Action Plan on Prevention and Control of Soil Pollution.

This Action Plan on Prevention and Control of Soil Pollution is a cross-sectoral Plan issued by the State Council regarding prevention and remediation of soil pollution to comprehensively improve the nation’s soil quality by the mid-21st century.The coverage of the Plan is national. China’s soil quality is facing severe challenges, due to adverse natural conditions in some regions, as well as anthropic factors including irrational mining and agricultural activities and fast urbanization. The soil contamination has drawn great concern of agricultural product safety and public health. The plan aims to arrest the worsening situation by 2020, improve the soil quality with a comprehensively controlled risk by 2030, and form a virtuous ecosystem cycle by 2050. According to the plan, protection of uncontaminated lands is the priority, while risk based approaches should be used for the implementation of soil pollution control. In order to lay the foundation for the implementation, the plan enforces a detailed nationwide survey and a comprehensive legislative/regulatory framework. It highlights farmlands and construction lands as the focus to ensure the safety of agricultural product and human living environment. The plan sets different actions towards lands of various contamination level, emphasizing on protection of non-polluted lands, monitoring and management of pollution sources to prevent new pollution, and remediation of contaminated sites. Soil for agricultural purposes is categorized into three types to preserve the safety of agricultural products. According to the plan, non-and-slightly-polluted soil will receive priority of protection; mildly-and-moderately polluted soil will be ranked as safely usable and seriously-polluted soil will be under strict management. Efforts will also be made to prevent overuse of agricultural fertilizers and pesticides that could endanger soil quality and soil contamination by industrial and mining sectors.The successful implementation of the Plan calls for huge support from government, academia and industry. The Plan points out the leading role of government, and addresses the reinforcement of liability systems. It also highlights the importance of science and technology advancement, encouraging research and innovations in the areas such as soil environment quality benchmark, contaminant fate and transport, health effect, monitoring and risk assessment, materials and technologies for soil remediation, etc. All these measures will ensure effective actions to comprehensively improve the soil quality.

Implemented by: Measures for the Administration of the Soil Environment of Agricultural Land (for Trial Implementation). (2017-09-25)