Reforming the Compensation Strategy to Enable Displacee's Livelihood, Reconstruction and Improvement

During the process of dramatic urbanization in China, the rapid development is frequently realized at the expense of forced displacement and resettlement. Although huge economic growth is undeniably shown and the so-called benefits are often considerable, the cost of growth is to a large extent transferred to the displacees through interruption of lifestyle, sudden impact, psychological trauma, and impoverishment, which has trigged numerous tragedies including violence and suicide. Consequently, the reconstruction and improvement of the displacees' livelihood has drawn increasing national and international attention and become a hot issue recently. The Tianzhong Lake Resettlement Project in Pingxiang city is a typical case of development forced displacement and resettlement, which displaces 198 households in an urban village to construct a reservoir, wet land park and high quality residential district for both the climate improvement, water storage and tourism development. Although compensation policy has been formulated and announced, an agreement is not achieved yet and the displacees are still strongly resisting the resettlement due to various reasons. The research aims to explore necessary reforms on compensation policy to enable the displacees of the Tianzhong project to reconstruct and improve their livelihood sustainably, through identifying the losses of the resettlers' livelihood assets, the impoverishment risks they are facing as well as the acceptable, realistic and enabling assistance and facilities to reconstruct and improve their livelihood. The researcher's objective is to ensure that the compensation not only comprehensively recovers the displacees' livelihood assets including human, social, physical, natural and financial capital, prevents or to the maximum extent mitigates the impoverishment risks, but also improves the displacees' livelihood incrementally in the long term. The research findings revealed both the visible and invisible losses of the resettlers 5 types of livelihood assets, and also the complexity of causes of these losses such as inadequacy of or ignorance in traditional compensation policy, the dramatic changes in lifestyle and living condition or certain indirect impacts of the project. Besides, 8 categories of impoverishment risks are examined, some of which are frequently neglected, identifying the contributive elements and most vulnerable groups, as well as evaluating the coverage and threats of the risks to the displacees. The findings not only demonstrated risks such as joblessness and landlessness as highly severe risks, but also revealed a number of influential factors contributing to the often neglected risks, such as anxiousness and potential psychological traumas. Furthermore, the necessary promotional and enabling assistance and facilities are explored considering the specific context of Tianzhong Project, with related acceptability and capacity of the displacees thus the scale and feasibility of these assistance and facilities examined. In order to maintain the displacees' livelihood above the original level, reforms should be introduced on a series of aspects including the compensation coverage and standards, exploration of alternatives for recovering activities, effective and comprehensive mechanism to prevent and mitigate risks, rational implementation process, transparency of decision making, increasing involvement and capacity building of the communities, and most importantly, sustainable improvement planning and instruments.