Soil Environmental Standard Values (SESV) and their Development: A Proposed SESV Framework Serving the Needs of Soil Environmental Management

Environmental standards are an important baseis for implementing environmental management. The current China National Soil Environmental Quality Standards (GB15618-1995) is far from adequate to meet with the practical needs of soil environment management. Therefore, it is now urgent and necessary to develop a suitable SESV framework. In the light of the nation’s soil environmental policies, i.e. "Exerting strict control over generation of new soil pollution", "delineating priority areas for soil environmental protection", "strengthening control of environmental risks of contaminated soils", and "unfolding soil pollution control and remediation", analysis was done of key tasks in protection and integrated management of soil environment and urgent needs for development of a SESV framework in China. Furthermore, based on surveys, a review was presented of status quo of the developed countries and regions and their experiences in the field of soil environmental laws/regulations and SESV frameworks. On such a basis, a proposal on soil environment standard system of China was brought forth, including soil environmental quality standards, soil environmental risk control standards, and polluted-soil-specific soil management and remediation (objective) standards. Meanwhile, suggestions were made that different soil environment supervisory institutions specific to "old" and "new" contaminated soils should be established separately. This research is expected to provide some references for the establishment and consummation of the SESV framework of China.