Green Growth Panel to Be Launched
By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
A senior presidential secretary Friday unveiled plans to set up a green growth committee that will oversee low-carbon policies across the government ministries in January.
``The Lee Myung-bak administration set green growth as core part of a national strategy to create green jobs,'' Pahk Jae-wan, a senior presidential secretary of national planning and strategy, said in a radio program.
``Next year, the government will provide support programs to create a green technology-based new engine for growth,'' he added.
Pahk noted the $10 billion four-river refurbishment projects, unveiled this week by the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs, were part of the green policy package.
The country's four major rivers ― the Han, Youngsan, Nakdong and Namhan ― will undergo facelifts under the plan.
Of the $10 billion, some 6 billion will be spent on dredging, which will bolster banks and thus enable them to prevent neighboring areas from being flooded during monsoon season. It will also create ecological parks near the waterways.
The remaining budget will be used to build dams and water reservoirs near the rivers.
If completed, the government would thereby spend much less on damage and restoration work after floods and in the process create some 190,000 green collar jobs.
Earlier, Pahk called the project ``Green New Deal,'' arguing it would not only create more jobs but resolve water shortages that troubled local residents living near the rivers.
The largest opposition Democratic Party (DP) said the construction projects would be of no help in resolving unemployment, which economists forecast will a hit record-high level next year.
DP lawmakers said the billion-dollar project would turn out to be a machine that will create tens of thousands of blue-collar jobs, not good green jobs, in the end.
Pahk also said the government will work closely with the nation's major businesses, including the semiconductor, steel and auto industries, to help the global giants consume less energy.
``We'll implement supportive policies to provide one million green homes and to help the auto industry become one of the four global giants in the green vehicle industry by 2012,'' he said.
In his Aug. 15 ceremonial speech, President Lee vowed to seek low-carbon, green growth as a major policy direction.