Full Text: Integrated Reform Plan for Promoting Ecological Progress (6)

16. Developing new approaches for formulating municipal-level (county-level) spatial plans

We will explore how best to standardize procedures for formulating municipal-level (county-level)spatial plans, public participation will be expanded, and planning will be made more effective and transparent. Those areas piloting municipal-level (county-level) spatial plans are encouraged to integrate planning departments, making a single department responsible for formulating the spatial plan for that municipality or county; and they may form a planning appraisal committee of experts and representatives of the relevant fields. Prior to the formulation of a plan, a resource and environmental carrying capacity assessment must be carried out, and the results of the assessment should serve as the fundamental basis of planning. During the process of formulation, efforts should be made to solicit opinions of those from relevant sectors; the draft of the plan should be published in full so that the suggestions and comments of local residents can be extensively solicited. After evaluation and approval by the planning appraisal committee, the plan must be deliberated and passed by the local people's congress, then reported to the relevant government department at the next level up to be placed on record. The finalized plan should include the text of the plan along with precise maps and images, and should be made available to the public through websites and other forms of local news media. Local residents are to be encouraged to oversee the implementation of the plan and report any development and construction activities that violate it. The local people's congress and its standing committee will hear reports at regular intervals on the implementation of the plan, and will hold the local government accountable for violations of the plan.

V. Improving the Systems for Total Resource Management and Comprehensive Resource Conservation

17. Improving the systems for providing the strictest possible protection for farmland and securing the economical and intensive use of land

The system for the protection of basic cropland will be improved and a redline below which the area of China' s permanent basic cropland must not fall will be established. To ensure that the area of basic cropland are not diminished, its quality does not deteriorate, and it is not converted to any other uses, the duty of basic cropland protection will be assigned to farming households and every piece of this cropland will be captured through photo-imaging and entered into the national cropland protection database, and its strict protection will be enforced. With the exception of unavoidable cases as specified by law in which basic cropland has to be used as the site of key national projects, no basic cropland may be used for construction purposes. Efforts will be redoubled to grade and monitor as well as maintain and improve the quality of cultivated land. The system for offsetting the occupation of cultivated land for purposes other than cultivation will be improved. A cap will be set on total cultivated land that can be used for new construction projects. It will be made sure that equivalent land is offset ahead of occupation and that the replacement land is of equal or higher grade than the cultivated land to be occupied. A cap will also be on total land that can be occupied for construction purposes, management will be instituted to reduce the amount of cultivatable land that is used as such, and incentive and constraint mechanisms will be established to encourage more economical and intensive use of land. Reasonable annual plans will be made for the use of land, adjusting the structure of land used for different purposes and making the best use of land that has already been made available. (mo