Early this year a large portion of China's southern areas suffered from disastrous winter weather. On March 4, three delegates to the National People's Congress, all from Jiangxi Province, spoke exclusively to China.org.cn about post-disaster reconstruction. "Jiangxi was calamitously hit by bad weather. As delegates of the forest industry, our proposals will focus on reconstruction and restoring the natural environment during the meeting," said Liu Lizu, Head of the Jiangxi Forestry Department.

He made the following suggestions:

First, the central government should introduce subsidies to create improved tree strains. It usually takes at least seven or eight years for improved species strains to produce economic benefits. We hope that improved strains would be subsidized by the central government, thus generating benefits to the forest industry.

Second, forestry disaster insurance work should be enhanced. Not many forestry disaster insurance categories are currently available on the market. Individual families are not strong enough to withstand risks, and insurance companies are expected to introduce more forestry disaster insurance categories to promote China's forest industry.

Third, financial departments should provide mortgage loans to the forest and wood industry.

Fourth, the central government should increase its financial input in ecological forest projects because this is a public affair.

Fifth, State-owned forestry centers are calling for reforms because they suffered heavy losses during this year's blizzard. The government should pay more attention to the forestry centers, many of which do not have comprehensive social security systems.

Finally, the country should make greater efforts to develop economically viable forests and provide more policy support to restore the natural environment; in this way remote and mountainous areas may become richer.

(China.org.cn by Yang Xi, March 5, 2008)