China has stopped the public release of an official study putting a cost on the nationâs environmental damage, a government researcher has told a Chinese newspaper. He blames official reluctance to confront pollution.
The Beijing News reported on Monday that the release of a report estimating the cost of pollution and ecological degradation in 2005 had been âindefinitely postponedâ.
Wang Jinnan, a senior expert at the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, and who was technical head of the project, said publicising the cost of bad air, water and soil had drawn fierce opposition from local officials eager to maintain growth.
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Wang said accounting for the cost of environmental damage would lead to a âhuge fallâ in the headline figure of economic growth. âAt present many areas still place (GDP) above all else,â he told the paper. âWhen such thinking dominates, the size of resistance to a âgreen GDPâ can well be imagined.â
Green GDP is a measure of growth that takes into account environmental costs.
Premature deaths
Wang said some provincial governments had lobbied the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and the National Bureau of Statistics not to release the data. The report was originally scheduled for release in March, the China Youth Daily reported.
A previous report for 2004 calculated that environmental degradation that year cost 511.8 billion yuan ($67.7 billion) or 3.05% of GDP â a figure one SEPA official said at the time was âshockingâ. That report was issued in September 2005 with official fanfare and wide domestic media attention.
The report for 2005 shows âlosses from pollution and reduction in the GDP indicator even higher than the 2004 reportâ, the paper said, citing a weekend seminar on the study.
The report would also have estimated economic losses from pollution for each province â a sensitive issue in a system where maintaining economic growth can be crucial to officialsâ promotion prospects.
The unusual revelation of official infighting is the latest sign that Chinaâs struggle to balance economic growth with environmental concerns has become a volatile political issue.
that China had asked the World Bank not to publish estimates of the number of premature Chinese deaths each year from polluted air and water.
The bank study said about 460,000 Chinese died prematurely each year from water and air pollution and about 300,000 more died from indoor toxins.
A report on 17 July from the (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) âinsistedâ that China integrated environmental concern in areas including energy, agriculture and transport into its management of economic growth.
Crude methods
The China Environment News, SEPAâs official newspaper, argued earlier in July that the âgreen GDPâ idea was essential to breaking officialsâ fixation on growth. âWe must use green GDP, this powerful restraining device, to further intervene and correct,â the paper said.
But the head of Chinaâs statistics bureau, Xie Fuzhan, said on July 12 that the government had stopped using the term âgreen GDPâ. Xie said the term was not internationally accepted, but China would continue issuing statistics on energy efficiency, land use and emissions.
Some Chinese economists have also said that methods and data available for calculating economic losses from environmental exploitation were still too crude for open use.
Without the support of the statistics agency it would be impossible to continue research seeking to calculate the costs of environmental harm, Wang said.
