Consider the implications of each of the world’s major economies consciously shifting their growth paradigms towards a model of sustainable development, one in which addressing climate change and environmental challenges while pursuing economic growth is not paradoxical or mutually exclusive. This is a daunting task, and while leaders in economies both developed and emerging talk about its importance, few have gone so far as to prioritize it as a national agenda item. For this reason, South Korea drew significant international attention in August 2008 when then-President Lee Myung-bak declared “low carbon, green growth” to be the core of a new national vision for economic growth.
The term “green growth” has a broad range of definitions. In the policy context, the UN Economic and Social Commission for the Asia-Pacific (UNESCAP) has described green growth as “economic progress that fosters environmentally sustainable, low carbon, and socially-inclusive development.” UNESCAP identifies policies that promote green growth as aiming to bring together economic development and sustainability in ways that require fewer resources, generate fewer emissions, and reduce environmental impacts while meeting demands for everything from energy, transportation and infrastructure to agricultural production. Green growth under this definition was adopted by the fifth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Development in Asia and the Pacific in 2005 as a strategy for increasing economic development.
South Korea’s shift to green growth as a new development paradigm was in many respects a logical next step. Rising incomes and quality of life, coupled with increased awareness of the steep environmental costs of South Korea’s meteoric economic development, had by the 2000s led to a shift in public priorities. This evolution led to initiatives such as Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon Stream urban renewal project, which contributed to then-Seoul Mayor Lee’s successful presidential bid. However, green growth was not initially at the front of Lee’s economic agenda, which was built around a platform of “747” growth targets: increasing South Korea’s GDP to 7 percent, per capita income to $40,000, and making South Korea the world’s seventh-largest economy. In light of these initial goals, the new focus on green growth was a striking change in narrative, not only for Lee’s government but also for South Korea.
The South Korean Government announced a “Green New Deal” in January 2009. This ambitious plan, which drew significant international media attention, called for 50 trillion won (about $38.1 billion at the time) of new investments and economic stimulus on a broad range of environment and sustainability-focused projects, which the government forecast would generate 960,000 new jobs. Focus areas of the Green New Deal included:
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Conservation (reducing energy use, increasing recycling, and clean energy development);
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Improving quality of life and the environment (green vehicle technology, transportation networks, smart communities, energy-efficient buildings, and securing clean water supplies);
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Protecting global resources and reducing carbon emissions, including through improving water resources and flood control (the “Four Rivers Project”); and
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Building industrial and information infrastructure facilitating efficient use of energy
It is noteworthy that this proposal came at the height of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, in which South Korea’s economy was one of the earliest and hardest hit, but would be one of the first and fastest to recover. Through this agenda, the South Korean government’s goal was to “weather the global economic crisis and create jobs…it will transform crisis into opportunity by equipping Korea with future growth engines.” While improving sustainability and environmental quality, economic growth opportunities were never far from the mind of the South Korean Government in advancing these policies.
South Korea followed up on the Green New Deal announcement in July 2009 with a five-year plan for green growth, which included a target of spending 2% of GDP to promote green growth through securing energy independence, improving the environment and quality of life, and innovation in green technologies as new growth engines. Additionally, the South Korean Government announced a target of 30% reduction in its carbon emissions by the year 2020 (compared to the business-as-usual scenario), and to launch an emissions trading system by 2015–significant given Korea’s near-total dependence on energy imports.
Given the long time horizon of many of these initiatives, it is challenging just a few years out to measure their successes or pass judgment. The near-term verdict is a mixed one from domestic perspectives in South Korea, where rising economic and social inequities have dominated political debate in the years since the green growth agenda was launched. The Lee administration’s policy approach to green growth demonstrated some of the compromises involved in trying to bridge the gap between sustainability and growth, as well as the challenges that emerge when trying to characterize as “green” some development projects that arguably were not. For example, plans for reducing South Korea’s carbon emissions relied heavily on expanding its nuclear energy resources and capabilities to 32% of the nation’s energy supply by 2020. While the plans called for a significant increase in renewable energy resources including solar and wind power, South Korea targeted these resources comprising 11% of its energy portfolio by 2020 given the very low base it was starting from and recognizing the challenges to viable commercialization and deployment. Much more controversial was the Four Rivers Project, which despite its goal of flood control and improving environmental and water quality was opposed from the start by many domestic environmental groups and questioned by experts as primarily a large public works project that would destroy the rivers’ environment. The new government of President Park Geun-hye, which took office in February 2013, is moving to investigate claims that the project has created significant environmental damage. Due in part to the association of the Four Rivers Project with the term “green growth,” and a sense that the emphasis was too often on growth and not enough on “green,” the Park administration appears to have shifted towards instead using the term “sustainable development.”
Despite these challenges, South Korea’s initiative in shifting towards green growth as a core national value, policy agenda, and narrative remain far ahead of other advanced economies. Moreover, the South Korean public appears to continue to strongly support these goals; as reported in the Korea Herald, a January 2013 poll by the Presidential Commission on Green Growth found 97% support for sustaining the green growth policy under the new government, and 84% thought it had helped in reducing climate change. South Korea’s actions beyond mere rhetoric on green growth policies have also set an important example for emerging economies that sustainability and development can go hand in hand. Indeed, South Korea has worked to put these ideas into international practice, and a future post will explore some of the international impacts and implications of this.
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