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Environmental costs

Revive China's green GDP programme

Nature volume 534, page 37 (2016)Cite this article

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In a potentially big step towards achieving its target of sustainable growth by 2020, China's government is developing a green measure of gross domestic product (GDP). We suggest that the country's upcoming audit of its natural-resource assets would provide an ideal opportunity to launch this 'green GDP', which factors the environmental costs of economic growth into the conventional GDP.

The government is recognizing that economic growth comes at too high a price. The cost of China's pollution damage roughly quadrupled from 2004–13, and has accounted for up to 3% of annual GDP over the past decade. Each year, there are 350,000 to 500,000 premature deaths from particulates in cities (Z. Chen et al. Lancet 382, 1959–1960; 2013). Indeed, the health cost of air pollution amounts to one-third of total environmental costs.

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  1. Jinnan Wang: *On behalf of 7 correspondents (see Supplementary information for full list).

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  1. Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, Beijing, China

    Jinnan Wang

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  1. Jinnan Wang
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Correspondence to Jinnan Wang.

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Wang, J. Revive China's green GDP programme. Nature 534, 37 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/534037b

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