Soil pollution and site remediation policies in China: A review

Abstract

It was not until the 1980s that China’s policy makers became aware of the detrimental impacts on urban health from soil pollution as a result of industrial waste emissions. For the past three decades, the Chinese government has strived to prevent and control industrial pollution. Setting appropriate environmental policies is the key to mitigating the legacy of industrial waste emissions accumulated for three decades. In this paper, we review the development process by outlining the evolution of the policies and the resulting legal infrastructure in terms of acts, regulations, ordinances, and standards. Deficiencies of the existing policies are identified. In the early stages, environmental policies were fragmented, consisting of single-purpose laws that are narrowly focused. With time, these policies gradually evolved to become better integrated and comprehensive management plans. However, the laws emphasize contaminated site restoration instead of preventing soil pollution. The legal framework shows that the policies that are in place often lack clear mandates because the authorizations are piggybacked on environmental acts and regulations that do not directly address issues of soil pollution. Furthermore, implementation plans are impractical due to outdated soil quality standards, unclear soil cleanup goals, unenforceable liability and supervision mechanisms, limited funding, lack of transparency and public outreach, and the unreliable financial and technical capabilities of the remediation industries.