World Bank loan to the projects of forestry rehabilitation and development in Hunan Province

7.2 Impacts on Forest Quality

The HFRDP will increase the forest volume and improve the forest stand quality in HN Province. The project will effectively improve the resilience of forests to natural disaster. It will also ensure the positive economic output from forests.

7.3 Impacts on Biodiversity

The HFRDP will effectively construct multifunctional forest shelters for birds, reptiles, amphibians with a forest trinity of arbor, shrub and herb. A natural platform for development of biodiversity can be constructed through effective forest restoration in HFRDP. When the forest vegetation is recovered, there will be obvious increase of wild animals, growth of above and under forest resources, thus to ensure the biodiversity and good natural environment.

7.4 Social and Economic Impacts

Obviously, HFRDP will promote local economic development in project area by employments provision, income increase and improvements of life quality. Local government normally expect HFRDP to improve local ecological environment and investment environment. Farmers from well developed areas (such as Liling City and Zixing City) with convenient transportation infrastructures have low expectations of income increase from the project in a short term. Furthermore, HFRDP has low income contribution in a short term for farmers in remote and less developed project counties (such as Luxi, Mayang and Yuanling Counties), especially on those who depend on forestry income. Therefore, the project design shall allow farmers to develop under forest crops and livestock/poultry raising, and select some economic trees such as waxberry and chestnut that also have high ecological values, so as to improve farmers’ income and reduce local poverty.

7.5 Institutional and Technological Impacts

The technical service has been good with sufficient technicians in project counties, but the HFRDP has even higher requirements for technical service and management and thus request the forestry management and technical service agencies to learn from international experiences and technologies, especially when some counties has never implemented WB projects. Therefore, technical trainings provided by HFRDP will improve the capacity of technical services at county and township level. The forestry management agencies at all levels could also have their capacity enhanced by learning from the international forest project management models.

7.6 Impacts on the Participation and benefits of Ethnic Minorities

Based on the second-hand data collected by SA team, the distribution of ethnic minorities in project area is indicated in table 7-1. Although, all the 22 project counties have ethnic minority population, some counties including Pingjiang, Dingcheng, Liling, Xinshao, Hengnan,Suxian,Yongxing and Anren are not included in table 7-1 due to its very small minority population.
Table 7-1 Ethnic minority population in project area (data in 2010)

Names of counties	population of the minorities	Proportion in the total population（%）	Names of the minorities	Location
Ningxiang	262	0.02	Mongolian, Hui, etc.	Non-project area
Yueyang	215	0.2	Hui, Tujia, etc.	Non-project area
Taoyuan	8000	0.82	Uighur, Hui, etc.	Non-project area
Yuanling	370000	57	Miao,Tujia, etc.	Project area
Mayang	306700	78.98	Miao	Project area
Luxi	180000	60.99	Miao,Tujia	Project area
Jindong district	3532	5.99	Yao	Project area
Shuangpai	13000	7	Yao	Project area
Changning	5744	0.21	Yao	Project area
Leiyang	130	0.01	Yao	Non-project area
Zixing	5600	1.47	Yao	Project area
Guiyang	5380	0.625	Yao	Project area
Rucheng	60000	2.4	Yao	Project area
Guidong	1000	0.059	Yao	Project area

As shown in table 7-1, the population of Miao minority group mainly reside in the counties of Mayang, Luxi and Yuanling in the west of the province, while Yao minority group are mainly inhabited in Rucheng, Zixing, Shuangpai and Changning Counties in the south of the province. The SA found that in project area, over 800,000 Miao minority population live in a concentrated area, so there requests and demands could be easily noticed and considered. However, Yao minority has a much smaller population of around 90000 and reside in a dispersed pattern with other nationalities, so their demands could be easily ignored. Thus, special attention shall be paid on Yao minority. Even though there is gap between Han nationality and Yao, Miao nationalities who have their unique culture, customs and languages, it is generally small. In project area, 70%-8 minority youth migrate out for work and are influenced strongly by external culture. Meanwhile, the minority culture is also being integrated into Han culture as the mainstream. However, they are still generally the social disadvantaged groups in HFRDP, so participatory consultation and planning shall be applied to guarantee opportunities for them to voluntarily participate in the project, and to develop EMDP to ensure their rights and benefits.