Speech by Mr. Zhu Lieke

Ladies and gentlemen, friends from the media,

Good morning!

Thank you very much for your attention and support to the efforts of combating snow disaster in the forestry sector. Just now you watched a documentary on the disaster damages to the forestry sector and a manuscript accordingly; you may have got an initial idea of the disaster situation in the forestry sector. In the following part, I will brief you the impacts of the recent snow havoc on forestry and the reconstruction endeavors after the disaster in the sector.

Since the mid-January of this year, the catastrophic blizzards and icy rains disaster has caused great losses on forestry. According to the latest statistics, in 19 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities including Hunan, Guizhou, Jiangxi, Hubei, Anhui, Guangxi, Zhejiang, etc, the disaster-hit forest area reached 279 million mu, 1,781 state-owned forest farms and 1,200 nurseries were severely damaged, forestry infrastructure was severely damaged. The direct economic losses in forestry amounted to RMB 57.3 billion yuan with the 2.63 million disaster-hit population of forestry staff, and the disaster-hit forest farmers had a huge population, the hit population in Hunan Province had already reached 9.24 million. Currently, disaster situation in forestry still maintains, and losses in forestry will be further enlarged.

The heavy losses of forestry caused by these blizzards are even rare in history, which has four features: 1. Great percentage of the total losses caused by the calamities. According to survey in 8 provinces including Hunan , the losses of forestry account for 40 percent-60 percent of the total losses of the whole province. 2. Seedlings, bamboo forest and newly planted forests were severely attacked by blizzards. It was very common that seedlings froze to death. In Hubei Province the affected area of bamboo forest accounts for around 80 percent of the total, 75 percent of the citrus plantations on the converted land from farming were attacked by blizzards in regions of Danjiang Reservoir, Fushui Reservoirs and Three Gorges Reservoir. In various provinces, the newly planted forests in recent years experienced even more severe attacks. 3. The economic losses of the forest farmers are heavy. After the conversion of farmland into forests and tenure reform of the collective forest, the economic forests established by investments from the local people suffered heavy losses. 4. The calamities give rise to serious secondary disasters. After the calamities, there will be easy occurrence of landslide, mud-rock flow, forest fires, forest pest and diseases and illegal logging, etc.

The frozen rains and blizzards will exert serious impact on forestry development in the future.

1. Great impact on people's livelihood. The local farmers' income from forestry account for over 50 percent of their total revenue. These calamities caused heavy reduction of the forest farmers' income in 2008 and will influence the incomes of these forest farmers with impact on collective forest tenure reform.

2. Great impact on ecological development. These affected areas are those where forestry has experienced fastest development and greatest vitality with the best endowments of forest resources. The affected forest area accounts for 1/10 of the total of the country, which exceeds the total area of land converted into forest from farming, or total planted forest area in three years from 2004-2006 and equals the total additional forest area of the whole country in one five-year plan period, which will cause serious impact on the ecology in China and the smooth achievement of 20 percent national forest coverage target till 2010.

3. Great impact on supply of forest products. The calamities will worsen the current serious contradiction between timber supply and demand, cause forest enterprises to stop production with impact on employment of around one million workers and the supply of forest products in the future years.

4. There is great difficulty faced by forest rehabilitation. There is great task for reforestation, severe damage to the forest infrastructure, which brought great difficulty to the reforestation and rehabilitation.

To deal with the disaster, under the leadership of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, SFA has paid great attention to it and formed a leading group for disaster relief immediately. The group takes immediate actions and forest administrative bodies at all levels use their best efforts to come forward to disaster relief. Millions of forest workers have come to the frontline. The economic loss of farm, livestock, houses, vehicles amounts to over 69 million Yuan. The disaster relief has achieved its progress at present stage.

(I) Timely deployment of disaster-resistance and relief action. Since December 24 2007, the State Forestry Administration has issued six urgent notification which deploys forest disaster relief actions, and communicated information, messages, techniques and reconstruction demand to nation wide through central media and the website of SFA.

(II) Timely dispatch special task forces to disaster-hit areas for investigation and disaster-relief guidance. During the Chinese Spring Festival, six (6) special task forces, headed by administrators of SFA went to eight (8) disaster stricken provinces like Hunan Province , to get the information on the snow ravage in forestry, visit forest worker families, and provide guidance on the disaster relief.

(III) Timely transfer disaster relief fund to affected area. On February 1, SFA transmitted 4.3 million yuan to six provinces like Hunan . On February 2, at the request of SFA, the Ministry of Finance immediately released 30 million yuan to Hunan Province and other affected provinces for forest relief. In SFA, all staff made donation of 300,000 Yuan and transferred to the disaster stricken area.

(IV) Prevention of secondary disaster. When the disaster came, the SFA immediately organized 26 academicians and experts to visit the disaster stricken area to provide guidance and compile booklets for technical measures on disaster relief aimed at major tree populations.

(V)Organize and Formulate Post-Disaster Production and Reconstruction Program.

On February 10 the SFA formulated a comprehensive program for forestry post-disaster reconstruction and it was submitted to the Command Center for Coal, Power, Oil, Transportation and Emergency and Disaster Rescue of the State Council and National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Finance.

Under the leadership of the Central Committee of the Party, the State Council and various local party committees and people's governments, and due to the efforts of China 's forestry sector in disaster relief, we have attained our first goal of “no forestry worker is frozen or starved to death and a safe spring festival”. Our next step will be the implementation of post-disaster reconstruction following the general guidance of the CCP and the State Council. Currently we will focus on eight (8) aspects, i.e. Ensure, Clear, Sale , Plant, Subsidy, Reduce, Reconstruct and Prevent, and do six (6) jobs:

(i)Focus on eight aspects. First is to ensure that the living standard of forestry workers and farmers will not decline, the forestry production capacity will not decrease and forest vegetation will recover rapidly, the wild life is less damaged. Second is to integrate clearing and forest silviculture and management to reduce economic losses to wood and bamboo. Third is to intensify guidance on wood and bamboo sale . We should not only ensure the sold-out of cleared wood and bamboo, but also prevent the possible forcing down of purchasing price due to the magnitude of wood and bamboo in the market, so as to avoid the short supply of wood and bamboo in the subsequent years. Floor price policy for wood and bamboo purchasing shall be studied and developed to avoid exacerbating forest farmers' losses. Fourth is to adjust and re-arrange planting activities, properly supply existing resources and ensure the supply of seed and seedlings for new plantings and beating-up. Fifth is to implement various subsidies to secure the post-disaster forestry reconstruction. Sixth is to formulate and promulgate incentive policies to reduce and exempt forestry taxes and fees, thus further alleviate the burden by forestry taxation and fee and assist forestry development and production in disaster-hit areas. Seventh is to organize and implement post-disaster forestry reconstruction program. The construction standard will be raised to strengthen infrastructure construction and ensure the rehabilitation speed. Eighth is to prevent the occurrence of secondary disasters such as landslide and mud flow, prevent the occurrence of disasters such as forest fire, pest and disease and wildlife epidemic disease, and illegal logging is strictly prohibited.

(ii) It is to strengthen 6 terms of work. Firstly conducting evaluation on disaster. It is to organize relevant experts and technicians to conduct overall and scientific evaluations on forest losses caused by snow disaster as soon as possible in order to provide basis for forest production reconstruction. Secondly, improving reconstruction plan. The scientific plan should be made and implemented steadily. Thirdly, recovering forest production. The supply of seeds and seedlings should be guaranteed in order to establish plantations in Spring and conduct replanting work. Together with tending of middle-aged and young plantations, it is to clear dead trees and fallen trees. The logging quota and forest fund budget should be adjusted; the input into the disaster-stricken areas should be increased in order to finish smoothly the annual forest task. Fourthly, enhancing provision of guidance. The forest technicians should be organized to provide services for the people in the disaster-stricken areas, improve scientific content for post-disaster reconstruction and reduce the losses to the minimum. Fifthly, organizing cadres to go to grass-roots level units to provide guidance for post-disaster reconstruction. The cadres in SFA should be organized to conduct investigation in disaster-stricken areas and to provide guidance for forestry reconstruction. Sixthly, learning overall experiences and lessons. The experiences and lessons on forestry disaster and self relief by engaging in production should be learnt. The criteria for construction of forestry infrastructure should be worked out and research on setting up forest insurance system be conducted and capacity building of disaster resistance in forestry sector be further enhanced.

Now, my colleague and I would like to answer your questions.