In an open session of parliament on Sunday, lawmakers gave their seal of approval to four articles of the bill on protecting the soil whose general principles had earlier been endorsed in late June.
Consent was granted to Article 3 of the legislation in which any utilization of soil must comply with technical criteria of sustainable soil exploitation.
Besides, all mining operations must follow the 1998 law and its subsequent amendments regarding environmental protection, ISNA reported.
Lawmakers also passed Article 4 which tasks the Plan and Budget Organization and the Agriculture Ministry to measure and include in national accounts the economic value of soil and the costs incurred by its contamination and degradation in various ecosystems.
Based on the other approved clause (no. 8), the Agriculture Ministry is put in charge of constant qualitative and quantitative monitoring of soil resources with priority given to farming and gardening lands.
The ministry must conduct the studies at appropriate intervals to enable the preservation of soil fertility and sustainability. It must also prepare maps and statistics showing any alterations in the quantity and quality of soil.
Moreover, Parliament approved a provision of the bill (no. 10) which assigns the responsibility regarding fertilizers to the Agriculture Ministry.
Management and monitoring of imports, production, packaging, distribution, sale and consumption of fertilizers is entrusted with the ministry.
The government body will also control the quality of fertilizers and chemical, organic and biological plant-growth enhancers.
In addition to these sections, Article 9 was referred to the Majlis Agriculture Commission for further review.
Once approved, agriculture and heath ministries will be required to define permitted limits for using fertilizers and pesticides based on environmental benchmarks with the purpose of preserving soil's qualities.
Subsequent Review
Lawmakers resumed their review of the legislation on Monday and approved three more items (no. 11, 19 and 26), IRNA reported.
The Department of Environment, as per a clause, will keep an eye on contaminated soil, identify the pollutants and issue an alert if the substances exceed permitted limits.
Based on Article 19, discharge and dumping of any liquid or solid polluting substances in soil without observing environmental regulations and out of defined zones is prohibited.
Violators will not only have to compensate for the loss, but will also have to pay a fine at two to five times the incurred loss.
A final article requires agriculture and health ministries, the DOE and the Plan and Budget Organization to prepare detailed guidelines for the enforcement of the law so that they can be approved by the Cabinet within six months.
The Soil Protection Bill was prepared in 26 articles, approved by the Cabinet and presented to the Parliament in April 2015.
After gathering dust for a while, the Majlis finally began to review it this year and several articles have separately been approved so far.
Iran's soil resources are deteriorating in quality, a blight which calls for more serious attention to prevent the progress of the destructive trend.
