750,000 a year killed by Chinese pollution

By Richard McGregor in Beijing

Published: July 2 2007 22:03 | Last updated: July 2 2007 22:03

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/8f40e248-28c7-11dc-af78-000b5df10621.html

Beijing engineered the removal of nearly a third of a World Bank report on pollution
in China because of concerns that findings on premature deaths could provoke “social
unrest”.

The report, produced in co-operation with Chinese government ministries over several
years, found about 750,000 people die prematurely in China each year, mainly from
air pollution in large cities.

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China’s State Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) and health ministry asked the
World Bank to cut the calculations of premature deaths from the report when a draft
was finished last year, according to Bank advisers and Chinese officials.

Advisers to the research team said ministries told them this information, including a
detailed map showing which parts of the country suffered the most deaths, was too
sensitive.

“The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too
sensitive and could cause social unrest,” one adviser to the study told the Financial
Times.

Sixteen of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China, according to previous
World Bank research.

Guo Xiaomin, a retired Sepa official who co-ordinated the Chinese research team,
said some material was omitted from the pollution report because of concerns that the
methodology was unreliable. But he also said such information on premature deaths
“could cause misunderstanding”.
“We did not announce these figures. We did not want to make this report too thick,”
he said in an interview.

The pared-down report, “Cost of Pollution in China”, has yet to be officially launched
but a version, which can be downloaded from the internet was released at a
conference in Beijing in March.

Missing from this report are the research project’s findings that high air-pollution
levels in Chinese cities is leading to the premature deaths of 350,000-400,000 people
each year. A further 300,000 people die prematurely each year from exposure to poor
air indoors, according to advisers, but little discussion of this issue survived in the
report because it was outside the ambit of the Chinese ministries which sponsored the
research.

Another 60,000-odd premature deaths were attributable to poor-quality water, largely

in the countryside, from severe diarrhoea, and stomach, liver and bladder cancers.

The mortality information was “reluctantly” excised by the World Bank from the
published report, according to advisers to the research project.

Sepa and the health ministry declined to comment. The World Bank said that the
findings of the report were still being discussed with the government.

A spokesperson said: “The conference version of the report did not include some of
the issues still under discussion.” She said the findings of the report were due to be
released as a series of papers soon.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

Beijing clouds the pollution picture

By Richard McGregor in Beijing

Published: July 2 2007 22:03 | Last updated: July 2 2007 22:03

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/69333ff8-28bb-11dc-af78-000b5df10621.html
The World Bank conjured a daring finale to a conference it co-hosted in Beijing in
March on pollution, staging a Chinese adaptation of a Henrik Ibsen play about a
doctor trying to alert citizens to an environmental problem.

The doctor’s battle in An Enemy of the People to reveal the truth has striking parallels
with efforts by reformers in China to force the authorities to be more open about the
damage to the environment resulting from the pursuit of high-speed growth.

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Few in the audience realised at the time just how striking the parallels were: a
landmark report issued at the conference on the cost of pollution in China had been
quietly, and substantially, cut under pressure from Beijing government ministries.

The excised material, about 30 per cent of the original report, detailed the number of
premature deaths in China each year from air and water pollution.

Based on an epidemiological model used by the World Health Organisation, the report
found that about 750,000 people die early every year in China because of the filthy air
and water.

The officials in China’s State Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) and health
ministry who vetoed the publication of the report’s full findings may have been most
disturbed by a map accompanying the findings.

This gave a detailed regional breakdown of the deaths, with most clustered in China’s
coal-belt in the north-west.

But, according to an adviser to the study, the World Bank was told by Chinese
officials that it could not publish the information because it was deemed too sensitive
and could thus cause “social unrest”.

An increasing number of local protests in China in recent years have been provoked
by local environmental degradation, commonly against factories that have polluted
surrounding farmland or water supplies.
The Chinese stance nonetheless appears to have taken the World Bank by surprise,
especially as Sepa and Pan Yue, its high-profile deputy director, have increasingly
used publicity to force through tougher environmental rules.

In a speech in April, Mr Pan said: “The public will lose confidence in the government
if they do not have information and cannot express their concerns. Social stability
may be affected as rumours spread out.”

The demand that the report be cut clearly irked the bank. The report says “it is
critically important that existing water, health and environmental data be made
publicly available”.

After demanding the material be cut from the written report, health ministry speakers
at the conference surprised and puzzled foreign researchers by including the details
about premature deaths in their verbal presentation.

It is not clear whether the health ministry officials revealed this information
inadvertently. The ministry and Sepa both declined to comment.

The Chinese side had been enthusiastic about the research project. Guo Xiaonmin, a
retired Sepa official who co-ordinated the work, said China had been doing research
on the cost of pollution for 20 years but a “lack of methodology” had produced
substandard results.

The report’s findings were not all gloomy. By some standards, the quality of the air in
Chinese cities has improved in recent years. Even so, Chinese cities are among the
most polluted in the world.

To calculate levels of air pollution, the biggest killer, the report uses the globally
recognised measure – which looks at the concentration of particulates measuring less
than or equal to 10 microns per cubic metre of air.

Only 1 per cent of Chinese urban residents live in cities with concentrations of such
particulate matter below 40 microgrammes per cubic metre of air. The WHO
guideline sets the bar at 20 microgrammes.
In 2003, 58 per cent of Chinese city dwellers were exposed to particulate matter of
more than 100 microgrammes, “twice the annual average standard in the US”, the
report says.

“This has huge costs,” said Gavin Fisher, a New Zealand-based air pollution
consultant who has worked in China.

“Most developed countries will adopt the WHO guideline over the next few years but
it will be decades before China can hope to get there.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007