The Legislative Yuan passed the Statute for Rejuvenation of Rural Villages in its third reading on July 14 and the government will accordingly promote for an orderly development works of rural areas, actually taking care of 600,000 families in Taiwan ’s 4,000 agricultural and fishing villages. And the government will strive to break bottlenecks in the long-term rural development and revitalize agricultural and fishing villages with industrial, cultural and infrastructure constructions to create wealthy new villages with quality life so as to attract young people back to rural areas.

The Council of Agriculture (COA) said as one of the i-Taiwan 12 projects President Ma Ying-jeou proposed during his presidential campaigns, the Statute for Rejuvenation of Rural Villages is a key legislation in the long-term rural development. The government has convened more than 300 meetings and seminars to solicit opinions from various sectors of the society since the drafted statute was presented in 2008. When reaching a consensus on sustainable rural development, the Council revised the draft according to adopted suggestions and deleted articles regarding rural area expansion and other matters which will be promoted in the next stage. So the articles passed by the Legislative Yuan have covered expectations of the whole society and people and the Council will join efforts with them in promoting “plan-oriented” rejuvenation projects based on the principle of integrated overall development and reasonable utilization of the rural land.

COA Minister Wu-hsiung Chen emphasized that the Council will set up a special fund to implement rural area rejuvenation projects. The Legislative Yuan approved the appropriation of NT$150 billion for the special fund as requested by the Executive Yuan. The Statute has listed specific expenditure items and the government will appropriate money for projects presented by various rural areas. Meanwhile, in coordination with the reorganization of the Executive Yuan, the proposed Ministry of Agriculture will set up the Rural Villages Development Administration to take charge of promoting sustainable rural development.

Minister Chen added that the 38 articles of the Statute have the following characteristics:

1.   Rural residents will jointly take part in implementing rejuvenation projects to beautify the environment orderly, revitalize agricultural industries, carry on agricultural culture heritage and create development vision with local features.

2. Appropriate funds for sustainable use to improve the entire environment, revitalize agricultural industries, and create better basic production conditions by taking living, production and ecology into consideration.

3. Training community manpower is listed as a necessary condition in the proposed rural area rejuvenation project, so that local residents can reach consensus when making decisions on how to beautify their community.

4. Green building and recycled energy resources are listed as important items of community environmental improvement and public facilities eligible for government subsidies to build communities with low emissions of greenhouse gases throughout Taiwan .

5. Strengthen self-management with community conventions to prevent careless constructions from worsening local landscape.

The Council will invite scholars and experts to formulate related detailed regulations and plan a publicity campaign for government agencies at various levels, rural communities and the public to better understand the Statute contents as well as objectives and methods of promoting rural area rejuvenation, noted Minister Chen. And the Council will also act as a platform to integrate resources provided by various government agencies so as to establish a new order for rural areas in which humanities, industries and land can co-exist in harmony.