Soil degradation through agriculture in China: its extent, impacts and implications for environmental law reform

China has some of the most intense and widespread soil degradation problems in the world. Mitigating soil degradation problems to achieve sustainable soil environment management has attracted high national priority in China’s environmental protection agenda. Over the past decades, environmental laws and regulations were developed in China to address the soil environmental protection issue, and a number of fragmental mechanisms have therefore been introduced. However, that has proven to be insufficient to address the challenges raised by soil degradation and to tackle issues in terms of food security, food safety and human health facing China. As a comprehensive strategy and method to manage natural resources and the natural environment, integrated ecosystem management (IEM) approach has been recommended as a suitable framework to deal with the soil degradation problems in China. The author argued that China should take prompt steps to reform its environmental regulatory frameworks to accommodate IEM for soil degradation control and sustainable soil environment management.