New opportunities for global cooperation (48)
The following are excerpts from presentations that are scheduled to be made during an international conference on conflict management organized under the theme of “From Environmental Challenges to Environmental Conflicted: New Opportunities for Global Cooperation” at the Seoul Press Center in downtown Seoul at 2 p.m. today. – ED.
Park Eung-kyuk, Ph.D.
President of the Korea Institute of
Public Administration
Today, environmental challenges have become increasingly significant in producing conflicts. As a result of unsustainable developments without taking due account of ecological consequences, we have witnessed a raised sea levels, and significant increase in temperature that has altered global climate cycle.
Nowadays, the threat posed by global climate change often leads to conflicting interests among people and nations surrounding resource scarcity and waste disposals issues. And the Northeast Asian countries are no exception to this trend.
Policymakers are indeed having a hard time in crafting efficient measures to counteract those issues, since these conflicts may be intensified in combination with other factors, such as inefficient governance system, economic instability, and the lack of regional cooperation.
There have been some proposals on how to prevent and manage conflicts and ways of promoting regional cooperation in Northeast Asia.
Jim Dator
University of Hawaii at Manoa
In 2008, the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies wrote a report titled, “10 Things Every Korean Leader Must Know About Climate Change in the 21st Century-plus Four Alternative Futures. I was asked to prepare my talk today as an update of that report.
There is no greater challenge for governments, economic systems, and all of humanity everywhere in the coming decades than dealing with the causes and consequences of human-created climate change.
Among the vast amount of research and opinion on climate change and climate policy, there are several fundamental points that must be understood, internalized, and used as a guide for our individual and collective actions, especially in Korea. I will present eleven points that I believe every leader – and citizen – in Korea must know about climate change.
I will then ask one question that I challenge you to consider and answer.
1. Climate change is real, it is here, and more are coming.
2. Global warming leads to climate change leads to global change.
3. Climate change is global, but its impacts are local.
4. It is too late to prevent climate change, but we can stop making it worse.
5. Climate change is a critical issue for national security.
6. The poor are both the most vulnerable to climate change, and yet in many ways the best prepared to adapt to it.
7. Climate change can be good, and should be grasped as a wonderful opportunity.
8. Climate change must be governed.
9. We have the technology to do the job.
10. We may not have the energy needed to do the job.
11. Climate change is a complex, interconnected, systemic phenomenon
Prof. Shin Dong-chun
Dept. of Preventive Medicine,
College of Medicine, Yonsei University
Environmental health issues in Korea in the 20th century may be summarized as follows:
1. Environmental diseases issue in Onsan, a non-ferrous metal complex
2. Pneumoconiosis in residents near a coal fuel-brick factory
3. Tap water contamination from phenol leakage into the Nakdong river
4. Dioxins emission by various solid waste incinerator
5. Heavy metal poisoning near decommissioned mines
Prof. Geoff O’Brien
Northumbria University
This is about addressing extremes as well as long term change. But there are huge uncertainties associated with climate change and many different views: It may not be happening, or it might not happen as fast as some think or it may be already too late!
Ideally we would want “no regrets” adaptation solutions – that is solutions that work for a range of climate scenarios and offer co-benefits
Climate change is a wicked problem: There is little opportunity to learn by trial and error or any exit point from the problem.
Human actions are leading to a series of “produced” unknowns: We can generalise about the type of threats we face but we cannot predict the “what” and “when.”
Conventional scientific methods cannot provide sufficient data for robust policy making – climate change uncertainties and the interactivity between systems at micro, meso and macro scales militates against gathering enough empirical data for robust decision-making. Climate decision making falls into the Post Normal Science (PNS) domain.
PNS can be used where there are differences of opinion and uncertainties and it is not possible to gather sufficient empirical data to resolve those differences. Climate change mitigation and adaptation are such a problem
An effective climate change policy is an iterative one that considers and incorporates this new learning at regular intervals.
Prof. Huang Chongfu
Beijing Normal University
Thirty years ago, there was a railway station in my home town in China where the railway was only two feet (0.6 meter) wide.
Thirty years ago, our environment was so clean but now there is serious pollution!
Thirty years ago, we were poor but happy!
Now, not so poor, but too busy and face much risks: Today’s China is badly different from past China. Now, there are much risks we have to face.
The Chinese government is paying more attention on risk management. Until now, the main role of risk analysis in China is to server for the government and giant companies.
The key projects have soundly promoted the researches of risk analysis in China.
Prof. Isao Sakaguchi
Gakushuin University
Middle power diplomacy has been a dominant model for Japan, involving dependence on stable international order since reputation matters for non-great power
There has been active participation in international institutions because there is a need for civil political diplomacy, more so than the ordinary model for western countries
Also, there had to be active movement in the Japanese civil society since it was too weak to influence the environmental diplomacy of the government of Japan.
As a result, local governments are more environmentally enlightened, and can lead the environmental diplomacy from bottom-up.
Historically, local governments were the primary supporters of Japan’s anti-pollution or nature conservation movements, helping to enforce stricter environmental regulations more strictly than the national government.
With the internationalization of local cities, they began to seek local diplomacy in 1980s with know-how in environmental regulations.
Prof. Chung Suh-Yong
Korea University
Looking at global problems for local solutions, we must recognize that there are various level of developments in different regions.
There are impacts of different political, economic, diplomatic, scientific, and cultural environments on the institution building process.
And there are all types of environmental problems:
● Yellow Dust (Korea vs. China)
● Acid rain (Japan vs. China)
●Marine environment (Korea vs. China)
● Fisheries (?)
●Movements of hazardous wastes (China vs.)
● Climate change (?)
As a means to try and resolve some of these problems, certain steps have to be taken:
● 1st step: individual small scale of cooperation mechanisms
● 2nd step: institutionalization of individual mechanisms
● 3rd step: institutional competitions among the mechanisms
● 4th step: formation of a region-wide environment (green) governance
Chung Ji-bum, Ph.D.
Korea Institute of Public Administration
Korea is one of the world’s 10 major energy consumers.
However, the country has few natural resources and its dependency on overseas energy sources has risen from 87.9 percent in 1990 to 96.7 percent in 2005.
The Korean energy policy has been driven by the considerations of national energy security to support the nation’s high economic growth and minimization of foreign oil dependency.
This has resulted in a policy that continues to have nuclear power as a major element of electricity production.
Since the startup of the first nuclear power plant Gori Unit 1 in 1977, the Korean nuclear industry has achieved continuous high growth.
Now, a total of 21 units are in operation, which ranked sixth globally (accounting for about 40 percent of the total domestic power generation).
Further, under the country’s fifth long-term power development plan finalized in January 2000, eight more nuclear power plants will be constructed by 2015.