The major ongoing effort to increase the country's gross domestic product (GDP) led to an increase in the discharge of major pollutants in the first half of this year, according to the country's leading environmental watchdog.

The State Environment Protection Administration (SEPA) announced the findings in a summary of its evaluation of the country's overall environment which the organization posted on its website. The summary covers activity in the first half and third quarter.

The quality of the country's overall environment remained unchanged or deteriorated in some areas, the report says.

As the country notched up a GDP growth rate of 10.9 percent in the first half of the year it also generated larger volumes of major pollutants, the report observed.

For example China produced more than 12 billion tons of industrial waste-water in the first half which is up 2.4 percent from the same period last year.

The chemical oxygen demand (COD), a major index of water pollution, increased by 3.7 percent, while emissions of sulphur dioxide were up by 4.2 percent in the first half.

Acid rain, which already affects almost one third of the nation's territory, remained unchecked. The report singled out east China's Zhejiang Province where nearly all rain in the cities monitored for pollution was acidic.

The report attributed the increasing volumes of pollution to the country's industrial structure. It said that food-processing, paper-making and chemical plants accounted for more than 80 percent of the increase in COD.

The report also attacked some local governments saying that only 30 to 40 percent of public projects had undergone environmental evaluations before being approved. 

The report's findings don not bode well for the country's goal of reducing energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent and the discharge of key pollutants by 10 percent within the time frame of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10).

The country has already failed to reach some of the major environmental objectives contained the 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-05).

In September the SEPA announced that pollution had inflicted economic losses of 511.8 billion yuan (US$ 64 billion) on the country in 2004. This is about 3 percent of the GDP that year.

"It's almost impossible to reduce energy consumption within a short period while experiencing such a high economic growth rate," Lu Zhongwu, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told China Daily at a meeting on November 11.

Coal output grew by 12.8 percent in the first half of this year. Coal-fired power plants emit greenhouse gases.

Lu called for more oversight of the high GDP growth goals set by local governments. He said some local officials seem to place economic growth ahead of everything else.
 
(China Daily November 22, 2006)