In a previous post I made I was struck by an incredibly image of how pollution is affecting China in a massive way, now a news article says that Pollution and environmental damage was costing up to 10 per cent of gross domestic product and resulted in zero or even negative growth in some regions, a member of the government’s taskforce on launching the Green GDP programme has said.

The mainland reported recently that GDP growth hit an 11-year high of 11.9 per cent year on year in the second quarter, taking first-half growth to 11.5 per cent. GDP growth rates reported by local governments have been even higher.

Commenting on the sizzling growth in the first half of this year, Lei Ming , of Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, who helped prepare the mainland’s first Green GDP report last year, warned there would be an even greater cost if Beijing failed to implement new "green requirements".

"In some provinces where an energy-intensive and high pollution development model was pursued, the cost of treating the environmental pollution would reach as high as 10 per cent of their local GDP," yesterday’s Shanghai Securities News quoted Professor Lei as saying.

"If these costs are discounted, the actual GDP growth is probably zero or negative."

Last September, the central government released the first Green GDP report - the result of a two-year survey examining 42 industries across 10 provinces and cities in 2004 - which was compiled by a group of environmental and economic experts and launched by the mainland’s top environmental watchdog and the National Bureau of Statistics.

The report said pollution cost a "staggering" 511.8 billion yuan in economic losses in 2004, equivalent to 3.05 per cent of that year’s total economic output.

Professor Lei said the figure heavily underestimated the real cost of pollution, adding that the figure would have been much higher if resource depletion, ecological damage and health-care bills were factored in. Foreign experts said Beijing’s calculations took into account only the economic price of environmental pollution.

However, the government recently announced it would postpone the programme indefinitely, due to strong opposition from some central agencies and regional governments.

Wang Jinnan , the technical head of the Green GDP accounting project, said the report had been shelved because of infighting between local and central governments and between government agencies.

"The State Environmental Protection Administration (Sepa) and the National Bureau of Statistics are at loggerheads over the method in publicising the report and over what contents should be made public," said Professor Wang, from the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning.

Professor Wang’s comments confirmed earlier rumours about bureaucratic discord over the issue between central agencies. Statistics bureau commissioner Xie Fuzhan told a press conference on July 12 that the government could not publicise the Green GDP statistics due to the lack of international precedent and controversy over the statistical method.

Professor Wang said some local governments had even sent letters to Sepa and the bureau asking them not to publish their reports. He said the 2005 report had been put on hold despite having been completed by the end of last year. "The unpublished report includes separate Green GDP reports on 31 provinces and the whole nation," he said.