Culture Sensitivity Assessment and Culture Protection in Religious Region: A Case from One Project Construction

Abstract

Traditional cultures help to establish harmonious relationship between humans and nature, and are an important wealth of the world. Project construction may have adverse effect on cultures of locals, especially for those who are the religious minorities, resulting in the loss of net benefits of project. Based on one of China’s clear-energy projects supported by the World Bank, effort were made on exploring how to identify culture sensitivity, and how to protect or revive those endangered or even extinct cultures. The results show that although there did not exist culture sensitivity by outside characters, such as language, consume, diet custom and its structure, it in fact existed in deep hearts of Tibetans because they were afraid that Gods of mountain and water they have been worshiping may be disturbed by the project, and catastrophe may befall on them. Therefore, local temple should dispatch monks to appease ceremonies before ground breaking. During building or after building, appeasing ceremonies should be held if required by local people. In addition, to rescue these in Tibetan cultures, school upgrading and bilingual education development, temple maintenance, training local/ethnic elites for Tibetan culture renovation, and information promulgating and advertising were