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dam-l Press Advisory, Uproar over Three Gorges Dam Financing Triggers Social and Environmental Concerns on Wall Street, April 9, 1999



PRESS ADVISORY, APRIL 9, 1999
Contact: Owen Lammers (510) 525-1443
Doris Shen (510) 848-1155 ext. 317

Uproar Over Three Gorges Dam Financing Triggers
Social and Environmental Concerns on Wall Street

In a precedent setting vote, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter shareholders sent a
message that they do not want the investment behemoth funding the Three Gorges
Dam in China. Today, at their annual meeting in Jersey City, New Jersey,
shareholders voted to establish operational guidelines that could preclude
providing assistance for such destructive projects in the future. 

Activists have been targeting Morgan Stanley Dean Witter since November 1997
when it was discovered that the company had been underwriting securities for
the State Development Bank of China, which was helping to finance the dam.
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter is also the leading western partner in China
International Capital Corporation, which last summer helped prepare a
feasibility study on potential bond and stock offerings for the Three Gorges
Project Development Corporation. To date, no Three Gorges project bond
offerings have made it to market outside of China. 

Today's resolution received five percent of the vote, a respectable figure for
social proposals. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter management responded by calling
for talks to begin next month with human rights and environmental activists to
lay the groundwork for such guidelines. 

"Morgan sees the writing on the wall. They do not wish to see their Discover
Card logo associated with the forced resettlement of up to 2 million
people as the waters rise behind the Three Gorges Dam," said IRN's vice
president, Owen Lammers.

This represents the latest development in the ongoing campaign that
environmental and human rights activists have been waging in financial centers
around the world to ensure no additional foreign support is made available for
the dam.

"We are going to challenge every firm that attempts to fund Three Gorges dam
because this project is not only the greatest social and environmental
disaster, it is also the largest financial white elephant in the market today,"
said Simon Billenness, of Trillium Asset Management of Boston (formerly known
as Franklin Research and Development Corporation) who authored today's
resolution.

"This is a victory not just for Three Gorges. It symbolizes the beginnings of a
much needed shift to put some social and environmental conscience into Wall
Street," said Michelle Chan-Fishel of Friends of the Earth's Green Investment
Program, who moved today’s resolution on behalf of Christian Brothers
Investment Services, an institutional investor owning almost 16,000 shares of
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. 

This is the second financial institution to take action as a result of the dam.
In January 1998, BankAmerica agreed not to underwrite any securities that would
directly finance the construction of the dam, and would evaluate deals that
might result in indirectly financing the dam on a case-by-case basis.

-30-

International Rivers Network (IRN) is the leading river advocacy organization
dedicated to protecting and restoring rivers and watersheds for the benefit of
the people and ecosystems who depend on them.  For more than 12 years, IRN has
been supporting a worldwide movement to promote the wise management of the
planet’s freshwater resources, link environmental protection with human rights,
create a worldwide understanding of river ecology, and reveal the
interdependence between biological, physical, and cultural aspects of rivers. 
IRN has been monitoring the Three Gorges project since 1986, and is currently
leading the international effort to halt all foreign support of the project
until a thorough and independent assessment of the project’s real impacts is
completed.