In order to meet the needs of developing a new turn of planning revision, our institute jointly undertook with UNESCO Beijing Office the large-scaled symposia of “Land Use Planning and Policy” sponsored by our Ministry of Land and Resources, German Ministry for Education and Research, and UNESCO. The topic of the conference addressed the current development situation of the regions where the economic development was rapid and the population concentration was high. Nearly 40 Chinese and foreign specialists from international organizations, e.g. UNESCO and FAO and 13 countries and regions attended the meeting to discuss with our governmental decision-makers on the very important subject of how to more scientifically make plans and decisions regarding land sustainable utilization.

Mr. Lu Xinshe, Vice-minister of Ministry of Land and Resource extended opening speech. In his speech, he pointed out that China is a country short of land resources nevertheless it is on the stage of rapid economic development. It would have to guarantee the food safety for the one fifth world population whereas it would have to maintain a sustainable, rapid and healthy economic development at the same time. How to protect and rationally utilized the exiguous, precious land resources and realize the “five-considerations” was the very serious challenge we would have to face. In order to positively handle the relations between economic development and land resource protection, to realize integral utilization of land resources, guarantee the food safety of China, guarantee the food safety economic safety, social safety and ecological safety of China , we would have no other way to go but do scientific land use planning and develop scientifically effective land utilization policies, so as to make land resources optimized, configured and integrally and reasonably utilized Land use planning had imposed a strategic impact and influence on the economic and social development. The scientific preparation and effective execution of a land use planning required a comprehensive research of multi-subjects, higher technical skills, and good mastery of macro-control at economic and social layer. Also, it required systemic philosophy, integral consciousness and overall-situation consciousness. He added that China was preparing a new turn of general land use planning revision, in which we should absorb the helpful experiences obtained in the previous two turns, study and solve the exposed problems, so as to make the planning turn out to be more strategic, more scientific, more practical and more operable, to make it really play the macro-adjustment role for our economic and social development, to make become a real “leader” in our land administration. To do this, we needed to summarize historical experiences, to study and learn good practices in the world so as to lift our planning preparation level, management level and scientific research level.

Mr. Yasuyuki AoshimaGeneral Representative of UNESCO Beijing Office, Minister of German Embassy, Mr. Tian Xiaogang, Secretary of United Nations Commission to China of Ministry of Education presented and made speeches respectively at the meeting.

The conference looked back the history our planning course had experienced , analyzed the challenges and problems we had in our current planning revision work and exchanged the advanced philosophy and methods in planning. The conference has not only push ahead with the planning revision work that our institute undertakes but also has attracted attention of the society of all lines to the land use planning course, causing series tracing reports by mediums home and abroad and wining high comments from internal and external specialists. At the close of the meeting an officer from UNESCO, said:” it is better than expected.” Some after-meeting feedback commended that the conference we undertook was the best among the three conferences held in China. They hoped to continue the cooperation with us.