Comparative study on green growth and green economy of Korea, China and Japan

Abstract

Environmental crisis, climate change, and diminishing natural resources have become a global issue in all parts of the world. Such phenomena call for unconventional approaches that emphasize environmentally sustainable economic progress to foster low-carbon growth. This need have fostered global attention on the concept of green growth or green economy as international organizations and societies foresee the concept as the alternative growth engine and the new economic paradigm for the upcoming era. Korean government was the first nation to adopt the concept of green growth for its future economic growth. In July 2009, Korean government announced its vision of Low-Carbon Green Growth with a list of comprehensive strategies and implementation plans to integrate national green growth policies. Korea’s green growth strategy envisions the policy objectives to ensure that Korea becomes the world’s seventh-largest green economic power by 2020 and the fifth largest by 2050. China introduced its 12th Five-Year Plan (FYP) in March 2011 focusing on creating social wealth in China that calls for more balance, coordination and substantiality. Japan’s greening of the economy started since the oil shocks of the 1970s as the Japanese government incorporated energy saving policies and alternative energy products. In fact, Japan is one of the leading nations in green economy and green technologies. In the aftermath of recent disaster, the Japanese government is in search of a new growth engine through green growth with the aim to create new demand and employment in green innovations for a low carbon society. This research consists of three country comparison of definitions of green growth, national strategies on green growth, green growth policy analysis, current status and prospects, international cooperation in green growth.