Chinese Statistical Agency Doesn't Want To Release Audit Of Environmental Damage, Costs - Reuters

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BEIJING (Reuters) - A drive to publicize the environmental costs of China's breakneck economic growth has run into opposition, the China Daily newspaper reported on Friday. It said the National Bureau of Statistics had asked the State Environmental Protection Administration not to release the results of their "Green GDP" audit for 2005 but to send them instead to the State Council, or cabinet, for reference.

"Experience has shown that both the theory and the methodology of Green GDP accounting are not sophisticated enough," the newspaper quoted the statistics bureau as saying in a letter to the environmental watchdog.

The two agencies last September jointly released China's first Green GDP report, estimating that environmental pollution caused losses of 511.8 billion yuan ($64 billion) in 2004, or 3.05 per cent of that year's GDP.

The full environmental bill was certainly much higher because the report, owing to data limitations, did not try to account for the cost of natural resources depletion or ecological damage such as soil contamination or groundwater pollution.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSPEK17562920070323