동북아 지속가능발전지표 개발 및 비교연구

Abstract

The concept of "Sustainable Development(SD)", first introduced in "Our Common Future," of the Brundtland Report, in 1987, refers to environment-friendly development that does not hurt the development potential of future generation, while satisfying the needs of development in the current generation. Ever since the concept of "Sustainable Development" was introduced, there have been various trials for making measurable the level of sustainable development, including indicators and index, etc., which correspond to the concept of sustainable development in each international organization and nation. And yet, there is no internationally standardized system that compared and evaluated sustainable development between nations and regions. The reason why this measuring work on sustainable development should proceed is that it provides not only important information on human activity, but also information on national environmental state in the decision-making of authorities, concerning the environment and economics. Thus, this study aims to develop sustainable development indicators (SDIs) suitable for North-east Asian countries, and to evaluate the degree of regional sustainable development through a comparative study on SDIs by each country. In this study, we selected the indicators related with sustainable development of Korea, Japan and China, by referring to the indicators of sustainable development of the UN, OECD, EU, U.S., U.K. and Korea that have recently been issued. In particular, we proceeded with correction, addition and deletion in order to constitute indicator systems suitable for the actual circumstances of North-east Asian countries based on the indicators of the UN and Korea announced in 2002. The data which had been collected this way indicated as SOC(social sectors), ENV(environmental sectors), ECO(economic sectors), and INST(institutional sectors) by sector for convenient use according to their division systems of SDIs announced by UNCSD(2001). Analysis of datum about each indicator shows that Korea, Japan and China became affluent in general due to rapid economic growth, but the wealth was not equally distributed as shown on the Gini Index of social sectors. As those countries became economically affluent, the nutrition status has improved, and life expectancy(average life span) in birth has become much longer thanks to the development of medical technology. Environmental indicators should broadly reflect natural resources and environmental problems, and consider the sustainability of environmental components. As for Korea and Japan, which have rapidly achieved economic growth since the 1950s, and also, as for China, which has recently lead global economic growth, all the countries show the increase of air pollutants from CO2 emissions, SOx emissions, etc. CO2 produced by human activities according to industrialization is a chief factor in the emission of Greenhouse gases. In addition, SOx which destroys environments in urban areas and threatens national health, etc, can also have negative effects on sustainable development. Evaluating an economic progress in terms of sustainable development should be reviewed not only with regard to current goods and services, but also to long-term trends. In addition, the receptive capacity of an economic system should be measured by considering the desires of future generations, in order to control the needs and desires of current generations. GDP per capita reveals an increasing trend. The GDP of Korea and Japan decreased and then began to creep up again. Also, the rise of GDP in China is marked. GDP is a very basic growth indicator reflecting the change in total production of goods and services by measuring thelevel and scale of total production. In institutional sectors, the number of Internet users, which is an important indicator of informatization is increasing in all the three countries, and in particular, the rate in Korea records an explosive increase. The number of Internet users plays a positive role in sustainable development as an indirectly measurable indicator of the informatization of the country. The potential usefulness of SDIs is rising, and the development of SDIs is being gradually accelerated, showing effective results. However, many constraints are also being discovered. First, the greatest difficulty is that the point access is different from the method of study, which explores a specific field in depth, since the point access is a long-term concept, inclusive of both current generations and future generations, and the notion of sustainable development itself includes very extensive areas. Second, since SDIs developed by each country are not systematically integrated and have little coherence in their basic data, it is difficult to compare the level among countries, and accordingly, there follows a restriction for policy decision-makers to interpret those indicators. For these SDIs, we would like to suggest political advice on their developmental direction as follows: First, there is an overall necessity to review strategies and visions on sustainable development by each country. Second, the revision and development of basic statistics by country are required. Third, it is necessary to review the preparation system of SDIs by country. Fourth, the integration of SDIs towards indices is required as a long-term project.