**Environmental Justice and Sustainability Impact Assessment: In Search of Solutions to Ethnic Conflicts Caused by Coal Mining in Inner Mongolia, China**

#### **Lee Liu, Jie Liu and Zhenguo Zhang**

**Abstract:** The Chinese government adopted more specific and stringent environmental impact assessment (EIA) guidelines in 2011, soon after the widespread ethnic protests against coal mining in Inner Mongolia. However, our research suggests that the root of the ethnic tension is a sustainability problem, in addition to environmental issues. In particular, the Mongolians do not feel they have benefited from the mining of their resources. Existing environmental assessment tools are inadequate to address sustainability, which is concerned with environmental protection, social justice and economic equity. Thus, it is necessary to develop a sustainability impact assessment (SIA) to fill in the gap. SIA would be in theory and practice a better tool than EIA for assessing sustainability impact. However, China's political system presents a major challenge to promoting social and economic equity. Another practical challenge for SIA is corruption which has been also responsible for the failing of EIA in assessing environmental impacts of coal mining in Inner Mongolia. Under the current political system, China should adopt the SIA while continuing its fight against corruption.

Reprinted from *Sustainability*. Cite as: Liu, L.; Liu, J.; Zhang, Z. Environmental Justice and Sustainability Impact Assessment: In Search of Solutions to Ethnic Conflicts Caused by Coal Mining in Inner Mongolia, China. *Sustainability* **2014**, *6*, 8756-8774.

#### **1. Introduction**

The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region forms much of China's strategic northern frontier bordering Mongolia and Russia. In a region where protest is rare, a series of Mongolian demonstrations across the region, including these in the capital Hohhot, took the world by surprise in the spring of 2011. Students demonstrated and clashed with police, demanding justice. The events were triggered by an incident near Xilinhot (Figure 1). A Chinese truck driver killed a Mongolian herdsman who was blocking a convoy of coal trucks from driving through his pastureland. Chinese and international media widely reported the protests that underscored simmering discontent over environmental damage from mining in this resource-rich region [1–3]. To quell the demonstrations, the government declared martial law and cracked down on the activists while pledging to look into the impact of the mining industry on the environment and local culture.

We were curious how mining-related environmental problems led to ethnic conflicts in a region that had been relatively free of ethnic tensions in recent history. Our initial investigation indicated that mining caused serious environmental and economic injustice to the Mongolian herdsmen. We found earlier reports on mining pollution in Inner Mongolia. For example, the *Beijing Youth Daily* reported that a few rare-earth refineries polluted the grassland and killed 60,000 livestock that belonged to 190 herdsmen from 1996–2003 [4]. Another report found that arsenic poisoning was threatening the lives of the nearly 300,000 people in the Ordos Region; 2000 were already sick and many died of cancer, producing cancer villages [5]. China has hundreds of cancer villages, places where cancer rates are unexpectedly high and industrial pollution is suspected as the main cause [6]. However, most of them are in the more developed regions on the eastern coast. In Inner Mongolia, the main cause is suspected to be water pollution caused by mining.

**Figure 1.** Location of the studied cities and coal mines in Inner Mongolia.

Mongolians have many long-established grievances, such as those reported by Jacobs: the ecological destruction wrought by an unprecedented mining boom, a perception that economic growth disproportionately benefits the Chinese and the rapid disappearance of Inner Mongolia's pastoral tradition [7].

Qian *et al*. find quantitative evidence to support the conclusion that the expansion of coal mining and associated industry and population increase was the major cause of grassland degradation in the Holingol region of Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia [8]. While mines are expanding, underground water is being over-extracted and coal-fired power plants as well as chemical plants are being established [9]. Coal mining and associated electricity generation have seriously degraded the water resource and the livelihood of local people in Inner Mongolia [8].

Greenpeace reports that in China, a coal chemical project in the dry Inner Mongolia region, part of a new mega coal power base, had extracted so much water in 8 years of operation that it caused the local water table to drop by up to 100 m, and the local lake to shrink by 62%. Due to lowering of water table, large areas of grassland have subsided (Figure 2). The drastic ecological impacts have forced thousands of local residents to become 'ecological migrants' [10].

At the costs of the environment and local residents' livelihood, Inner Mongolia has since 2002 experienced an economic boom based on mining. The wealth from the economic boom has not been fairly distributed. Many Chinese investors have benefited from the mining operations and become billionaires. Ordos became one of the wealthiest cities in China. However, ordinary Mongolian herdsmen are not benefiting from that boom, which is based on exploitation of what they view as their resources. Coal development on the grasslands does not increase the herdsmen's income or

materially improve their life but instead has dampened their future by degrading the environment [11], causing injustice and sustainability disparities [12,13].

**Figure 2.** Baorixile, Hulunbeir, Inner Mongolia: grassland subsidence due to lowering of water table caused by coal mining [10]. © Lu Guang/Greenpeace.

The paper draws from global knowledge of environmental justice and assessment approaches and applies it to Inner Mongolia. It argues for the need of developing a sustainability impact assessment (SIA) and demonstrates that such a need is particularly urgent for subtle ethnic regions such as Inner Mongolia. We explore answers to five related questions: (1) What are the theoretical bases for developing an SIA that emphasizes justice? (2) How have assessment approaches been practiced in China? (3) Why has environmental impact assessment (EIA) not worked for Inner Mongolia in the current EIA system? (4) How and why do we need to explore an SIA that supports environmental justice in order to help with sustainability? (5) What should China do in search of solutions to ethnic conflicts in Inner Mongolia?

The analyses were based on data collected during fieldwork through qualitative research methods including site inspections and semi-structured interviews and discussions with local officials and scholars concerning environmental and economic issues. The study covers seven major coal-mining areas: Dongsheng, Shenshang, Suletu, Yuanbaoshan, Wulantuga, Baorixile, and Huanghuashan, in six associated city regions: Ordos, Hohhot, Xilinhot, Chifeng, Tongliao, and Hulunbeir (Figure 1). Primary and secondary data were collected during fieldwork in the summers from 2011–2013. The initial report was presented and discussed at the International Conference on Sustainability Assessment at Dalian Nationalities University. Follow-up fieldwork and research was conducted after the conference to further verify and interpret the research findings. We realize that our study areas were limited to only a few places. Due to lack of time, financial support, and availability of data and information, we were not able to obtain quantitative data or conduct more in-depth investigations. Environmental justice, sustainability impact assessment and ethnic conflicts in China are topics that are contested and require more systematic research. As a result, caution is needed when drawing conclusions from our findings.

In search of solutions to environmental degradation, injustice, and ethnic conflicts in the region, we first examine how project assessment tools could help. For example, environmental impact assessment (EIA) has been regarded as an important measure to control environmental impact in many countries, and some governments, such as those of the United States and Scotland, have attempted to use environmental assessment tools to deliver environmental justice [14]. However, environmental assessment tools in theory and practice appear to be inadequate when sustainability, not just the environment, is the subject for assessment.
