Zhejiang authorities recently published official guidelines for the calculation of GEP (gross ecosystem product), the first provincial-level document of its kind in China.

GEP is used to measure the value of the natural environment's contributions to economic activity.

The guidelines are 28 pages long and are filled with complex mathematical formulas used to arrive at a GEP figure from inputted data.

The city of Lishui in southwestern Zhejiang, with the help of the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, completed its first GEP calculation in 2018. The city later became the country's first city to establish a GEP calculation system spanning the municipal, county, township, and village levels.

The provincial standards in the new guidelines are a modified and upgraded version of Lishui's standards which take into account the different environmental characteristics of various Zhejiang cities.

According to Xu Xing, an official of the Zhejiang Development and Reform Commission, GEP calculations, which are set to be adopted across the province, will incentivize local authorities to prioritize protecting the environment and developing industries such as forestry and rural tourism.

Lishui has already benefitted from its GEP initiative: tourism authorities in Zhenbu town, Qingtian county successfully mortgaged the town's ecological products (as gauged by GEP calculation standards) to obtain a 5-million-yuan ($761,500) loan from Qingtian Rural Commercial Bank on the day the guidelines were released.

The Zhejiang Development and Reform Commission has drawn up plans to spread the use of GEP from Lishui to all of the province’s 26 mountainous counties by 2021.