The Sino-German Soil Workshop was held on June 8^th, 2018 in Beijing and was co-organized by GIZ and the Foreign Economic Cooperation Office (FECO) of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE). The Sino-German Environmental Partnership invited Dr. Bernd M. Bussian, an Environmental Consultant, previously served for German Environment Agency (UBA) to the workshop. The participants consisted of staff from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) and its affiliated agencies.

After the welcome remarks from Zhang Xiaolan, the Deputy Division Director, FECO and Dr. Christian Stärz, Project Director, Sino-German Environmental Partnership, the keynote speaker Dr. Bernd M. Bussian made five presentations focused on the topic of “Basic concepts of German legislation and discussion on questions”. Hereby, Dr. Bussian addressed the issues of prevention and control of soil pollution arisen by changing the land use. Soil remediation is a cost-intensive endeavor especially for industrial use, therefore, questions regarding assessment of the current state of soil and groundwater contamination in order to better identify the liable party, as well as the responsibility, arise.

Dr. Bussian also addressed the question of how to set soil values, background values, soil monitoring, and soil inventories, as well as the issues of remediation of contaminated industrial and agricultural sites. He introduced some cases of measures in place in Germany for risk control and remediation of soil in agricultural land surrounding mining areas.

After the lunch break, Dr. Bernd M. Bussian continued with his presentations firstly on the topic “Remediation of contaminated industrial and agricultural sites”. The speaker concluded his presentations with shedding light on standardization of analytical test methods, sampling, and quality assurance.

The Sino-German Environmental Partnership has supported MEE and its affiliated agencies in the past few years in their soil work, through the provision of German and European expertise, experience and best practices. Furthermore, the Sino-German Environmental Partnership supported the formulation and implementation of the Soil Action Plan, which was introduced in 2016.