News in SHP

OPENING ADDRESS TO 2002 SINO-AFRICAN SHP TRAINING WORKSHOP

Mr. Zhu Xiaozhang, Honorary Director of HRC

Good morning !
Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to be here to give an opening address to this important training workshop specially designated for our African friends, which shoals the sincere friendship between China and African countries. I'd also, together with our Director Dr. Chen, express my congratulations to you for your participation in the workshop.

I believe that most of you are SHP-professionals, but I wonder if you are well aware of the history and prospect of international cooperation in the SHP sector. As the former Director of HRC, I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you some stories about this subject.

These stories include historical background and three milestone meetings for SHP international cooperation. Up to mid -1970s, the electric energy supply in the world was mainly from fossil fuel generation, only about 1/5 from hydropower. In early 1970s, the price escalation of petrol pushed people to focus attention on new and renewable sources of power production. These revitalized the worldwide interest for SHP development which has almost been given up during the past several de-cades. Since then, both developed and developing countries paid importance to the development of SHP. A series of international conference have been held for exploring ways and means of strengthening the international cooperation in the SHP-sectors. Here I'd only mention 3 milestone meetings:

The 1 one is the Kathmandu Meeting organized by UNIDO in 1979 in Nepal's capital Kathmandu. This was the 1st international meeting after the oil crisis in 1970s, and was attended by 68 representatives from 23 developing countries (including Africans) and 10 developed countries and several UN's organizations. One of the important results of this meeting was the "Kathmandu Declaration". It was appealed that: "Exchange of information, knowledge and experience is felt to be of basic importance for promotion of this SHP technology, not only between developed and developing countries, but also among the developing countries themselves". This statement indicated the earliest concept of South-South cooperation, which has then been expanded in a very broad way and deep senses, during the past 2 decades. As you have seen, our training workshop here is just a kind of South-South cooperation project called TCDC program. OK, back to the Kathmandu Declaration which further stressed: "The Participants of the Meeting therefore decide to underline the need for the strengthening of international cooperation in a systematic, efficient and effective manner".

The 2nd one was a similar meeting held in Hangzhou, China and Manila, Philippines in 1980 also organized by UNIDO. Together with the 1st meeting, it also strongly recommended the setting up of a center or centers of excellence relevant to SHP.

The Bra one I want to inform you is the UNCNRSE held in 1981 in Nairobi, the Capital of Kenya in Africa. This grand conference was directly organized by the UN Secretariat and at-tended by 124 countries with 1400 delegates .in which 90 were leaders at minister level or higher. According to the "Program Action" of the Conference, a series of centers of excellence for new & renewable, including R+D, demonstration, dissemination, training and information were anticipated to be set up.

Thus, HRC has just been established from this background under the sponsorship of Chinese government and UNDP/UNIDO.

Due to time limitation, I could not mention too much here. Anyhow, a lot of conferences and activities for international cooperation have then been held over the past 20 years. In the mean time, there was also relevant expansion of SHP market worldwide, especially in the equipment supply and project construction sectors, which has correspondingly been ex-tended from only relying on western developed countries into South-South Cooperation. Today as we are facing globalization of economy, the worldwide cooperation for SHP development would surely from an important sector. This is especially true as for as technical aspect is considered. I assume you are well aware that common consensus has been attained internationally that SHP is an appropriate technology instead of advanced one. As an appropriate technology, SHP is most properly for and could easily be managed by developing countries. In fact, rich experience has already been accumulated in some developing countries. As you have just heard from our Director, Dr. Chen's introduction about China's success on SHP development, and after listening to all the lectures in the up-coming workshop, I hope you will understand that China is an excellent example in this field. I don't want to repeat too much in this connection, but I have to point out that the SHP technology in China is mature and proven, which is wrapped up through construction of more than 40,000 SHP-stations. Furthermore, as China's SHP-technology is also plentiful and versatile, it is suitable for other developing countries. Of course, what I mean "suitable" here mainly indicates those pure technical issues, such as:

-indigenous material for dam construction;

-reasonable standard for power plant design;

- reliable and cost-effective production of turbine-generators with reasonable efficiency level; and--environmentally friendly consideration of reservoir construction, etc.

For those social, economic and administrative issues, I believe you will certainly differentiate what is suit- able and what is not suitable to your countries, according to our different political, economic and social systems.

Finally, I'd stress that following the tendency of globalization of economy and China's entry into WTO, it is predictable that the economic and technical cooperation in the SHP-sector between China and African countries will have more space to expand and bilateral trade will also be further promoted. Our colleagues participated in this workshop will be expected to act as a bridge and initiators for the future cooperation. I will be glad to offer my contribution to you with respect to knowledge, experience and information that may be of help to your business. For this purpose, I will give a presentation of international cooperation for SHP development to you by end of this workshop. As a follow-up action after that, we may sit together to explore the potentials of our future cooperation and discuss relevant issues that may be of concerns to both sides and hopefully, even make certain commitment of intention on some specific items.

I'd finish my address today and thank you for your attention.