By Lee Suh-yoon
Environmental cooperation can come first in expanding ties with North Korea, government officials and experts said Wednesday.
“Environmental cooperation is less constrained than political or economic cooperation. It also brings a more a bottom-up approach to building inter-Korean ties,” Cho Myung-rae, president of the state-funded Korea Environment Institute (KEI) said at a forum at the National Assembly. “Also, due to U.N. sanctions, environmental cooperation is a more practical measure at this point than economic cooperation.”
Vice Minister of Unification Chun Hae-Sung also called for inter-Korean environmental cooperation.
“There are no boundaries set for inter-Korean environmental cooperation, it's a common problem of the Korean people,” Chun said. “North Korea, too, has shown active interest in environmental issues recently, joining international treaties on migratory birds and wetlands.“
Panelists said North Korea should implement strict environmental standards in its development.
“(North Korea) can set up an effective environmental policy using the painful lessons South Korea learned during its rapid industrialization,“ Cho Hong-seub, a journalist, said in a panel discussion.
Though less industrialized than its neighbor in the South, North Korea already suffers from a host of environmental problems. North Korea's weak environment infrastructure makes it the seventh most vulnerable country in the world to environmental disasters such as floods and landslides, KEI reports.
In 2012, North Korea hosted its own international conference on ecosystem restoration in Pyongyang. The conference focused on deforestation and river pollution, two major environmental problems in North Korea.
“Seeing the numerous inter-Korean projects fills me with hope but at the same time, is also deeply worrying,” Environment Minister Kim Eun-kyung said in an opening speech. “Preventive standards need to be included in such projects so that environmental degradation does not intensify in North Korea after unification.”