Delegation from SETE invited to the 3rd World Soil Day - Environmental Science and Ecology Forum

          The 3rd ‘World Soil Day – Environmental Science and Ecology Forum’ and ‘Eco Century – Song Chen Soil Ecological Art Exhibition’, marking the #WorldSoilDay 2021, successfully brought together academics, practitioners, and other experts at the Shanghai Xinqiao Art Gallery on 5 Dec 2021. The theme of this soil ecological art exhibition is ‘life and soil’, with nearly 100 soil art works and documents on display, aiming to raise awareness about the importance of maintaining healthy soil though the edification and aesthetic education of soil art. Mr. Ren, Guanping, former Secretary General of the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences, Mr. Lu, Shuyu, executive vice president of the Shanghai Society of Environmental Sciences, Professor Li, Fayun, dean of the School of Ecological Technology and Engineering (SETE), heads of other relevant departments of the Shanghai Society of Environmental Sciences and delegates from SETE attended this event.

         In honor of the theme of #WorldSoilDay 2021 (‘Halt soil salinization, boost soil productivity’), Professor Li, Fayun spoke on the importance of maintaining healthy soil and emphasized that the soil nurtures all things and in turn links to human well-being. Alongside global climate change, soil pollution, soil salinization, soil erosion, soil desertification as well as unreasonable agricultural production methods can adversely affect growth and reduce crop yields leading to food security issues and thereby affecting human nutrition and livelihoods. In order to effectively strengthen the prevention and control of soil pollution in China, on May 28, 2016, the State Council issued the ‘Soil Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan’, which identified the control of soil pollution as one of the three major action plans for ‘declaring war on pollution’. Remediation of contaminated soil has become a hotspot in the field of environmental protection technology, and is also one of the most challenging research directions.

         When this #WorldSoilDay campaign has been launched worldwide to raise awareness, our team at SETE has carried out research on development of key materials and technologies for bioremediation of contaminated sites to provide technical support for ‘ecologically improving soil health and building a beautiful China’ through the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2020YFC1808802) in cooperation with Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Tsinghua University, Jilin University, South China University of Technology, SUS Environment Co., Ltd., and Zhejiang Kefeng Biotechnology Co., Ltd., etc. This project specifically looks at cost-effective solutions to the development of biocarriers embedded with immobilized microorganisms for long-term bioremediation effect on broad spectrum organic pollutants.