Originally published here.
Today, methods of economic growth that depend on fossil energy such as petroleum, coal, and natural gas (NG) have led to climate change unprecedented in human society due not only to advanced nations, whose economies have gone beyond the mature stage, but also to the dramatic economic OPEN ACCESS Sustainability 2015, 7 8749 development in recent years of developing countries such as China and India, which consume considerable energy. Considering the clear warnings sent by the meteorological system and the fact that humans are the major cause of climate change, the Earth currently faces a crisis. To avoid the worst outcome of climate change, the breadth of the world average temperature rise must be suppressed within 2 °C.
Because global warming has led to serious, widespread, and unavoidable results, the later sustainable production and consumption are begun, the social costs will increase even further. The major reason for climate change is carbon dioxide (CO2), whose emission humans have caused. Methods of economic growth that depend on fossil energy not only emit CO2 but also have led to the gradual depletion of natural resources and their consequential unstable supply to the international market, thus periodically serving as a factor for economic instability. Current economic growth methods exploit fossil fuel, which is a limited resource, and the atmosphere’s ability to store carbon and continuously increase human society’s global demand for such resource. As a result, they propel even more production and consumption, thus destroying the equilibrium of the ecosystem.
Floods, droughts, windstorms, and sea level rise, which can be triggered by climate change, will lead to damages beyond levels historically experienced by the human race so far, and, in fact, it is still unclear as to just how destructive the results will be. In the case of South Korea, according to predictions by the National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER), by 2050, the country’s temperature, annual precipitation, and sea level are expected to increase by 3.2 °C, 15.6%, and 27 cm, respectively. While the Earth’s average temperature has risen by 0.89 °C over the past 112 years, the temperature rise for South Korea during the same period has been 1.7 °C, twice as high. If the nation continues to emit greenhouse gases (GHG) at current rates without reduction, the figure is expected to increase by 5.9 °C, again twice as high, and sea level rise likewise surpasses the world average.
In particular, because of a change into a subtropical climate, the vulnerability of Northeast Asia including the Korean Peninsula to the effects of climate change including the destruction of social infrastructures due to floods, deaths due to heat waves, and shortages of water and food due to droughts is expected to be higher than the world average. Indeed, climate change has affected the economy of the Korean Peninsula considerably as well [1]. Amidst such a situation, South Korea’s energy-intensive economic growth and environmental pollution have accelerated. The nation’s energy use and GHG emission has continued to increase along with economic growth since the implementation of the first 5-Year Economic Development Plan in 1962, when full-fledged industrialization began. South Korea’s economy has grown rapidly, even giving rise to the neologism “Miracle on the Han River”.
However, because it has focused only on short-term economic gain, the country is now witnessing in all spheres of society the side effects and limitations of intensifying problems including environmental pollution, inequality, economic gap, and corruption. At this moment, the decoupling of South Korea’s economic growth and GHG emission seems extremely difficult. Indeed, from 2007 to 2015, the increase rate for GHG emission surpassed that of the gross domestic product (GDP). Despite its short history of industrialization, the nation ranks 7th worldwide (19th cumulatively) in GHG emission and 1st worldwide in the GHG emission increase rate, respectively. Moreover, it imports 97% of its necessary energy from other countries. In fact, South Korea’s total energy import far surpasses its export of automobiles, steel, and ships combined. Although the country now ranks 13th worldwide in economic size and 8th worldwide in trade volume, respectively, it also ranks 4th globally in energy import. With energy efficiency according to energy Sustainability 2015, 7 8750 intensity of GDP half that of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and one-third that of Japan, respectively, South Korea must remedy such a situation for many reasons.
However, measures have not been properly taken due to reasons including the price competitiveness of the domestic industries and the management of commodity prices. This is in contrast to advanced countries such as Germany and Denmark, which have pursued the desynchronization of economic growth, environment, and energy consumption as a national strategy and reaped considerable fruits [2]. According to Statistics Korea (KOSTAT) and OECD, South Korea’s unemployment rate has increased by 1.1% points from 2.4% in 1990 to 3.5% in 2014. In February 2015, South Korea’s unemployment rate of 4.6% and youth unemployment rate of 11.1% were at their highest since the Asian financial crisis of 1997. The actual unemployment rate including abdicant employment is 12.5%.
The gap of the youth unemployment rate compared to the entire unemployment rate has continued to expand since 2012 and reached 6.5% points in February 2015, surpassing the 5.6% points at the end of 1998, the highest figure ever. South Korea has thus witnessed the intensification jobless growth, whereas economic growth continues but the capacity to create jobs increasingly drops [3,4]. On the other hand, due to the global economic crisis during the latter half of 2008, which fundamentally shook up the framework of the capitalist market economy, a trend of low economic growth and low interest rates has become fixed, thus further aggravating the world market. Recent years have witnessed a phenomenon where jobs do not increase even with investment or economic growth.
Due to “growthless jobs” and “jobless growth,” where the economic growth and employment do not go hand in hand, faith in the traditional employment policy that the promotion of investment and growth creates jobs has been shattered. In addition, youth unemployment rates have increased around the world. As a result, green job policy has become as important as never before because it links the problems of environmental crisis including climate change, which has emerged as a global issue in the 21st Century, economic growth, and employment. In the past, environmental protection was seen as a factor that raised costs and interfered with growth. However, it has now been evaluated as having the potential to promote technological innovation, to create jobs, and to enhance both the economy and welfare in the green economy of the future. In such a context, international discussions on green jobs have been active.
The governments of various countries have endeavored to devise measures regarding green jobs. In particular, because the economic crisis of 2008 led to a rise in unemployment, poverty, and inequality, more people voiced concerns arguing that returning back to the employment situation before the economic crisis is not enough for economic recovery, environmental conservation, and decent employment for everyone and that it is increasingly more vital to find alternative ways of promoting employment. However, because no country has had enough time since the implementation of its green job policy to make objective evaluations, as of 2015, the success or failure of green job policy remains an unfinished process [5–8]. However, one thing is clear: to realize increased employment and environmental conservation through the creation of green jobs, an ideological foundation for sustainable development and active, consistent policy signals based on it are necessary. Each country has implemented green job policy based on a disparate ideological foundation in accordance with its social, political, and economic situation. The green job policy of advanced nations closely links the two challenges of actively responding to environmental problems such as climate change and of creating quality jobs from the perspective of sustainable development and starts from the recognition that the problems of Sustainability 2015, 7 8751 environmental conservation, economic growth, and employment creation cannot be addressed separately. In contrast, the green job policy of developing countries tends mainly to be biased in favor of economic growth [9]. In such a context, South Korea’s green job policy is an interesting research topic.
Following the launching of the Lee Myung-bak administration in February 2008, the nation saw the implementation of green job policy for the first time. At the time, the Lee Myung-bak administration pursued green job policy, presenting “low-carbon green growth” as the national vision. At this moment, however, green job policy has lost its momentum and come to a standstill, not even mentioned in policy documents. Since the launching in February 2013 of the Park Geun-hye administration, which has espoused the “creative economy” as the new national vision, green job policy has remained in a stalemate without being a practical alternative to sustainable development, and an economic growth orientation through market self-regulation has continued to be in effect.
As a result, contrary to the past praise abroad for South Korea’s green growth policy [10,11], the nation’s energy and environmental consumption has in fact continued to increase, and the country has grown increasingly distant from sustainable development. Starting from such problematics, the present study will construct a theoretical framework centering on sustainable development and analyze the process and contents of South Korea’s green job policy. First, it will analyze the process through which this green job policy was introduced, grew, came to a halt, and reached the current rupture.
The present study will then analyze the contents of the nation’s green job policy in terms of the theoretical foundation, governance, definitions, and scale. Following Section 1, the introduction, Section 2 will construct a theoretical framework for analysis, with a focus on sustainable development. Section 3 will analyze the moments at which the green job policy was introduced, grew, became stagnant, and stopped. Section 4 will analyze the contents of the green job policy in terms of the ideological foundation, governance, definitions, and scale. Section 5 will present the conclusion and policy implications.
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