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Korea’s Green Growth Policies and COP 18
A speech delivered for the Ministers of Foreign Affairs from Pacific Island Countries, held at Hotel Shilla, Seoul, on May 31, 2011, organized by the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Your Excellencies:
It is a great privilege and honor for me to host this dinner tonight for so many distinguished Ministers from the Pacific Island countries and the Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum on behalf of Korea’s Presidential Committee on Green Growth.
I am afraid that in return for accepting this dinner, however, you will have to listen to, and endure, my welcoming speech for the next 15 minutes or so. I can only hope that this will help whet your appetite, by causing you a hunger if not for any other reason.
Your Excellencies:
You have come to a country which has re-launched its economy on a new development paradigm called green growth.
This began more or less like a big bang with a speech by President Lee Myung-bak, on August 15, 2008, on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the modern Republic of Korea in which he declared that green growth would be Korea’s new development vision for the next 60 years.
In this speech, President Lee said, “I want to put forward ‘low carbon, green growth’ as the core of Korea’s new vision. Green growth refers to sustainable growth which helps fight greenhouse gas emission and environmental pollution.” He further said, “It is also a new national development paradigm that creates new growth engines and jobs with green technology and clean energy”.
I invite your special attention to this statement of President Lee’s. Contrary to the common belief, President Lee saw new business, employment, and economic opportunities in efforts to fight climate change and further preserve and enhance the environment. I think that the unspoken key word here is innovation.
Our belief in Korea is that it is innovation which renders green growth a workable new paradigm for economic growth.
Since this declaration of green growth as Korea’s new development strategy, a green wave has been spreading in this country. I would like to highlight several such phenomena.
At the level of both the central government and the local governments, policy programs are being introduced to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions as well as the environmental pollution, including the harm to the country’s eco system, from cities, buildings, transportation, agriculture, as well as businesses and homes.
Various NGOs have been rallying in support of those moves by the central and local governments.
A national program of measures for adaptation to climate change, such as to anomalous weather phenomena and their harmful consequences, have been launched.
To help meet all those objectives effectively, and with as little cost as possible, scientists and entrepreneurs are investing in the development and deployment of new and renewable energy technologies, not to mention, a broad range of environmental technologies. The government is introducing various measures to encourage them to do so.
The central government and the local governments have been at the forefront of all these efforts. Their combined total investment in green growth has been scheduled to amount to 2% of the national budget each year during 2009~2013. The central government has jump-started this green investment drive by launching the so-called Green New Deal consisting of 9 major, and 27 related minor, projects in a proactive response to the global economic crisis
The market has begun to respond to all these policies and projects rather vigorously. New green businesses are emerging on a broad front.
The total amount of investment in green businesses by 30 big business groups was 15.1 TW (or 13.7 B$) during 2008~2010, with the annual rate of increase of 75%. It is projected to increase by 48% to 22.4 TW (or 20.2 B$) during 2011~2013.
The investment by big business groups is concentrated on the photovoltaic and wind power equipment, LED, fuel cell, batteries, hybrid and electric cars, among others
Encouraged by supportive measures from the government, small and medium enterprises have been participating in this green investment boom. Many of them, mostly in new and renewable energy equipment, are emerging as ‘hidden champions’ in the global market.
As an undertaker of public projects, the central government has been concentrating on infrastructure.
The largest such undertaking has been a rather huge project to restore the four major rivers which run through most of the South Korean landscape. There has never been any serious attempt to manage the river system in the Korean history while the bottom of the rivers has been rising as well as dried out due to accumulation of the earth and sludge.
To be completed next year, the purpose of this project is to restore and enlarge the capacity of the Korean river system to cope with serious floods as well as to serve as the reservoir of water resources in preparation for the increasing vicissitude of the weather due to climate change. Its other purposes are to restore the habitat for fish and other living species in the Korean rivers and also to develop the embankment areas for recreational and tourism purposes.
In order to be fair, it should be mentioned that, ironically, a number of those who claim to be environmental activists have been protesting this project. But they have also protested all the successful projects of the past, such as the Seoul-Busan HSR Project and the Incheon International Airport Project.
The government has also established as well as launched a 5-Year Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change for the 2011~2015 period. This consists more broadly of the measures to address the impact of climate change on people’s health, food security, water, maritime and coastal safety, climate disasters, forest, and the ecological system.
The local governments are drawing up adaptive measures of their own in order to supplement the central government’s plan.
The transportation sector accounts for more than 20% of Korea’s greenhouse gas emission. The government has announced a blueprint for green transportation.
The thrust of this blueprint is to induce a massive modal shift of passengers and cargos from road to rails, by remodeling the entire existing national rail system into a high speed rail network by 2020 while completing the urban mass rapid transit systems.
The existing automobiles and buses will be gradually replaced with hybrid or electric cars and buses. More than forty percent of the automobiles on the street will be those green cars by 2020. Already, some of the buses on the street in Seoul are electric buses. I am driving a hybrid car myself.
The government has launched an ambitious project to create a national smart grid by 2030. By combining the power grid with IT, the smart grid will the consumers to optimize their consumption of electricity, including renewable energies. Jeremy Rifkin, a futurologist, argues that the smart grid will usher in a new industrial revolution.
A smart grid test bed has just been completed on the Jeju Island off the peninsula’s southern coast and will be gradually expanded to the national scale.
Just next week, the Presidential Committee on Green Growth will discuss a new roadmap for green buildings and green homes.
The Ministry of Environment is preparing to report its draft First Basic Plan for Recycling of Resources to the Presidential Committee. The purpose is to make Korea free of any waste ultimately. The objective of this plan will be to create the necessary infrastructures for the recycling of resources and eliminating the waste to be buried.
And to make just one observation local governments’ initiatives, the Special Autonomy Province of Jeju Island with a population of half a million is preparing to announce in early July its plan to become a carbon-free zone by 2020.
The Jeju Island thus aspires to become the world’s first-ever carbon-free island and zone, obviously except many of your beautiful Pacific Island countries which I believe are already nearly free of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.
Your Excellencies:
All these and more green developments have been brought about by the green growth policy initiatives launched by the Korean government under President’s new development vision for the country.
The Presidential Committee on Green Growth was formally launched in February 2009 in order to follow up on the President’s new vision for the country, and specifically to elaborate and implement the green growth strategy in a systematic way.
The committee consists of 14 Ministers and up to 36 civilian experts. It is the highest policy deliberation body which coordinates the relevant policies among the Ministries, while also promoting public-private partnership through close consultation with the private sector
For this purpose, it is co-chaired by the Prime Minister and an appointed Civilian Chairman. I have the honor of serving as such presently. The president attends its formal meetings to participate in its deliberation.
The Presidential Committee has prepared and released a National Green Growth Strategy consisting of three components – pursuit of low carbon society and energy security, creating new engines for growth, and enhancement of quality of life and contribution to global green growth, all three geared to the ultimate vision of Korea as a model green nation which realizes a virtuous harmony of the economy with the environment.
The Strategy proposes to transform Korea’s entire system of resources and energy utilization practices over the whole range of sectors from power generation to industries, agriculture, forestry, land and maritime management, life styles, houses and buildings, transportation, and so on.
Korea has also legislated the Framework Act on Low Carbon Green Growth at the end of 2009. This Act authorizes the government to intervene in the market in any way that is justified by market failures, with regulations, taxes and incentives.
Of a special significance is that the government adopted and announced the country’s medium-term greenhouse emission reduction target of minus 30% by 2020 relative to the BAU scenario. 30% is the maximum of the reduction range recommended to the developing countries by the IPCC.
This reduction target was presented to the international community in Copenhagen as a voluntary target. But it has been made legally binding domestically under the Framework Act.
I would like to point out here that the emission reduction target and other environmental goals are serving as the key driver of all those green investments and projects in Korea, including the business efforts to ‘green’ the existing industries and further to shift to high-value-added services. Korean experiences thus far thus demonstrate the importance of the will and actions to reduce greenhouse gas and protect the environment as the ultimate driver of green innovation.
Your Excellencies:
Conversely, we in Korea believe that the belief in green growth nurtures and enhances commitment to contribute to the fight climate change and to protection of the environment, consisting of the natural assets like the air, climate, water, the land, and the ocean.
We also believe that green growth is more effectively pursued for all when countries join in the green growth strategy. We further believe that the developing countries should all join in the pursuit of this strategy for their strong, sustainable, and balanced growths, thus leapfrogging the brown growth paths which the advanced industrial economies have pioneered.
We believe that the brown growth development model is collapsing in this era of energy, climate, ecological and food crises. A belated catch-up along the old path would be futile.
For this reason, Korea would like to make green growth a shared strategy, especially for the developing countries. Korea has been undertaking a number of international initiatives for this purpose.
First, Korea launched an East Asia Climate Partnership initiative in 2008. Since then, Korea has been expanding this program, helping the developing countries in Asia invest in water resources management, low carbon cities, low carbon power generation, forestry, and waste management.
Second, Korea has been increasing its ODA commitment, with focus on green projects, in part to contribute to the financing of the East Asia Climate Partnership projects, but also to contribute to the Global Environment Facility and the ADB’s Future Carbon Fund.
Third, in May 2009, the OECD launched a 2-year study project on green growth strategy at the proposal of the Korean government. The purpose of the project was to develop a general theory of green growth as well as policy guidelines for the same, and more ultimately to promote broad application of green growth strategy and the policy guidelines for it to the member and non-member countries of the OECD. The OECD concluded this project, and released its report, just last week. Korea has been a key contributor to the project, and will actively participate in the effort to globalize the strategy, especially for the developing countries.
As Mr. Angel Gurria, the Secretary-General of the OECD, opened the ceremony at the OECD in Paris to release the report on the green growth strategy, he said that Korean President Lee Myung-bak was ‘the father of the green growth strategy’ and presented the first copy of the report to Mr. Kim Huang-shik, the Korean Prime Minister who attended the ceremony, inviting him to deliver the keynote speech.
Fourth, in July last year, the Korean government launched a new international center called the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) in Seoul. GGGI will study green growth policies as well as offer advisory services to the developing countries on their green growth policies and projects. It will be under the management of an international board of directors consisting of eminent former politicians and experts from both the developing and the developed countries. The Korean government is being joined by others such as the Danish, the UAE, and the Japanese governments as financial contributors.
GGGI is currently chaired by Dr. Seung-Soo Han, a former Korean Prime Minister, and has recruited Mr. Richard Samans, Managing Director of the Davos Forum, as its Executive Director. GGGI is establishing regional offices around the world and creating an international network of research partners.
Currently, GGGI is engaged in projects to help the governments of Brazil, Indonesia, and Ethiopia, with their respective green growth policies.
Lastly, the Korean government has been trying to contribute to the overcoming of the deadlock at the UNFCCC COP negotiations. In Copenhagen, President Lee unilaterally announced its voluntary medium-term GHG emission reduction target for 2020, in what he called a “Me-First” spirit, urging others to do the same.
Also, in Copenhagen, Korea proposed the registration of the voluntary commitments of the non-Annex I countries in International Registry for the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation. Those commitments would be legally binding but the developing countries which have registered them may be asked to bind then domestically.
The Korean government believes that the NAMA Registry which has been made open to the non-Annex I countries in this way may be used to provide a breakthrough over how to bring the developing and the developed countries to a deal on their respective mitigation commitments.
Now, the Korean government would like to make one more effort, this time, of crucial importance, to contribute to an early and successful conclusion of the currently on-going UNFCCC negotiation on the post-Kyoto Protocol regime.
We will see the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol regime for climate change toward the end of 2012, next year. On the other hand, the possibility of a successful conclusion of the current negotiation at COP17 to be held in Durban later this year is practically zero. This makes COP18 to be held somewhere in Asia next year very crucial. Every possible effort should be made not to let the Kyoto regime expire without its successor agreement in view, if not, in place.
The Korean government successfully chaired the G20 Summit in Seoul in November last year. In particular, it has successfully persuaded the developed country governments to agree to inclusion of the development issues on the agenda for the summit. Furthermore, it has successfully brokered an agreement to adopt two important declarations on developing cooperation, that is, the Seoul Consensus on Development Cooperation, and the Multi-Year Action Plan for Development.
The Korean government is bidding to host COP18 in order to try its capability to broker another agreement between the developing countries and the developed ones on how to apportion the responsibility to mitigate global climate change. Korea believes that, given its track record with the Seoul G20 Summit as its Chair, as well as its commitment to a global green growth strategy, it is in a better position than any other country in Asia to play such a constructive role at COP18 and bring a successful conclusion to the COP negotiations if and when it is asked to host, and chair, the COP.
In this way, Korea would like to construct a global architecture for green growth.
The Korean government fears that without a conclusive and successful negotiation at COP18, the world is likely to slip into a prolonged stalemate over how to deal with climate change. And with every year of delay in seeing the peaking of the global greenhouse gas emission beyond 2020, it will be increasingly more difficult to avoid a global warming of over 2 degree C, and hence, the apocalyptic climate disasters, which would pose not just economic and social, but more seriously, the security risks of the first order, to countries around the world, and especially, to all those represented in this room.
We are all familiar with the saying, “The Heaven helps those who help themselves”. If we, in this room, facing the common risks from the looping climate disasters, do not help ourselves by working together toward a successful COP18, and thus to avert those disasters, who will help us?
It is in this spirit that my Government of the Republic of Korea has been asking you to support the Korean bid to host COP18. In the same spirit, we thank all those who have decided to support the Korean bid.
And we propose to work together in order to, and until, we bring about an effective climate change deal which would save our home towns and father lands from a possible climate disaster. We would also work together in order to further build our future prosperity on the shared green growth strategy.
So, please, allow me to close by saying, “All for one, one for all – We all share the Pacific Ocean!”
Thank you for your attention.
May.312011_Korea_Green_Growth_Policies_and_COP18.docx