Premier Wen Jiabao said Friday that departments concerned should pursue harmony between human beings and nature in the process of rejuvenating the northeast industrial belt.

Wen presided over a meeting to hear a report on the research of water and land resources allocation, ecological environmental protection and sustainable development in the northeast area. The report was made by Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Approved by the State Council, the Chinese Academy of Engineering initiated the consultation project on the rejuvenation of the northeast industrial belt in April 2004.

A total of 31 academicians and 260 experts worked two years to work out the report, which discussed ecological environmental protection, constructing grain and forestry bases, urbanization and water and land allocation in the area.

"Organizing experts to launch consultation research before the policy-making of the country's strategic issues is a good approach to pursue scientific and democratic policy-making," Wen said at the meeting.

"The suggestions raised in the report will be important references for the formation of the economic and social development program in the northeast industrial belt," said Wen.

He said reasonable water and land resources allocation and ecological environmental protection are the major strategic issues for rejuvenating the industrial belt.

Water resources should be saved by improving water resources utilization efficiency and forming water saving-oriented economic growth mode and consumption mode, and be protected by comprehensively taking economic, legal and administrative means, Wen said, stressing that the water quality deterioration tendency, especially along the Songhua River and Liaohe River, must be resolutely curbed.

The protection of farmland resources should be strengthened. Any unlawful seizure of farmland should be banned, Wen said.

Ecological construction and environmental protection should be beefed up. Natural forests should be well protected. The return of fragile farmland to forest, or pasture, should be continued, he said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 14, 2006)