Chapter 2

Review of Related Literature

Foreign Literature

Soil pollution has been one of the side effects of three decades of breakneck economic

expansion in China, raising concerns over food security and people's health in the world's most

populous nation.

China's troubles with air and water pollution are widely known with its smog-

clouded cities and chemical-filled rivers drawing international attention. However, there is

another, less visible consequence of the whirlwind GDP growth the country has experienced over

the past three decades: soil pollution.

"Rapid industrialization has left a legacy of soil pollution that is damaging health and

livelihoods in villages across China," concluded a recent investigation titled "The victims of

China's soil pollution crisis," jointly conducted by Yale Environment 360 and china dialogue, a

non-profit organization based in London and Beijing.

However, soil pollution is not only affecting the health and well-being of Chinese

citizens, it is also putting the nation's food security at risk. A Chinese government report released

in April this year said that 16.1 percent of the country's soil was polluted.

The figure for contaminated farmland is even higher, 19.4 percent. The main

contaminants are heavy metals such as cadmium, lead, nickel and arsenic, among others.

The areas mainly affected include the country's industrial belt along the eastern coast as

well as inland provinces in central and western China. Experts say the main sources of this kind

of pollution are industrial waste seeping from factories onto the soil, and agricultural activities
such as the application of fertilizers and the use of polluted water for irrigation. The level of

pollution has raised questions about the quality of food produced in the contaminated regions.

Miao Zhang, senior toxic campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia, explains that soil pollution can

cause underground water contamination, thus damaging the quality and quantity of crops. The

contaminants, in turn, tend to "accumulate in the human body through food chain," Miao told

DW.

But despite the awareness of what pollution can do, poor people have little choice but to

eat locally produced food, highlights the chinadialogue report. The organization's founder and

editor, Isabel Hilton, said in a DW interview that serious health issues, including cancer and

diseases infecting the nervous system, could be caused by soil pollution.

With 19 percent of China's farmland contaminated, agriculture and the livelihood of rural

communities are being badly hit. Soil pollution is an issue often obfuscated by the authorities,

says China expert Isabel Hilton. (24.07.2014)

But in February 2013, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) finally admitted

that "cancer villages" existed in China. The chinadialogue report cites the estimates of some civil

society groups which put the number of such villages at around 450, and that the figure is on the

rise.

Describing the pollution problem as "severe and urgent," Greenpeace's Miao says that it

is hard to understand the reasons behind the government's reluctance to share information. "But

hiding the data did make people wonder whether it was because the problem was too terrible to

be known," she added.

Analysts, however, agree that Beijing has started taking measures to confront the

problem, although it still has a long way to go. "Many polluting factories have been shut down in
central and eastern parts of the country. Unfortunately, this is less true of western China where

there are thousands of toxic sites that need to be contained and we are still not seeing the

necessary level of pollution control," explained Hilton.

Furthermore, experts call for more government focus on crop safety, demanding that

contaminated sites should be taken out of food production chain. But getting rid of the pollution

is not only about the removal of contaminants, it also involves the restoration of soil health,

which is required to ensure food safety and people's health. The need of the hour is a

reorientation of the Chinese development model, which has succeeded in lifting millions of

people out of poverty over the last three decades.

The problem is that the emphasis was on very rapid growth and little attention was paid

to the negative effects, which economists call externalities, stressed Hilton. "These effects are

showing up in health impacts, food safety, food security and water scarcity as well as

contamination.

All of these have economic impacts, so looking only at GDP growth does not give you

the true picture," the expert underlined.

This view is shared by Greenpeace campaigner Miao, who argues that treating one

million hectares of polluted soil will cost at least 140 billion yuan (22.6 billion USD). "The

economic development in the past 30 years did make China a good fortune. However, there is

already evidence showing that there is huge debt behind the prosperity."

Local Literature

Land pollution Is the contamination of the land through the dumping of waste and

garbage and the introduction of toxins into the environment. Acid rain, the spreading of water
pollution to surrounding beaches and river banks, litter and even new construction sites can all be

sources of land pollution.

Some of the effects that land pollution leaves behind are obvious ones, such as unsightly

piles of garbage, landfills and loss of environments surrounding new construction. Many of the

worst effects are actually less obvious to the eye.

One of the biggest threats to the eco-system caused by land pollution is chemical

contamination. Plastics, toxins in wastes like anti-freeze and other chemicals seep into the

ground where they remain. Many modern day chemicals and materials either do not biodegrade

or break down, or if they do, then break down into smaller chemical particles. These particles

poison the ground itself. Plants growing in the ground, animals that eat the plants and even

humans are all affected by these chemicals. This can lead to the loss of some types of plant and

animal life as well as create long-term health problems such as cancer in humans.

When land pollution is bad enough, it damages the soil. This means that plants may fail

to grow there, robbing the eco-system of a food source for animals. Eco-systems may also be

upset by pollution when the soil fails to sustain native plants, but can still support other

vegetation. Invasive weeds that choke off the remaining sources of native vegetation can spring

up in areas that have been weakened by pollution.

In some cases, pollution can damage the soil to the point that vegetation no longer grows.

This may lead to erosion of the soil. Erosion leads to the loss of top soil in the earth. This loss

can spread, meaning that nearby areas that may not be contaminated with pollutants begin to

erode, spreading the loss of vegetation and life.

Land pollution can be caused by contact with contaminated areas, like polluted water

ways or acid rain created from air pollution. This pollution can spread in the other direction so
that polluted land has a negative impact on surrounding environments. Land pollution that

contaminates soil can also contaminate waterways. Contaminated water that evaporates into the

atmosphere can fall back to the earth as acid rain, causing the cycle of contamination and

pollution to continue.

Many of the long-lasting effects of land pollution, such as the leaching of chemicals into

the soil cannot be easily reversed. The best way to deal with land pollution is to keep it from

happening in the first place.

As little as two percent of waste is recycled. If recycling efforts are stepped-up, then the

amount of waste being added to landfills can be decreased. Preventing the overuse of soil that

makes it acidic and contaminates nearby areas, will keep the problem from spreading. Wherever

possible, contribute to cleanup efforts in your area to help prevent land pollution from becoming

worse.

Foreign Studies

China’s environmental crisis is one of the most pressing challenges to emerge from the

country’s rapid industrialization. Its economic rise, in which GDP grew on average 10 percent

each year for more than a decade, has come at the expense of its environment and public health.

China is the world’s largest source of carbon emissions, and the air quality of many of its major

cities fails to meet international health standards. Life expectancy north of the Huai River is  5.5

years lower than in the south due to air pollution (life expectancy in China is 75.3 according to

2013 UN figures). Severe water contamination and scarcity have compounded land deterioration.

Environmental degradation threatens to undermine the country’s growth and exhausts public

patience with the pace of reform. It has also bruised China’s international standing and
endangered domestic stability as the ruling party faces increasing scrutiny and public discontent.

More recently, amid waning economic growth, leaders in Beijing appear more determined to

institute changes to stem further degradation.

While China’s economic boom has greatly accelerated the devastation of its land and

resources, the roots of its environmental problem stretch back centuries. It wasn’t until the 1972

United Nations Conference on the Human Environment that China began to develop

environmental institutions. It dispatched a delegation to the conference in Stockholm, but by then

the country’s environment was already in dire straits. Economic reforms in the late 1970s that

encouraged development in rural industries further exacerbated the problem.

Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping implemented a series of reforms that diffused authority to

the provinces, creating a proliferation of township and village enterprises (TVEs). By 1997,

TVEs generated almost a third of national GDP, though TVEs have since declined in relative

importance to the Chinese economy. But local governments were difficult to monitor and seldom

upheld environmental standards. Today, with a transitioning Chinese economy fueled by large

state-owned enterprises, environmental policies remain difficult to enforce at the local level,

where officials often priotize hitting economic targets over environmental concerns. Despite the

government’s stated goals, actual change to environmental policies and effective implementation

will require revisiting state-society and state-market relations and China’s bureaucratic power

structure, writes CFR’s Yanzhong Huang.

China’s modernization has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and created a

booming middle class. In some ways, the country’s trajectory of industrialization is not unlike

those of other modernizing nations, such as the UK in the early nineteenth century. But experts

say China's environmental footprint is far greater than that of any other single country.
Local Studies

Soil is a vital resource for human survival in that it is the medium in which most plants

grow, it cleans and stores water, detoxifies pollutants, and plays a key role in the regulation of

the Earth’s temperature. Soil is also the habitat of a multitude of soil organisms necessary for the

cycling of elements and for keeping a healthy environment for human beings (Blum, 2007).

Also, many of the important antibiotics to treat human diseases are products of soil

bacteria. Worldwide, soil resources are degraded at an unprecedented rate due to various human

activities. Soil degradation is a severe global problem of modern times (Lal, 1998). Steiner

(1996) noted that every year 5 to 7 million hectares of agricultural land worldwide become

unproductive due to physical and chemical degradation. The problem is much more serious in

tropical than in temperate areas since tropical soils are more prone to degradation because of

their properties and the prevalent climatic conditions. Countries or sub-regions in Asia and

Africa that depend upon agriculture as the engine of economic growth will probably suffer the

most (Scherr, 1999). In the Philippines, the National Action Plan (NAP) for 2004 to 2010

identified soil degradation as a major threat to food security. It reported that about 5.2 million

hectares are seriously degraded resulting to 30 to 50% reduction in soil productivity and water

retention capacity (NAP, 2004). Because of this, NAP identifies the control of soil degradation

as one of the major research priorities for the Philippines. Atienza et al. (2008) reported that

there is a need for a coordinated and continual appraisal and protection of soil resources in the

Philippines. About six (6) million hectares of agricultural land worldwide become unproductive

every year due to the various soil degradation processes. The problem is much more serious in

tropical than in temperate areas since tropical soils are generally more prone to degradation
because of the nature of their properties (e.g. they are more weathered) and the prevalent climatic

conditions. Countries in Asia and Africa that depend upon agriculture as the engine of economic

growth are believed to suffer the greatest impact of soil degradation. In the Philippines, soil

degradation is one of the most serious ecological problems today. The National Action Plan

(NAP) for 2004 to 2010 identified soil degradation as a major threat to food security in the

country. NAP reported that about 5.2 million hectares are seriously degraded resulting to 30 to

50% reduction in soil productivity.

Soil degradation is defined as the process which lowers the current or future capacity of

the soil to produce goods or services. It implies long-term decline in soil productivity and its

environment-moderating capacity. The concept of soil degradation was first used by Kostychiev

and Korchinski in 1888 to describe a natural soil change. Since natural degradation is slow, the

present concept of soil degradation according to the Global Assessment of Soil Degradation

(GLASOD) focuses on a human-induced process. Soil degradation occurs because of drastic

changes or disruption in the normal processes of soil formation due to human activities.

There is a need for more data on the physical and socio-economic characteristics of

degraded lands to aid in the formulation of appropriate soil management strategies to support

biodiesel production in these unproductive lands which is now being promoted by the Philippine

government. Also, there is the danger that the use of the degraded lands for intensive and long-

term biodiesel production without the appropriate soil management would cause further soil

deterioration and thus aggravate the ecological problems that are now occurring.