The World Bank has recently released a multi-year, multi-sector study that estimates the physical and economic cost of air and water pollution in China.

In recent decades, China has achieved rapid economic growth, industrialization, and urbanization. Annual increases in GDP of 8 to 9 percent have lifted some 400 million people out of dire poverty. Between 1979 and 2005, China moved up from a rank of 108th to 72nd on the World Development Index. With further economic growth, most of the remaining 200 million people living below one dollar per day may soon escape from poverty. Although technological change, urbanization, and China’s high savings rate suggest that continued rapid growth is feasible, the resources that such growth demands and the environmental pressures it brings have raised grave concerns about the long-term sustainability and hidden costs of growth. Many of these concerns are associated with the impacts of air and water pollution.

The study finds that the health costs of air and water pollution in China amount to about 4.3 percent of its GDP. By adding the non-health impacts of pollution, which are estimated to be about 1.5 percent of GDP, the total cost of air and water pollution in China is about 5.8 percent of GDP.

The report also found that the burden of both air and water pollution is not distributed evenly across the country. For example, China’s poor are disproportionately affected by the environmental health burden and only six provinces bear 50 percent of the effects of acid rain in the country.

Click here to access and read the entire report.