rebuild a life that is better and greener.

Through the joint work with our partners, the notion of "building back better" was introduced during the planning process. Villagers in Makou were encouraged to participate in meetings and vote on issues related to the recovery so that the rebuilding process could be handed over to them because they best understand their needs. The villagers set up separate teams, responsible for different tasks, including project implementation, procurement, funds use and quality control. All the adult villagers voted to elect members of the teams.

Multi-sectored collaboration, in which partners from different institutions work on the same platform, was introduced, too. Based on the direct livelihood assistance provided by the LGOP, the Ministry of Science and Technology is helping the local economic restoration, and planning from medium- to long-term perspective through its Technical Task Force in the fields.

Working with Actionaid International and drawing from international experience, All China Women's Federation is paying special attention to the needs of women and vulnerable groups to ensure the recovery offers people equal opportunity for livelihood.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection is contributing to water resources and soil conservation through outreaching initiatives, which in turn benefit agriculture rehabilitation.

The UNDP provides emergency and early recovery assistance in many places, and one of the core purposes of our work is to empower people and give them voice. In Makou and other pilot villages, we adopted some of the practices together with local partners. As UNDP's long-standing development partner in poverty alleviation, the LGOP embraced the idea of incorporating participatory approaches into poor villages' recovery and reconstruction work. By engaging communities and enhancing transparency, the LGOP is actually piloting a new way of grassroots self-governance that can be adopted in the specific context of rural China.

While remaining confident of the overall progress, I felt it important to constantly remind ourselves that in the massive recovery and reconstruction efforts, some groups such as the poor, the disabled, the elderly and women could be left behind. To build a harmonious society with equal rights and opportunities, we have to lay special emphasis on helping vulnerable groups and catering to their specific needs. For example in Makou, a welfare house was built by the village to house four vulnerable families that were unable to do so themselves. We could not have done this without our partners, in this case the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development and Autodesk and the Architectural Design and Research Institute of Tsinghua University. Together, we helped fill the gap for safer building and energy-saving reconstruction, and ensured that resources and commitment were synchronized at the community level for integrated results. The most important contributors were of course the villagers.

Reconstruction of the village also involved the introduction of green technology and energy-efficient products. Specific environmental measures touched upon included waste-water treatment and the use of biogas. The green approach has been backstopped by the Ministry of Environment Protection's initiatives to improve waste disposal management and promote the use of clean energy.

While bringing in ideas, expertise, knowledge and information, we have not only focused on physical reconstruction and technicalities, but also on helping to change people's mindsets, which is often the most challenging part. This includes shaping their awareness of and behavior toward rebuilding a better and greener world.

In the beginning, villagers may not feel that it is necessary to use biogas instead of cutting down trees, and not use categorized garbage cans. Our job is to help them understand that these efforts have resulted in 20 years worth of progress in their lifestyles in merely half a year. I was very pleased to see the difference made by this process: local villagers started discussing and adopting green concepts like zero-emissions and eco-friendly.

Once our program in Makou and the other 18 pilot villages matures, we hope to scale up our work and replicate those successful experiences in more than 4,800 other poor villages in the quake-hit areas to help their recovery work.

The world knows about the extraordinary efforts China has made to reduce the impact of the Wenchuan quake.The disaster serves to remind us that our achievements in social development and poverty alleviation will not be sustainable if our capacity cope with disasters is not strengthened.

Moreover, the process of recovery, as it will last much longer than two years, has provided us with an opportunity to think through some in-depth issues, including local democratic governance, rights-based development, as well as community environmental protection.

I want to thank the Canadian government, too, for contributing about US$1.65 million to a two-year program that ends in August 2010. The total amount of the program is US$5.36 million.

And I hail the strength and determination of the villagers of Makou for the way they have been rebuilding their lives after such catastrophe. We are humbled by what we have seen.

The author is country director of the UN Development Program in China.

(China Daily 05/29/2009 page9)