The role of policies in soil pollution management

Soil pollution has become a major threat to food safety, human health, and ecological safety. A series of soil contamination events such as poisoned rice, cadmium contaminated rice, land poisoning and lead poisoning have led to social instability and even public panic in some areas. Soil pollution management faces huge challenges and problems such as lack of rules and regulations, ambiguity of responsibility, lack of accountability, and poor management ability. The first task to meet the challenge of soil pollution is to prepare the soil law to provide the legal basis for soil environment management and soil pollution management. To manage soil pollution and to meet current and future needs, soil pollution management requires the creation of an integrated standard system of soil environment based on the basic design principles of protection of human health and ecological safety. Pollution management mainly involves two important issues: creating a clear system of responsibility that determines the responsibility of cleaning up contaminated sites, and establishing a fund dedicated to these areas. Soil pollution management requires a multifaceted, organized, and long-term effort. The enactment of soil law can only meet the basic need to strengthen or improve soil pollution management. Soil law cannot solve all problems. Therefore, it is important and necessary to improve effective mechanisms for soil pollution management, although to date, emphasis has been placed on research, classification, risk assessment, and remediation of contaminated sites.