Seoul Should Drop Development-First Policy

It's been quite a while since ``green growth" became a pet term for President Lee Myung-bak and his aides. So ordinary Koreans might be asking why the nation's global ranking in environmental performance index plunged from 51 in 2008 to 94 this year. Few ― if any ― environmentalists are wondering why, however.

In Copenhagen last month, President Lee volunteered to slash Korea's emission of greenhouse gases by 30 percent in 2020 in the so-called business-as-usual terms ― from the estimated level of a decade later if nothing is done until then ― as the first among countries with no reduction obligation. The government is also pushing to draw the next climate change conference to Seoul.

This may look less impressive if one is aware that Korea's ranking in greenhouse gas emission has fallen to 147th place out of 163 countries over the past two years. Some foreigners might suspect the relationship between Korea's diplomatic initiatives and its track record.

Even more disappointing are the responses of the Environment Ministry officials to the biennial survey jointly conducted by two prestigious U.S. universities, Yale and Columbia, questioning their credibility and consistency in methodology. As recently as last year, the same officials vowed to lift Korea's EPI ranking to 10 by 2030. Even considering the difficulties in precise calculation of the index, which side is more inconsistent: the U.S. universities or the Korean authorities?

Come to think of it, both the plummeting ranking and the environmental bureaucrats' excuses are only natural. At a time when the entire nation is being turned into a huge construction site with the digging of the bottoms of the nation's four longest rivers, building a Seoul-Incheon canal, the construction of all kinds of special cities and the erecting of endless rows of apartment complexes.

The environment ministry's role: Rationalizing the administration's development fervor by making enormous environmental damage appear manageable. So much so that some critics have selected the environment ministry, along with the national unification ministry, as two government offices running exactly counter to their original roles and duties.

Most ironical of all, the ministry has recently pledged to improve the nation's environmental ranking by improving the water quality of its rivers, but it was the area in which Korea marked one of its highest scores by being ranked at 30th place.

All this means the Lee administration should immediately stop the cosmetic surgery of the nation's nature, which may make it appear pretty on the surface but rotten underneath while taking up lots of taxpayers' money. It instead should reinforce far stricter emission standards on domestic businesses, large manufacturers in particular, to reduce the nation's share in global air contamination, which is at least twice the portion its gross domestic product takes in the global economy.

Unless the administration sets 2010 as the first year toward genuine sustainable growth, Korea will hardly be able to avoid the stigma of environmental double player.