If the economic statistics are falsified, it will affect the protection and governance of the ecological environment in at least two aspects: first, it will affect the balance between environment and economy, resulting in the misjudgment of the environmental and economic situation; second, it will affect the payment capacity of environmental protection and governance, resulting in the misjudgment of environmental protection policies. In addition, fraud in economic statistics will have negative impact on other aspects, resulting in misjudgement in decision-making.
Serious impact on environmental protection situation to judge whether economic statistics are fraudulent or not!
Recently, the governments of Inner Mongolia and Tianjin have publicly admitted that their economic statistics are false. After squeezing out the water, the total GDP scale and growth rate of these provinces and cities have fallen sharply. Taking Tianjin as an example, Binhai New Area will directly squeeze out 1/3 of its expected trillion GDP in 2016 and adjust it to 665.4 billion yuan. Such a large adjustment of statistical data lays the groundwork for the next reform of the statistical system of data. At the same time, the "water" in economic data has harmed many fields, including economic growth itself, and among them, the protection of the ecological environment has also suffered. In my opinion, the protection and management of ecological environment are affected by the fraudulent behavior of economic statistics at least in the following two aspects, which greatly interferes with the scientific nature of relevant environmental protection policies.
First, it has affected the balance between environment and economy, resulting in a misjudgement of the environmental and economic situation.
The fraud of economic statistics first affects our analysis and judgment of the current environmental and economic situation. The overestimated level of economic growth makes us overestimate the economic affordability of environmental protection policies.
At present, the decision-making of environmental protection in the whole country depends not only on the degree and trend of ecological environment deterioration, but also on our optimistic estimation of the economic growth situation. As far as the balance between environment and economy is concerned, environmental protection policies in any period can not be too divorced from the basic aspects of economic growth.
The author once analyzed the "environmental economic situation" and drew the basic conclusion that the current environmental economic situation is relatively stable on the whole, which is based on the relevant economic and environmental statistics. This means that if the economic statistics of a certain region are seriously overestimated, it is necessary to revise the original conclusion that the relationship between environment and economy is likely to be "unbalanced". Once the environmental and economic situation deteriorates, we should make timely adjustments to relevant policies.
Secondly, it affects the ability to pay for environmental protection and governance, resulting in misjudgement of environmental protection policies.
Falsification in economic statistics has greatly changed the ability to pay for environmental protection and governance, which is highly dependent on local economic and financial capabilities. Although the transfer payment from the central government is beneficial to the ecological environment protection in many regions, the main expenditure of local environmental protection still comes from local financial revenue, and some regions also pay environmental protection expenditure according to the fixed proportion of GDP scale. This means that once the economic statistics are seriously overestimated and adjusted, the level of fiscal revenue will also decline, and public investment in environmental protection will bear the brunt, and may decline in the future, which will greatly damage the payment capacity of regional ecological environment protection and governance.
In fact, once the fraudulent economic statistics are adjusted, there may be "imbalance" in the environmental economic relations in some areas, so the "economic basis" and conditions for continuing to implement the "strict" environmental protection policy will no longer exist. At this time, environmental protection policies should be "adjusted" to "conservative environmental governance". Conservatively, in the current stage of social and economic development, the growth rate of GDP of more than 6% is still necessary. Otherwise, in the growth rate of less than 6%, continuing to implement the "high-pressure" environmental protection policy will exert greater pressure on the economy.
Taking Tianjin as an example, in the recent formulation of "environmental protection tax", the tax amount of Tianjin ranks in the forefront of the country, which is much higher than that of Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hangzhou, which surpass Tianjin in economic scale. The basis for making such a judgment is obviously related to the GDP scale originally calculated. In the case of large overall economic scale, the tax amount of Tianjin is adopted. It is undoubtedly reasonable for environmental protection tax to promote structural adjustment, but on the contrary, if the data are false, such a high level of "environmental protection tax" tax may have an impact on the economy and industrial structure prematurely, thereby damaging the economic foundation.
In addition to the above two factors, fraud in economic statistics will also have a negative impact on other aspects, resulting in misjudgments in decision-making. For example, in the case of exceptional economic performance, local governments often put forward higher requirements for environmental protection performance, but in fact, limited by the "real" level of economic development, environmental protection is difficult to produce obvious results in the short term, which "forces" some local governments to monitor environmental quality. Falsification of environmental protection performance data further affects the authenticity of local environmental protection statistics, thus further making relevant departments misjudge the situation of environmental protection and changing the policy direction of local environmental governance.
Generally speaking, the fraud of statistical data at the economic level seems to be only related to macroeconomic decision-making, but its harm is far-reaching. In the case of highly coupled ecological environment and economic system, the environment