Shenzhen yesterday officially released its Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) accounting system, the first of its type in China, after a pilot of six years.
GEP refers to the total value of the final products and services provided by a regional ecosystem for human welfare and sustainable economic and social development.
“Traditionally, we use GDP as the only standard to evaluate the development of a country, or a region, and ignore the damage on the environment. The introduction of GEP offers a unified standard to evaluate ecosystem products and services in a region,” Zhang Yali, deputy chief with the Shenzhen Municipal Ecology and Environment Bureau, said at a press conference held by the Shenzhen Municipal Government Information Office at the Civic Center in Futian yesterday.
“The ideas and techniques in the system are both taking the lead in the world as it used the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting—Ecosystem Accounting adopted by the U.N. Statistical Commission as a reference,” she said.
The system was made after wide surveys and exchanges with cities including Beijing, London and Lishui in Zhejiang Province, a city that takes the lead in exploring the coordinated growth of GDP and GEP, according to her.
Shenzhen began to pilot GEP accounting in Yantian District and established a dual accounting mechanism on GDP and GEP in 2014.
Yantian has already benefited from its GEP initiative. In 2019, its annual PM2.5 concentration was 19.4 micrograms per cubic meter, the lowest in Shenzhen history. It raked in 10 billion yuan (US$1.54 billion) of tourism revenue that year, and was rated as a Natural Oxygen Zone of China last year.