Presentation Transcript
Three Gorges Dam: Three Gorges Dam Yuen-ching Bellette Lee
Department of Political Science
University of Chicago
Introduction: Introduction The Yangtze River
The Three Gorges Dam project
Controversy over the Dam
Global boycott: tension between developmentalists and environmentalists
Human rights at the Three Gorges – global capital vs. transnational environmental lobby : Human rights at the Three Gorges – global capital vs. transnational environmental lobby Involvement of western financial companies to raise fund for the $25 billion project
Campaign of transnational environmental groups against financing the dam
Human rights as the focus of argument
1. Environmental human rights
2. Economic, social and cultural rights – right to water and natural resources
3. Political and civil rights
– beating, detention, and imprisonment of demonstrators
-- petitioners charged with “disturbing the Three Gorges resettlement” – an inverted logic of justice
-- state power and institutions mobilized to quell resistance
Human rights at the Three Gorges – national government vs. transnational civil society: Human rights at the Three Gorges – national government vs. transnational civil society Global environmental lobby: human rights defined upon the natural rights theory rooted in a Euro-American tradition
China: define rights upon particular Chinese circumstances – rights of subsistence as primary; economic development is the pre-requisite to all human rights