With the aim of regulating sustainable land management and acknowledging it as "of great relevance for human subsistence", the Senate chamber recently passed the bill that establishes a legal framework for soil. The initiative must return to the Agriculture Commission for its particular discussion for approval.
In detail, the project considers the “need to regulate sustainable land management, as well as safeguard its protection, conservation and restoration, in order to avoid its destruction and degradation; promote the identification, study, classification and knowledge; considering the international treaties ratified by Chile, which are in force and affect this matter”.
In order to meet the aforementioned objective, the proposal includes seven regulatory principles: integrality, territorial equity, governance, citizen participation, science, responsibility and soil sustainability.
Regarding the latter, the project states that "in order to promote the protection of the benefits provided by soils in the social, environmental and economic spheres, the State will tend to carry out the management that prevents soil destruction and degradation in order to avoid compromising their ecosystem functions, as well as the needs of the future generations”.
Never the less, the document estimates citizen participation as an important source for soil preservation, acknowledging the right to participate in the preparation, implementation, evaluation and updating of sustainable soil management instruments in an informed manner, to all the people or groups of people who are interested in doing so.
At Hidronor we support the advancement of this legal framework for soils and continue to contribute with our services with the conservation of this resource. To date we have managed more than 450,000 tons of contaminated soil across Chile during the last ten years which has given us great expertise in remediation and sanitation of contaminated soil, where we cover sampling procedures, laboratory analysis, extraction, bagging, transport, treatment and final disposal of waste in our own facilities, as well as authorized facilities, among other aspects.
Do you want to know how we do it? We invite you to learn more details here.
