MOE, MLTM, Gangwon-do, and Gangneung-si Committed to Cooperate in Building Low Carbon Green City

□ The Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Land, Transport, and Maritime Affairs, Gangwon-do, and Gangneung-si (hereinafter ‘Cooperating Organization’) concluded a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) to build a low-carbon green city in Gangwon-do on July 22, 2009.

○ The MOU was promoted after president Myung-bak Lee proposed to build a green city when he visited Gangwon-do on February 10 and the Gyeongpo region in Gangwon-do was chosen for the project on July 15.

□ The Minister of Environment, Maanee Lee, said GHG reduction in urban transportation and housing sector was urgently needed. In addition, he made sure that the government and Gangwon-do’s joint project for the Gangwon-do green city would build a worldwide model city for green growth, based on the test bed of government’s environmentally-friendly items and WIBRO, and maximized participation of private enterprises in energy, housing, and IT.

※    Low-carbon Green City: A model city which pursues green growth and win-win situation for economy and environment by reorganizing urban structure into low carbon social system. Foreign exemplary cases are BedZED in UK, Freiburg in Germany, Amersfoort in the Netherlands, and Hammarby in Sweden.

□ The Gyeongpo region in Gangneung-si not only contains valuable culture and tourism resources including Gyeongpodae, Jeongdongjin, and Ojukheon but also has affluent potentials with regard to new & renewable energy such as sunlight, solar heat and wind power, so that carb on reduction factors including green transport and low carbon house can be applied.

○ The proposal of the Gyeongpo region showed concrete plans on green transport, energy efficient housing and resource recirculation. With GHG reduction goals, the Gyeongpo region was chosen as a model city on July 15.

□ The MOU aims at creating confidence among the cooperating organizations in promoting the joint low-carbon green city project. Based on the MOU, the cooperating organizations designated the Gyeongpo region as a model city for the project and decided to make joint efforts to promote the project in a successful way.

□ The MOE has closely cooperated with Gangwon-do for low carbon green city project by creating a model of green city, jointly conducting a research for basic plan(May 21 ~ December 17, 2009), and consulting with related agencies on administrative and financial support plan.

※ Related agencies: Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Land, Transport, and Maritime Affairs, Ministry of Strategy and Finance, Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Ministry of Public Administration and Security, Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Ministry of National Defense, Korea Communications Commission, Korea Forest Service, and National Emergency Management Agency

□ The cooperating organizations will work out comprehensive plans for the region, consists of 1) green transport, 2)low carbon energy and housing, 3)green space and ecosystem, 4) circulation of water and resource.

○ In addition, they will conduct the old town improvement within each agency’s budget in this year, and begin creating environmentally-friendly circumstances for undeveloped area next year.

□ An official of the MOE said the low carbon green city of ROK could become a unique model city, surpassing the western green cities if regional features such as ecology, culture, tourism resources and cutting-edge IT were combined for the realization of creative ideas for green city.

○ He also said the cooperating organizations would do every effort to shorten the project period by 2012, so that the current government could get tangible achievement and expand the project into 16 cities and districts after 2012 to enable the ROK to become an exemplary nation of the low-carbon green city.

Jeong-gi Hong, Geon-il Shin (+82-2-2110-6668) /Policy Coordination Division, Environmental Policy Department