[sustran] China 'buried smog death finding' - World Bank complies, maybe.

[Todd Edelman, Green Idea Factory]

  China 'buried smog death finding'

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6265098.stm>

*The World Bank is alleged to have cut from a report research that 
suggests pollution causes hundreds of thousands of premature deaths 
annually in China.*

The move followed pressure from Beijing, which believes the material is 
too sensitive and could lead to social unrest, said the UK's Financial 
Times.

It said information was cut from the forthcoming report after requests 
from two Chinese government departments.

The World Bank told the BBC the final version had not yet been finalised.

But a statement added: "[A preliminary] version of the report did not 
include some of the issues that are still under discussion."

The Financial Times said the Bank report, entitled 'Cost of Pollution in 
China', found up to 760,000 people die prematurely each year in China 
because of air and water pollution.

High levels of air pollution in China's cities leads to 350,000-400,000 
premature deaths, it said. Another 300,000 die because of poor-quality 
air indoors.

The newspaper article, quoting World Bank advisers and Chinese 
officials, also said research showing that there are 60,000 premature 
deaths each year because of poor-quality water was also left out of the 
report.

*'Social unrest'*

"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.

It said the bank "reluctantly" agreed to take out the sensitive 
information.

The World Bank told the BBC that information for the report, which is 
being compiled in conjunction with the Chinese government, was still 
under review.

A World Bank spokeswoman refused to say whether or not statistics about 
premature deaths were amongst the information taken out of the initial 
version.

Despite the apparent dispute over figures, the preliminary World Bank 
report published in March suggests air and water pollution do lead to an 
increased number of deaths in China.

It also says the total cost of air and water pollution in the country 
amounts to about 5.8% of gross domestic product.

According to the Financial Times, China's State Environmental Protection 
Administration (Sepa) and its health ministry asked the World Bank to 
cut out the reference to the specific number of pollution-related deaths.

The BBC could not reach anyone at Sepa to comment on the issue.

But the government department is certainly aware of China's pollution 
problems. Last month it said about 60% of Chinese cities regularly 
suffer from air pollution and have no centralised sewage treatment 
facilities.

The final World Bank report is due to be released soon.

The organisation has previously said that China is home to 16 of the 
world's 20 most-polluted cities.

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Todd Edelman
Director
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