China's Water Pollution Economic Loss Study

Our country has a large population, but water resource per capita is quite a little. During the process of fully developing the economy, the water pollution continues to become more and more severe, and it seriously constrains the healthy development of society and economy in our country. Although people have realized the harm of water pollution, there is no universal and sustainable method to calculate the water pollution loss. This paper will develop such a method, by which one can quickly calculate the economical loss caused by the water pollution, and provide data support for the decision layer.This research compared various domestic and foreign calculating methods of pollution loss, including human capital method, opportunity cost method, engineering expense method, replacement of market value method, recovering expense method, investigation judging method, etc.; It then synthetically used these methods, and at the same time, combined with points in environment economics to ensure the S curve fitting relationship between water quality concentration and economical loss; A function was used to simulate and educed the water quality-economical impact curve; For next, the curve's parameters were fixed according to different loss types; Some of Prof. Li Jinxiu's basic parameters were cited to calculate the countrywide water pollution losses; Finally, it established a calculating system of pollution losses, which can quickly work out the pollution losses.The calculation of water pollution losses involves many factors, and it is a huge systematic project. It is very difficult to get a statistical result in short term. This paper mainly discussed an operable calculating method. In the calculating process, it did its best to match the realistic circumstances of pollution loss, did the comparative analysis combined with a mass of materials, and finally established the waterquality-economical impact curve in each part; and further solved out the pollution loss. This paper has the following achievements:1. After calculation; it is found that the economical losses of water pollution are 232.307 billion RMB in our country in 2000; accounting for 2.39% of the national GDP.2. It made the water quality-economical impact function more accurate; and fixed different parameters for different loss types. For instance; a new fractional function was adopted to calculate the agriculture losses; in order to match the realistic circumstance better.3. It increased the water shortage losses caused by water pollution. Based on investigation and analysis; it is found that in the total water shortage amount of cities in the whole country; that caused by pollution accounts for 25%; from which it can be drawn that water shortage losses caused by water pollution account for 25% of the total.4. Based on the data investigation; a transferring method to calculate losses among drainage area and administrative area is developed.