President Lee Myung-bak on Wednesday beefed up efforts to advance Korea’s green growth drive by pledging larger development aid for it and enlisting more support for its bid to host the headquarters of a UN climate fund.
Speaking at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, Lee reiterated that green growth was a core strategy to weather global challenges.
“We need green growth to realize sustainable development while responding to global challenges such as the economic crisis, the widening gap between rich and poor and climate change,” he said during his keynote speech.
“Green growth regards responding to climate change and resolving energy and environmental problems as its new growth dynamo, and is an ‘inclusive action strategy’ to realize three objectives of sustainable development: economic development, social integration and environmental preservation.”
Introducing Korea’s push for a global network of green growth partnerships, Lee said Seoul would spend more than $5 billion in official development assistance by 2020 to help developing countries pursue eco-friendly growth.
The conference, dubbed the Rio+20 Summit, was attended by about 50,000 people from across the globe including dozens of heads of state and high-level government officials from more than 180 countries.
Lee flew to Brazil earlier Wednesday to join the conference after attending the Group of 20 summit in Mexico.
Since August 2008, Lee has pushed for the new initiative to reduce Asia’s fourth-largest economy’s reliance on fossil fuels and develop renewable energies, green technologies and environmental industries into a new growth driver.
On the sidelines of the UN conference, Lee attended an event converting the Seoul-based Global Green Growth Institute into an international organization. The think tank was established in June 2010 by the Korean government to map out green growth strategies and spread its campaign overseas.
Representatives from Korea and 14 other countries signed a treaty that elevated the status of the institute. Lee and leaders from seven countries including Australia and Denmark attended the event.
“The GGGI seeks to become an action-oriented organization to tackle climate change and shortages of energy, water and food, and other challenges. Let’s make our efforts to join forces in this initiative remain in our history as a big step forward,” Lee said during his welcoming remarks.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised Lee for spearheading the green growth initiative.
“I am proud of him as a Korean UN chief. I pledge to whole-heartedly support the GGGI,” he said in his congratulatory speech.
At the ministerial-level climate change meeting to be held in Seoul in October, the GGGI is to begin its official operation as an international body by holding an inaugural general conference and board meeting.
Lee also used his attendance at the UN conference to garner wider support for Korea’s bid to host the headquarters of the Green Climate Fund.
The fund is aimed at helping developing countries reduce greenhouse gases and adapt to climate change with funds from advanced nations. Beginning next year, the GCF seeks to raise $100 billion annually by 2020.
Incheon has been competing with six foreign cities in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Mexico and Namibia to host the GCF headquarters. The selection of the winner is to be finalized at the 18th Conference of the Parties, a UN climate change conference to be held in Qatar in November.
Lee is on a tour of four Latin American nations that include Chile and Colombia. He will return to Seoul next Wednesday.
