`Green New Deal' Lacks National Consensus

The Lee Myung-bak administration has finalized the ``Four-River Restoration Project" as part of its ``Green New Deal" initiative. The government announced Monday that it will spend a total of 22.2 trillion won ($17.8 billion) to complete the project by 2012. As officials stated, the aim of the river refurbishment work is to prevent floods, tackle water shortages, enhance water quality and create jobs.

We cannot overestimate the importance of the mammoth project which the administration stresses is pivotal to better managing water resources, restoring the ecosystem and speeding up economic recovery. South Korea's water shortage is predicted to reach 800 million tons in 2011 and 1 billion tons in 2016. The water quality of the four rivers has continued to deteriorate following the nation's rapid industrialization and development.

The project calls for large-scale dredging operations of river bottoms and building of small dams, catch basins and reservoirs that can store up to 1.3 billion cubic meters of fresh water in the four rivers ― the Han, Nakdong, Geum and Yeongsan.

We hope that the Lee administration will make thorough preparations for construction work to make the Green New Deal a real success. No one dares to oppose the objectives of the grand project that is described as eco-friendly and viable in economic terms. But, we want to point out some problems with the plan so that officials can avoid some shortcomings or policy blunders.

The project is not properly based on national consensus. The government first floated the idea of the river project last December after it gave up President Lee's plan to build a cross-nation canal linking the Han River to the Nakdong River, which was intended to connect the capital city of Seoul to the southeastern port of Busan.

But, environmentalists and other civic activists still cannot shake off suspicions that Lee is trying to push the four-river restoration project as part of his canal plan. They have claimed that such a canal scheme would bring catastrophic damage to the environment, not to mention the questioned usefulness of it as transportation means.

Therefore, the government had better make the utmost effort to build national consensus on the river project before launching construction work. It plans to complete a survey on the possible effect of the project on the environment by around October, when construction work is scheduled to begin.

It is almost impossible to conduct a proper survey in a short period of time. It would be better for the administration to take enough time to minimize a potential adverse effect on Mother Nature. A plan to build 16 catch basins in the rivers could worsen the water quality and destroy the marine ecological system.

The project requires tremendous outlays from the national treasury. Some experts forecast that the budget for the river plan might snowball to more than 30 trillion won. This will inevitably lead to a huge budget deficit which could do harm to fiscal health of the government. Thus it is important to prevent any waste of taxpayer money amid the unprecedented global economic crisis. We urge policymakers to overhaul the project to check if it is really a New Green Deal to harmonize the environmental protection and economic development.