President Lee Myung-bak and Mexican President Felipe Calderon have called for "green growth" as a key solution to overcome the global financial crisis and pledged to work together with other G20 nations for the environment-friendly drive.
The two leaders made the appeal in a joint article contributed to Germany's Financial Times Deutschland newspaper Monday, saying the current growth paradigm of production and consumption should be changed to become greener so both growth and environmental protection can be achieved.
Green growth can also create millions of new jobs and help renovate industries, they said.
"Efforts are continuing to overcome the global economic crisis. But we should not turn a blind eye to important long-term tasks, preoccupied with pending issues," Lee and Calderon said in the German-language article, according to Seoul's presidential office.
Calderon is the host of next month's G20 summit, and Lee hosted the G20 summit in 2010.
"Under the initiative of Mexico, the chair nation of this year's G20 summit, we will make all cooperation efforts for global economic stabilization, growth and recovery, and to address problems stemming from climate change," they said. "South Korea and Mexico view green growth as a key element contributing to overcoming these challenges."
Green growth has been one of Lee's trademark policies and calls for lessening Korea's dependence on fossil fuels and promoting the development of alternative energy sources, such as solar and wind power, and other technologies that increase energy efficiency.
Lee believes the strategy will provide South Korea with fresh growth engines for its economy and help the country -- one of the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters -- reduce the emission of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases amid growing calls to curb global warming.
Lee and Calderon also called for narrowing development gaps between advanced and developing economies and expanding official development assistance to less well-off countries. More efforts are needed for an early launch of the "green climate fund" aimed at helping developing nations pursue green growth, they said.
The fund's establishment was agreed in a 2010 U.N. climate change meeting in Mexico.
The two leaders also said global food production should increase by more than 70 percent by 2050 to meet growing global demand for food, and that such an increase should be done in a sustainable manner. (Yonhap)