Why Beijing Is Trying to Tally The Hidden Costs of Pollution As China's Economy Booms
HONG KONG -- By conventional measures, China's economy is roaring ahead at a growth rate of more than 10%. But an unusual report by the Chinese government suggests the nation's growth -- while swift -- may not be quite as dazzling as it seems.
Last month, Beijing released the results of a two-year "green accounting" study indicating the nation's rampant pollution problem is quietly undermining long-term economic growth. According to the report, pollution cost the country $64 billion in 2004, the equivalent of three percentage points of economic output. The report suggests China's "true" growth rate in 2004 would have been closer to 7% if the costs of pollution had been factored in.
The so-called green gross-domestic-product figures are part of a long-term Chinese government project aimed at quantifying the economic impact of pollution, and may mark a shift in strategy for a regime that has promoted unbridled growth as the key to social stability. The basic idea of green GDP is to subtract the costs associated with environmental degradation from traditional GDP to give a more realistic picture of the health of the economy.
The Chinese report, released jointly by the State Environmental Protection Administration and the State Statistics Bureau, was spearheaded by Pan Yue, SEPA's deputy director. Mr. Pan is in the vanguard of the effort to push environmental issues to the top of the nation's agenda. The "green GDP" concept has been embraced by top political leaders, including President Hu Jintao, who has made "sustainable development" a theme of his speeches this year.
The initiative comes as China confronts the rising costs of the environmental woes linked to its rapid growth, which include widespread air and water pollution and acid rain. This year, China's economy is expected to grow 10.5% -- an increase from 10.2% in 2005 -- and at a 9.5% rate in the first half of 2007, the research office of the country's central bank said Friday.
The Chinese Academy on Environmental Planning estimates that more than 400,000 of China's about 1.3 billion people die from air-pollution-related illness each year. About 300 million Chinese lack access to clean drinking water, partly because of pollution from factories, and the central government pledged to spend $125 billion to address the problem.
"China can't go the way of polluting first, and then treating it," said SEPA official Jia Feng, in an interview with local Chinese news media, warning that "the ecological system that shoulders economic development will be crushed."
Green GDP is one part of the budding field of environmental economics, which aims to apply rigorous business-accounting methods to environmental problems. "Green economists" are driven by the notion that typical methods of measuring growth -- namely GDP -- are too crude a way to measure the overall health of an economy, and their work, though controversial, is attracting increasing interest from such quarters as the World Bank, Columbia Business School and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
While GDP looks at the market value of goods and service produced in a country each year, it ignores the fact that a nation might be fueling its expansion by polluting or burning through natural resources in an unsustainable way. In fact, the usual methods of calculating GDP make destroying the environment look good for the economy. If an industry pollutes in the process of manufacturing products, and the government pays to clean up the mess, both activities add to GDP. China's report estimates it would take a one-time direct investment of about $136 billion -- nearly 7% of GDP -- to clean up all the pollution pumped into the nation's air, water and soil in 2004.
Environmental economists hope solid economic analysis will make the case for protecting the environment harder to dismiss. "This is not some flaky, left-wing offshoot of economics," said Robert Stavins, a professor of business and government at Harvard University and director of the school's growing environmental-economics program. "It is rigorous economics applied to some challenging and important social problems in the environmental domain...If the way a country is growing is by living high on the hog, and spending down its natural capital, you would want that to be reflected in the country's national income accounts -- if those accounts are intended to be a long-term measure of welfare."
The concept of green GDP and how to calculate it is a hotly debated topic in economic circles, and even some environmental economists find it of limited value. The Chinese report, for example, was criticized by some environmental advocates because it considered only the costs of pollution and didn't factor in the costs associated with overuse or exploitation of resources. Mr. Pan has said the report marks "only the beginning" of his nation's effort to calculate green GDP.
Many economists dismiss the very notion of tinkering with the GDP formula to incorporate environmental costs. They say GDP was never intended to measure anything but cash flows. There are plenty of other things exluded from GDP, they argue, such as contributions made to the economy by housework or volunteer labor. Instead, some economists favor a system of "satellite accounts," alternative growth indicators that can be considered in conjunction with GDP as a way of adding perspective, but aren't meant to replace the usual GDP data.
Still, it is significant that China is reckoning with its environmental problems in this way. "This kind of analysis is usually done by [nongovernmental organizations] or critics from outside the government," said Daniel C. Esty, a professor of environmental law and policy at Yale Law School. "In this case, the Chinese government is doing it itself, and recognizing that there is a real price paid for economic strategies that disregard environmental protection."
Though the idea of green GDP has been around since the 1970s and has been explored by some government agencies in the West as a way of qualifying economic growth figures, China's environmental regulatory agency has taken it a step further, saying it will use the figures to influence policy as part of its vow to crack down on polluters. Typically in China, local officials have been promoted based on how fast they expand their local economies. That has created an incentive to disregard the environmental consequences of rapid industrial growth. Now, Beijing said it will use green GDP calculations to evaluate the economic performance of local bureaucrats.
In practice, that might not be so easy in China, where the central government's directives on environmental issues are often stymied at the local level. Nor is it clear yet that all parts of the central government back Mr. Pan's efforts. His agency, SEPA, is one of the weakest in the government, and some in the regime continue to view economic growth as China's paramount goal.
Publicity is one of the few arrows in Mr. Pan's quiver. The regulator believes he can shame the government into action, and he speaks in unusually frank terms about the reasons for much of China's worst pollution, including corrupt local environmental officials colluding with local polluters.
Although time will be the truest test of China's commitment to GDP green, an early indication may come next year. If SEPA is able to release the figures again -- or even have them incorporated in the regular data compiled by the government's statistics bureau -- that could count as a victory for environmentalists.
绿色GDP凸现污染对中国经济的影响
按通行的指标衡量，中国经济正在以超过10%的增速飞速发展。但中国政府发布的一份非同寻常的报告显示，虽然中国经济在高速增长，但可能并不象看起来那么惊人。
上个月，中国政府发表了为期两年的“绿色国民经济核算”研究结果。研究显示中国广泛的污染问题正在无形中危害中国长期的经济增长。研究结果表明，2004年全国因环境污染造成的经济损失为640亿美元，占当年GDP的3%。报告称，如果考虑污染成本的话，2004年中国的“真实”增长率接近7%，而不是10%左右。
所谓的绿色GDP数据是中国政府旨在量化污染对经济影响的长期项目的一个组成部分，可能标志着将粗放型增长视为社会稳定重心这一体制的战略性转变。
国家环境保护总局(State Environmental Protection Administration)和国家统计局(State Statistics Bureau)联合发布的这份报告受到了国家环保总局副局长潘岳的大力推动。潘岳一直积极努力推进环保问题成为国家的首要议事日程。绿色GDP概念已经被国家主席胡锦涛等高层领导人所采纳。胡锦涛一直将可持续发展作为今年讲话的中心议题。
中国经济高速发展的同时，也面临着因此而产生的大范围空气和水污染以及酸雨等环境恶化问题，与此相关的成本也在日益增加。中国央行的研究机构上周五表示，预计中国经济今年将增长10.5%，高于2005年的10.2%，2007年上半年预计将达到9.5%。
中国环境规划院(Chinese Academy on Environmental Planning)估计，在中国13亿人口中，每年有40多万人因与空气污染相关的疾病而死亡。另外，约有3亿人难以获得清洁的饮用水，工厂导致的水源污染是这种状况的原因之一。中央政府承诺投资1,250亿美元解决这个问题。
国家环保总局官员贾峰在接受中国当地新闻媒体采访时表示，中国不能重蹈“先污染后治理”的覆辙。他警告说，承载经济发展的生态系统将会崩溃。
绿色GDP是环保经济学的一个新兴领域，旨在将严格的企业核算方法应用到环境问题中。“绿色经济学家们”认为，GDP这种衡量经济增长的典型方法过于粗放，无法衡量经济的总体健康程度。尽管他们的工作仍存在争议，但却吸引了世界银行(World Bank)、哥伦比亚大学商学院(Columbia Business School)和达沃斯世界经济论坛(World Economic Forum)等组织越来越浓厚的兴趣。
尽管GDP衡量了一个国家每年生产的商品和服务的市场价值，但却忽视了一个事实：某个国家可能采用污染或耗尽自然资源这种无法持续发展的方式推动经济增长。实际上，通常计算GDP的方法使破坏环境看上去似乎对经济有利。如果一个行业在其生产过程中产生了污染，政府又投入了资金来消除这些污染的影响，这两种活动都会提高GDP数据。中国政府在发布的报告中估计，如果要全部处理2004年排放到空气、水和土壤中的污染物，需要一次性直接投资约1,360亿美元，这个数字接近当年GDP的7%。
环境经济学家们希望，对环境问题的可靠经济分析能引起更多人对保护环境的重视。绿色GDP的基本概念是从GDP中减去与环境恶化的相关成本。哈佛大学企业及政府学教授、该校环境-经济学项目负责人罗伯特?斯塔文斯(Robert Stavins)说，如果一个国家是以高能耗以及耗尽自然资源的方式来实现增长，那么这应该反映在可能成为该国长期福利指标的国民收入帐户中。
斯塔文斯说，这并不是左翼的古怪经济学分支。这是针对环境保护领域一些富有挑战性的重要社会问题的严谨经济学。
绿色GDP的概念和计算方法是经济领域颇受争议的热点问题，甚至一些环境经济学家认为其价值有限。比如，一些环保主义者批评中国的报告，称其只考虑了污染的成本，并未考虑资源过度利用和开发的成本。潘岳曾表示，这份报告仅仅是中国计算绿色GDP举措的开端。
许多经济学家对把环境成本补充到GDP计算公式中不以为然。他们说，GDP本来衡量的就只是现金流量。他们称，GDP中排除了许多其它方面，如家务和志愿劳动对经济的贡献。部分经济学家更看好所谓的“卫星账户”系统，这个可选的增长指标可同GDP相结合作为考虑未来前景的一种方式，但不会取代常规的GDP数据。
不过，中国以这种方式判断环境问题具有重大意义。耶鲁大学法学院(Yale Law School)环境法与政策教授丹尼尔?埃斯蒂(Daniel C. Esty)说，这种分析通常是由（非政府组织）或政府之外的批评人士完成。而中国政府是自己在做这件事情，并且已意识到忽视环境保护问题的经济战略会为此付出巨大的代价。
尽管绿色GDP的理念自上世纪70年代就形成了，西方国家的一些政府机构也一直探索以此作为修正经济增长数据的一种方式，但中国的环境监管机构更进了一步，他们表示将用此类数据影响政策的制定，作为打击排污企业承诺的一部分。在中国，地方官员的提拔一般是根据当地经济发展速度来决定的。这促使地方官员为了工业快速发展而忽视环境影响的后果。现在，中国政府表示将用绿色GDP数据来对地方政府官员进行经济绩效考核。
实际上，要在中国做到这点可能并不容易，中央政府有关环境问题的意见常常难以在各地得到贯彻。中央政府的所有部门是否都支持潘岳的种种努力尚不清楚。国家环保总局是最弱小的政府部门之一，不少部门仍将经济增长视为中国的首要目标。
公众宣传是潘岳的为数不多的武器之一。他认为能够以此让当地政府感到难堪，从而采取行动。他以非同寻常的坦率措辞谈到了中国许多最为严重的污染发生的原因，其中包括腐败的当地环保官员同污染企业沆瀣一气。
时间将真实地考验中国有关绿色GDP的承诺，明年就会初见端倪。如果国家环保总局能够再度发表数据，或是将其加入到国家统计局编制的例行数据之中，那都将是环保主义者的重大胜利。
Jane Spencer
