Shortage of GDP from Environmental Perspective

* GDP reflects the economic growth, but do not reflect the social costs of environmental damage and the resource depletion.
* For example, as long as the harvesting of cutting trees, GDP will increase, but over-harvesting of trees will result in the reduction of forest resources, which GDP does not consider.
* If the current economic development of excessive consumption of natural resources, pollution of the ecological environment, this kind of development is not sustainable.

SEEA1993 & SEEA2003

* The green gross domestic product(green GDP) is an index of economic growth with the environmental consequences of that growth factored in.
* In order to measure the sustainable development and environmental considerations, the United Nations published the Handbook of National Accounting “environmental economic accounting system” (System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting, referred to as SEEA 1993) in 1994, in 2003 it was revised again as “System of Integrated Environmental Economic Accounting 2003”.

GREEN GDP IN CHINA

* In 2004, When Jiabo, the Chinese premier, announced that the green GDP index would replace the Chinese GDP index itself as a performance measure for government and party officials at the highest levels.
* The first green GDP accounting report, for 2004,was published in September 2006. It showed that the financial loss caused by polltion was 511.8 billion yuan, or 3.05 percent of the nation’s economy.

Mnay provinces Request to withdraw from the pilot Green GDP, 2005 Forever Abandoned

* As an experiment in national accounting, the Green GDP effort collapsed in failure in 2007, when it became clear that the adjustment for environmental damage had reduced the growth rate to politically unacceptable levels, nearly zero in some provinces.
* In the face of mounting evidence that environmental damage and resource depletion was far more costly than anticipated, the government withdrew its support for the Green GDP methodology and suppressed the 2005 report, which had been due out in 2007.

* Reason 1:
* State Environmental Protection Administration VS National Bureau of Statistics
* Reason 2:
* Local Government VS Environmentalists

My view on the Delay of Green GDP in China

* China is a developing country, governments eagerly need some encouraging statistics to show how fast we are developing.
* Some days ago I am certainly for the application of Green GDP in China, because I think it is a more realistic reflact of well being. But now I think maybe I am too arbitrary. I neglect the utility that the “unreal” statistics have to all Chinese who so eagerly need kind of success comparing with developed countries.

* At present there are a number of major technical problems exist in the implementation of green GDP accounting, which is mainly embodied in the measurement of environmental costs.
* The determination of the concept of environmental costs is easy, but the realization of the measurement of environmental costs is very difficult. This difficulty comes mainly from and the time factor and space factors of the environmental costs.

* Advocation of environmental protection does not achieve the desired height.
* The majority of people in China who promote environmental protection recent years, maybe are only kind of imitation, following the trend of European countries and the United States which attaches great importance to environmental protection.

Wang Jinan Said.

* “Each research of the environmental policy is a long process, people who do policy research must be psychologically prepared for this. However, if the relevant departments of government do not accept it, a large number of your efforts are likely to have been in vain.”