South Korea takes efforts to tackle environment issues including holding P4G summit next year
- 5 years ago
Fine dust has once again covered South Korea. Meanwhile, there are some movements this week in Seoul promoting green transitions. Our Choi Jeong-yoon visited one of them, the Global Green Growth Week summit, and reports on what South Korea can do to tackle climate change and air pollution.
South Korea has the second highest levels of fine dust out of 36 OECD countries.
And out of the 100 cities in the OECD with the worst dust levels, 44 are located in Korea.
Amid growing concerns over air pollution, the National Council on Climate and Air Quality has called for the strongest measures yet to reduce fine dust emissions by 20 percent from last year’s levels.
Those measures including stricter bans on old diesel cars and reducing the operation of coal power plants, Seoul has recently taken actions such as an 'alternate no driving day' system for public workers as well.
Experts say however, that while cracking down on activities that create emissions, the government also needs to find approaches for internal green transitions by using taxation as a policy instrument.
“We have to look at different economic incentives such as those set by governments through taxes or subsidies that send price signals to all the actors in the economy from companies to private citizens about production and consumption decisions.”
Expanding measures to promote renewable energy and green growth, Korea will hold the second P4G "Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030" summit in Seoul next June.
This comes after President Moon Jae-in proposed Seoul's vision for green growth at the P4G summit's first edition in Denmark last year.
“The key part of having a country like the Republic of Korea is it itself has grown very quickly. It provides an example of how to grow in the future, as it goes to its own transition but also how other developing countries can make that accelerated transitions."
The vision states that economic growth and environmental issues are not trade-offs but mutually reinforce each other.
A global initiative hosted by 12 countries and 6 international organizations, the P4G looks for new business and financial models that can drive inclusive growth, sustainable development goals and climate change action.
The key agenda of 2020 Seoul summit will be ‘partnerships' between the public and private sectors in order to push for sustainable, inclusive growth and action on climate change.
Choi Jeongyoon Arirang News.
South Korea has the second highest levels of fine dust out of 36 OECD countries.
And out of the 100 cities in the OECD with the worst dust levels, 44 are located in Korea.
Amid growing concerns over air pollution, the National Council on Climate and Air Quality has called for the strongest measures yet to reduce fine dust emissions by 20 percent from last year’s levels.
Those measures including stricter bans on old diesel cars and reducing the operation of coal power plants, Seoul has recently taken actions such as an 'alternate no driving day' system for public workers as well.
Experts say however, that while cracking down on activities that create emissions, the government also needs to find approaches for internal green transitions by using taxation as a policy instrument.
“We have to look at different economic incentives such as those set by governments through taxes or subsidies that send price signals to all the actors in the economy from companies to private citizens about production and consumption decisions.”
Expanding measures to promote renewable energy and green growth, Korea will hold the second P4G "Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030" summit in Seoul next June.
This comes after President Moon Jae-in proposed Seoul's vision for green growth at the P4G summit's first edition in Denmark last year.
“The key part of having a country like the Republic of Korea is it itself has grown very quickly. It provides an example of how to grow in the future, as it goes to its own transition but also how other developing countries can make that accelerated transitions."
The vision states that economic growth and environmental issues are not trade-offs but mutually reinforce each other.
A global initiative hosted by 12 countries and 6 international organizations, the P4G looks for new business and financial models that can drive inclusive growth, sustainable development goals and climate change action.
The key agenda of 2020 Seoul summit will be ‘partnerships' between the public and private sectors in order to push for sustainable, inclusive growth and action on climate change.
Choi Jeongyoon Arirang News.