Task of Legislating Environmental
Law for Sustainable Development

Astudy report entitled, "Our Joint Future"made by the World Environmental Development Committee, defined that sustainable development as the development satisfactory to the modern generation without damaging the capability satisfying the need of future generations.
This idea of sustainable development can be surmised as a basic idea of the environmental law, designed to do its best as a member of the Earth Community by integrating society, improving the quality of life, and achieving balance among generations. Detailed environmental policies are intended for prior prevention of environmental pollution, the search for co-existence of environment, the economy, and society, the expansion of civilian participation in economic policies, and providing support to the autonomous management of environment by businesses to achieve their target of the creation of a beautiful environment, and healthy future.
This idea was handled by the People's Government in the name of "live and let live"between environment and the economy with the central government cooperating with local governments in managing demand and supply of natural resources and pre-prevention of environmental pollution, which boosted the effectiveness of environmental management, the expansion of the economic inducement measures, and the development of environmental technologies.
In the era, the special law on the four largest rivers was adopted, the Eco-2 project was pushed, making up the framework for pre-preventive environmental management, among others.
Coming into the Participatory Government era, the paradigm for environmental management was expanded to other areas, including new environment, economy and society for balanced growth of each sector from environment and economy. The government has been trying to turn the paradigm around to facilitate pre-preventive and solution of environmental conflicts through the autonomous management of environment by businesses, strengthening the environmental evaluation system and a new governance-type political resolution method.
For detailed contents, the legislation of the Special Seoul Metropolitan Air Environment Improvement Law, the promotion of overall pollution quantity system and the introduction of environmental health policies can be brought up.
In connection with sustainable possible development, other pieces of laws being pushed by the government include as follows: First, a study is being made to legislate the so-called, "the law on the promotion of sustainable possible development,"in order to implement the declaration of the vision for sustainable possible development dated June 4, 2005.
Key points of the proposed law would be to draw up the evaluation system for sustainable possible government policies to raise their possibilities. Second, debates on the legislation of a law on the circulation of electric, electronic products and automobiles to cope with the international regulations on environment intended to create a guarantee system to minimize environmental effects by managing the harmful material from reuse of products to restriction of the use of harmful material from the stages of development to scrapping. Third, the law on circulation of resources is being promoted focusing on the establishment of national resources circulation basic plan and the introduction of the evaluation of resources circulation system. A major aim is to formulate a guideline for resources circulation connected to the construction of new cities and distribute it. Fourth, the environmental health promotion law is being promoted to work out a basic legal framework for environmental health policies to cover such matters as the evaluation of health effect, support for environment-related disease patients, and the establishment of environmental health standards.
Legislation of laws to be proposed by legislators include:
First, the law for promotion of purchasing environmental products was legislated and declared Dec. 31, 2004, and enforced from June, 2005, and drafts for the revision of the law have been turned over to the Environment Labor Committee. Its major contents include the expansion of the role of the Environment-Friendly Commodities Promotion Institute to produce, sell and distribute environmental products, and the mandatory sales booth for large store operators to handle environmental products in their stores. Second, The draft of revision of the Scrapped Material Management Law include a provision for building a small scrap material burner(In case, the scrap material burner is operated by the owner of the scrap material management business, it should be able to burn at least two tons of the material per hour.) For existing owners who have incinerators, they should close them down within a fixed period.
The Law for the Promotion of the Formulation of Raw Material Economy Circulation Society has been turned over to the Environment Labor Committee and the committee will review the revision of the law taking into consideration various related pieces of legislation turned over to the National Assembly by the government, along with various opinions collected from all levels of the government and industry when the committee takes action to legislate the revision. When the revision is passed at the parliament, various other related laws would have to be revised also.
Fourth, the law for the prevention of global warming should prepare for an integrated measures to form a base for sustained and systematic promotion to cope with the climate change agreement. It is also meant to be prepared for implementation of the Kyoto protocol, voluntary measures to reduce hot-house gases, securing rational energy use and effectiveness and put them into practice. The legislation of basic law for coping with the climate change agreement should be considered after collecting views from various ministries of the government and decide on timing and legislation date. We have reviewed various possible legislation matters relative to environmental consideration with regard to national environmental capacity and Korean economic and social situations from the side of sustained possible development. We found that many parts need to be amended in mid-to-long term perspectives on the side of the sustained possible development in connection with overall aspect of the legislation of the environmental law. These issues need to be considered on the same level of national land plans, the framework for the industrial structure and people's conscience and will remain a task to be studied further in light of its further development. nw

Ha Jong-beom, Chief of Staff,
The Committee on Environment & Labor, The National Assembly