Govt. Strives to Foster Environment Technology Industry as New Growth Engine

Sets its sights on raising its global ranking in technological competitiveness from current 10th to 5th place

The following are excerpts of a recent interview between NewsWorld and Environment Minister Lee Maanee, who spelled out policies on the environment including the low-carbon, green growth paradigm, the response to climate change and the new European regulation on chemical substances on the occasion of Environment Day.
Question: Will you tell our readers about the significance of marking Environment Day and the anniversary events?
Answer: The government held a ceremony to celebrate the 14th anniversary of Environment Day on June 5. The official ceremony coincided with diverse side events, including an exhibition of environment-related products, a concert, an academic seminar, a river-revamping activity and an ecological experience program held according to each region across the nation.
This year marked the first Environment Day anniversary following the declaration of the national vision of “Low-carbon, Green Growth” last August 15. The anniversary events were designed to deliver a message for mustering public support for the national vision and encouraging voluntary participation in the realization of the vision as well as maximizing the people's participation.
The events were aimed at helping the Environment Ministry, a prime mover behind the low-carbon, green growth initiative, and mustering the public's determination to translate into action the general public's “green life.”
Q: Will you tell us about the direction of the ME's policies on the low-carbon, green growth paradigm?
A: The low-carbon, green growth paradigm is a new national vision designed to cope with the earth's environmental problems including climate change and the depletion of energy and natural resources and ensuring sustainable growth. There is a need for harmonizing the environment and the economy and constituting a virtuous cycle structure to realize the vision.
On Jan. 6, the ministry announced 49 action tasks in the environment sector that will contribute to the pursuit of the national green growth initiative.
It has initially worked on the expansion of a waste-to-energy policy, the drawing and distributing of a weather resources map, the building of a climate change surveillance network and the developing of a prediction model in order to step up greenhouse gas emissions reductions and the capability to respond to climate change.
The ministry plans to develop the top 10 environment technologies and nourish promising environment industries in order to help those technologies and industries take the lead in environmentally-friendly growth.
It strives to expand such projects as the reuse of treated waste water and the “Clean Korea Action Projects” in order to improve the environment and create environment-related jobs.
In an effort to improve the quality of the general public's life ― the ultimate goal of the green growth paradigm ― the ministry plans to ramp up environmental policies related to the public's living environment, including the prevention of bad urban odors, the supply of clean, safe tap water, the improvement of weather forecasts, countermeasures against such environment-related diseases as atopy, and the improvement of the air quality of such indoor spaces as subway stations.
Q: Are there long-term projects the ME is readying to combat global warming and climate change?
A: The earth saw temperatures soaring an average of 0.74 degrees Centigrade over the past 100 years, whereas the average temperature at the nation's six major cities climbed as much as 1.5 degrees Centigrade during the same period, nearly double the earth's average temperature rise. As a result, Korea finds itself feeling the negative effects, including a change in precipitation patterns, an upsurge in weather disasters, a rise in hotter nights and the introduction of tropical diseases.
The ME, in cooperation with 12 government agencies, established a master plan for responding to climate change last December and worked out a detailed implementation plan this past April, calling for monitoring and predicting climate change developments and assessing their effects on each sector. Based on this, it stipulates what programs in each sector that are designed to respond to climate change including the ecosystem, water, health and natural disasters should be worked out and implemented.
The ME is implementing the comprehensive plan for combating climate change it established last June in order to comprehensively deal with climate change problems including greenhouse gas emissions reductions. According to the plan, Korea is actively participating in a waste-to-energy policy, the development and distribution of green cars, the introduction of a carbon level system and the “Green Start Movement,” a public drive for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Q: Will you elaborate on how Korean companies will take action against the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemical substances (REACH), a new European Community regulation on chemicals and their safe use, and future plans?
A: REACH, which took effect in June 2007, became a subject of burden Korean exporters to the EU market. The reason is that companies exporting chemical substances and chemical products to the EU are required to submit information on the chemicals. The process adds costs to the production of information on chemicals and direct and indirect costs, including registration fees, which are burdensome to Korean companies.
REACH is sure to serve as a trade barrier to exporters to the EU. The introduction of the regulation has prompted advanced countries, including the United States and Japan, to step up environment-related trade barriers. Exporting countries, which have lost competitiveness due to the regulation, need to diversify their export markets to areas outside of advanced countries.
The ministry inaugurated an ad hoc corps designed to provide support to Korean companies in dealing with REACH in 2006. The corps has assisted Korean companies in finishing up the pre-registration, the first measure necessary to comply with REACH. Following the pre-registration, the corps has been providing additional support for registration, licensing and permission as a means of complying with the REACH regulation.
REACH was introduced to correct the distributing of approximately 100,000 chemical substances whose information on their toxicity is not available.
In Korean, about 40,000 chemical substances are in circulation. The government has taken the lead in identifying the toxicity of chemical substances in circulation, but in reality, this national effort has been proven to be not very comprehensive.
Accordingly, the Korean industry needs to introduce a system similar to REACH so that it can ban chemical substances harmful to human health and produce safe products on a voluntary basis, a move considered significant enough to protect the public health and environment from toxic chemical substances. However, it should be preceded by a prudent examination and research into the introduction of the system, given its effects on the industry.
Q: Will you tell us about Korea's environment technology development and its strategies?
A: The environment industry is an industrial field designed to address environmental crises including water, air, soil and other environmental pollutions; the depletion of natural resources; global warming and other changes in the ecosystem; and weather disasters. The industry's competitive edge hinges on the levels of technologies for the prevention of environmental pollutions and overcoming the earth's environmental and natural resources crises.
The Korean environment industry continues to grow with a rise in the global market share, but still lacks competitiveness. Its share in the global environment industry was estimated at 4.4 percent or about 34 trillion won in 2007. Companies in the Korean environment industry are small-sized and less specialized with an average of 1.2 billion won in sales and seven employees in 2007.
In an effort to nurture the environment technology and industry as next-generation growth engines, Korea plans to expand to 400 billion won in 2012 from 197 billion won in 2009 investments in the development of the top 10 green technologies: the top seven market-oriented core technologies including water treatment, green cars and responses to climate change, as well as the top three future-oriented basic and principal technologies on convergence-based improvement of environmental pollutions, greenhouse gas alternatives and lifestyle-related, environmentally-friendly products.
The government plans to carry out diverse support policies for the cultivation of the environment industry, including ones on the revamping of placing orders on environment equipment projects. It strives to foster the top 10 new environment markets, including the environment plant industry, carbon market and urban mining, as strategic exporting industries.
Thanks to the implementation of these policies, Korea aims to raise its global ranking in technological competitiveness from the current 10th to fifth place by ramping up its technological levels to more than 80 percent of those of advanced countries, and raise its share in the global environment market to 7 percent or 67 trillion won and to export more than 8 trillion won worth of goods and services in the environment market.
Q: Will you tell us about projects to rejuvenate the four major rivers in a bid to secure enough water and preserve the environment?
A: The projects are designed not just to restore the original functions of the four major rivers, which are suffering from the exacerbation of water quality, a lack of water volume and damage to the ecosystem, but also to brace for natural disasters including floods and droughts, which will likely be caused by climate change.
Waterways will be refurbished to increase the flow of water and make them a clean and refreshing ecological space.
The projects are designed to help the nation build a foundation for green growth by recreating and upgrading the four rivers so that history and culture can breathe in areas centered around rivers, and humans and nature can exist harmoniously.
In a bid to make the projects environmentally-friendly, the ME aims to advance from the original completion date of 2015 to 2012 the goal of improving the good-quality water rate to 86.3 percent. To this end, the ministry plans to set environmental standards on chemical oxygen demand (COD), which shows recent signs of rising and worsening pollution, and total phosphorous (TP) concentrations, blamed for causing red tides, as well as the introduction of a TP system. An inter-ministry consultation is under way to revise the Act on Basic Environment Policies.
Sewerage facilities will be expanded, advanced waste water treatment installations and sewage systems will be refurbished in rural farming areas with a lower sewerage rate. More facilities for treating industrial waste water with high chemical concentrations and livestock excretions will be inaugurated.
The government plans to install muddy water reduction facilities to cut the ever-worsening non-point source pollution and carry out projects to restore the ecosystem of low-lying urban areas.
Q: Will you introduce environment projects the ME is undertaking or plans to undertake in cooperation with the international community?
A: President Lee Myung-bak has made public pledges for Korea to contribute to ensuring global green growth as one member of the international community on several occasions. He announced a plan to contribute $200 million over five years in order to help East Asian countries adjust to climate change during the G-8 Summit held in Doyako, Japan, in July 2008. The Korean government put a support program in place after it was designated late last year.
The ME has been actively engaged in UN environment activities, as we hosted the 10th meeting of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands together with the Gyeongsangnam-do provincial government last year. The ministry and UNESCAP have been executing a project to raise environment-related officials' capabilities, a policy forum and a pilot project since 2005 in accordance with the Seoul Initiative on Environmentally Sustainable Economic Growth (Green Growth) in the Asia-Pacific region.
The ministry will organize a policy forum on green growth for environment-related officials and experts in the Asia-Pacific region in cooperation with UNESCAP that will coincide with the Global Environment Forum 2009 in August in Incheon. It will also host UNEP Tunza International Children's Youth Conference on the Environment in Daejeon in August. nw

Environment Minister Lee Maanee