Korea's Green Growth and the New Expanison Paradigm

At the recent G20 meetings in Seoul, Korea put green on the the business summit agenda. The world wide recession propelled the global economy in a new direction, forcing many countries around the world to follow a new green expansion paradigm.

For sustainable and balanced development, governments are increasingly aware of the fact that green growth is the future of economic development.

In an interview with The Korea Times, Young Soo-gil, chairman of the Presidential Committee on Green Growth said, “The agenda for the summit will be crowded with other issues of pressing priorities to allow much discussion on green growth. The Korean G20 Summit Preparatory Committee is aiming for mainstream advancement on the agenda for the summit, and so ‘development’ will be a prominent theme.”

“This will hopefully allow President Lee Myung-bak to bring the attention of the G20 Leaders to the value of the theme of green growth as a catalyst for global cooperation in many development dimensions,” he added.

Young said that Korea is seeking to take a lead in the global green growth drive by sharing its knowledge and experience.

“Korea would like to help those developing countries harmonize their growth aspirations with the environmental ones by sharing its green growth tool kits and experiences, as well as by working together to undertake specific mitigation and adaptation projects in cost-effective and growth-friendly ways in individual countries,” he said.

“Korea is also willing to take leadership in the international efforts to help build physical infrastructures in the developing countries in climate-change resilient ways. For these purposes, Korea is to make green growth partnership a leading component of its increased ODA (Official Development Assistance) commitment as a new member of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC),” he added.

As part of this effort, Korea has launched the East Asia Climate Partnership (EACP). Most significantly, on July 16 of this year, the Korean government launched a Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) based in Seoul.

“Korea hopes to develop GGGI into an international treaty-based institution by 2012 with support from other countries which share belief in the value of green growth as well as of sharing insights, know-how and experiences on it,” he said.

“The Green Growth Committee also hopes that Korea’s green growth inspirations will play a facilitating role in making a breakthrough over the issue of how to reconcile economic, social and environmental development objectives at the Rio plus 20 Conference on Sustainable Development to be held in 2012,” he added.

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Video on Green Growth - Korea's Key to a Better Future

With the recent G20 summit held in Seoul, Korea is taking the opportunity to show its leadership in the development of the green economy. This 6 minute video reviews green growth generally and then zeros in on Korea's efforts. The video contains a great introduction on green growth and the need for transnational wisdom.

The Presidential Committee on Green Growth of Korea announced on May 13 that the Korean government will invest about 12 trillion won (roughly US $9.5 billion) by 2013 in the development of green technology as part of the "Green New Deal" announced earlier this year.

Since his inauguration, President Lee Myung-bak has put green growth on top of the country's agenda. He has stressed the importance of the development of environment-friendly technologies that will boost Korea's economic competitiveness.

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UN Hopeful about G20 Climate Finance

The Seoul G20 summit ended on 12 November, 2010. On November 9, Achim Steiner, the UN Undersecretary General and Executive Director of UNEP, wrote about the important role the G20 can play 'embedding a fundamental transition to a more sustainable global economy that looks beyond the current, narrow definition of wealth and GDP.'

The G20 has acted to stabilize banks and to counter the financial and economic crisis. Steiner hoped that the G20 meeting in Seoul could have been 'a watershed in international financial and economic affairs, where the pledge, made at the G20 in London, toward a green and more sustainable recovery moves from communique to concrete commitment.'

The G20 must deal with the important issues of averting economic crises similar to the recent recession and 'the even bigger and more complex ones emerging as a result of climate change, environmental degradation and unsustainable overexploitation of the planet’s natural assets.'

As Steiner pointed out, there are some very promising signs that more and more countries are understanding the urgency of the climate change crisis. Korea has earmarked close to 90 percent of its funds to a short- and long-term vision of green growth. The country’s leaders have also made the indivisible link between the leadership role of public policy making in terms of unleashing private sector investment into clean tech and other green sectors.

The costs associated with climate change are being factored into the thinking of an increasing number of banks and pension funds who are beginning to see rising risks to their investments from the loss of ecosystems. Increasingly people understand that the disruption to food supplies, supply chains and other challenges linked with natural resource losses are a much bigger threat than international terrorism.


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