Low carbon, green growth Korea

Abstract

During the focus on rapid industrialization and accelerated economic growth, Korea had little leisure to worry about environmentally sustainable growth, with severe and lingering consequences: Korea is one of the top ten carbon dioxide emitters and ranks 94th on the 2010 Yale Environmental Performance Index (EPI), a measure of environmental public health and ecosystem vitality in 163 countries. Korea’s current commitment to Green Growth relates to the concern for the environment which Koreans have always fundamentally shared but had chosen to put on the back burner for decades. This green pledge was articulated in President Lee Myung-bak’s New Green Growth Formula, summarized in his August 15, 2008, address on the 60th Anniversary of the Republic of Korea. Noting that, after the agricultural, industrial, and information revolution, the world is about to enter the age of an environmental revolution, President Lee presented Low Carbon, Green Growth as a new national development paradigm" that will create new growth engines and jobs in the twenty-first century, with the advent of green technology and clean energy.