In order to speed up the construction of ecological civilization and effectively promote the implementation of the new "Environmental Protection Law", the Ministry of Environmental Protection recently held a special meeting on establishing a green GDP2.0 accounting system and restarted green GDP research work.

Li Qingrui, director of the Policy and Regulations Department of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, said that the relaunch of the Green GDP Accounting 2.0 research project is to implement General Secretary Xi Jinping’s instructions on improving the economic and social development assessment and evaluation system and integrating resource consumption, environmental damage, ecological benefits, etc. into the construction of ecological civilization. The status indicators are incorporated into the economic and social development evaluation system, making them an important guide and a concrete embodiment of the spirit of restraint and instruction in promoting the construction of ecological civilization. The "Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of Ecological Civilization" reviewed and approved by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee on March 24 instructs that major systems such as natural resource balance sheets, natural resource asset departure audits, ecological environment damage compensation and liability investigation should be used as breakthroughs. Deepen the reform of the ecological civilization system. The new "Environmental Protection Law" implemented on January 1 this year also requires local governments to be responsible for the environmental quality of their jurisdictions, establish a monitoring and early warning mechanism for resource and environmental carrying capacity, implement an environmental protection target responsibility system and an assessment and evaluation system, and formulate economic policies to fully consider the impact on the environment. Influence.

Li Qingrui said that restarting the green GDP research project is an important measure to promote the transformation of green development and a powerful starting point for comprehensively deepening reforms. Carry out environmental economic accounting, verify environmental capacity, and calculate the environmental costs of economic and social development. We will quantitatively analyze and judge the environmental situation, explore long-term mechanisms for environmental asset accounting and application, establish an economic and social development evaluation system that reflects the requirements of ecological civilization, and promote Provide strong support for the formation of a green industrial structure and green production and lifestyle with low resource consumption and environmental pollution.

Green GDP was first proposed by the comprehensive environmental and economic accounting system advocated by the United Nations Statistics Agency. The implementation of green GDP accounting means that the resource and environmental factors in the process of economic activities are reflected in the national economic accounting system, and the cost of resource depletion, environmental degradation, ecological damage and pollution control are deducted from the total GDP value. Its purpose is to make up for the shortcomings of traditional GDP accounting that fails to measure the consumption of natural resources and damage to the ecological environment.

Research on green GDP began in 2004, when the former State Environmental Protection Administration and the National Bureau of Statistics jointly carried out research on green GDP accounting. In 2005, 10 provinces and municipalities including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, and Liaoning launched green GDP pilot work based on the investigation of economic losses from environmental pollution. In September 2006, the former State Environmental Protection Administration and the National Bureau of Statistics jointly released the "China Green National Economic Accounting Research Report 2004". This report is my country's first GDP accounting research report adjusted for environmental pollution losses. The research started in 2004 was called Green GDP 1.0 by the experts of the research team, and the research that has been restarted now is called Green GDP 2.0.

Li Qingrui said that green GDP is still a project that is being studied and needs to mature, and is based on a useful supplement to the current economic accounting system rather than a negation. Compared with green GDP1.0, green GDP2.0 will seek innovation. In terms of content, increase the research on environmental carrying capacity based on environmental capacity accounting, delineate areas with high intensity of resource consumption, areas hardest hit by environmental pollution and ecological damage, and find out the "environmental background." Technically, we should overcome the problem of weak data in the early stage, consolidate the data and technical foundation of accounting, make full use of data from multiple sources such as satellite remote sensing and pollution source census, and build a big data platform to support green GDP accounting.

Li Qingrui introduced that Green GDP 2.0 mainly includes four aspects: First, environmental cost accounting, which simultaneously carries out environmental quality degradation cost and environmental improvement benefit accounting to comprehensively and objectively reflect the "environmental cost" of economic activities; second, environmental capacity accounting, which carries out Research on environmental carrying capacity based on environmental capacity; third, accounting of the total value of ecosystem production and carrying out ecological performance assessment; fourth, research on economic green transformation policies, combined with accounting results, to promote regional economic green transformation and establish development consistent with environmental carrying capacity models and put forward medium- and long-term policy recommendations.

The meeting proposed a research plan for the green GDP2.0 accounting system. The first stage (2014-2015): Cooperate with relevant departments and research institutions to carry out learning from international experience, construction of accounting framework system, research on technical specifications, national-level environmental capacity accounting, ecosystem gross production value accounting, and preliminary establishment of policy applications system, form accounting technology support capabilities, and organize the establishment of relevant technical specifications for green GDP accounting. The second phase (2016-2017): In order to test the feasibility of the green GDP2.0 accounting method, different regions are selected to carry out pilot work. The pilot content includes environmental cost and environmental benefit accounting, environmental capacity accounting, ecosystem gross production value accounting and Economic green transformation policy pilot. Different regions can choose different pilot content based on their different economic development and ecological environment characteristics. Since this is a cutting-edge and innovative research project, there is no successful international experience to draw from, and it will take a long time to explore. Therefore, the form in which the research results will be published and when they will be published will depend on the progress of the research.