China’s plan to clean up soil lacks teeth, Greenpeace says
Some provinces face daunting challenge in meeting targets laid out in blueprint released by State Council, group says
It has taken Chinese authorities 10 years to prepare their first road map for tackling soil pollution – a problem that affects one-fifth of the nation’s farmland – and the first deadline for improvements is just four years away.
But one environmental campaigner working for Greenpeace said the plan – announced this week by the State Council “lacks teeth” and some provinces faced a “daunting challenge” in meeting some of its deadlines.
The plan sets two major deadlines – the first involves stabilising soil quality to ensure 90 per cent of polluted farmland and industrial sites is safe to use by 2020.
A second deadline involves making improvements to soil quality so that 95 per cent of all contaminated land is safe to use by 2030.
The strategy, which follows similar schemes targeting air and water pollution, comes after state media reported in April that hundreds of students fell ill at Changzhou Foreign Languages School in Jiangsu province after they moved to a new campus next to a severely contaminated site that had been home to a number of chemical factories.