OECD의 환경유해보조금 개혁 논의동향과 국내 정책과제

Abstract

OECD countries transfer at least USD 400 billion to different economic sectors every year. In 2002, the total support for agriculture amounted to USD 318 billion, which represents about 1.2% of GDP in OECD countries. Financial transfers to fisheries appear very small in comparison at around USD 6 billion a year, but are equivalent to around 20% of the value of landings. Support for European road and rail transport amounted to about USD 40 billion in 1998. In the case of energy sector, subsidies to energy producers in OECD countries are amounted to USD 20-30 billion every year. Many OECD countries would like to reduce subsidies and favor particular sectors or industries in their economies, particularly those harming the environment as well as imposing economic costs. During the 1990s many OECD countries began to take steps to reduce and restructure their support policies in an effort to reduce overproduction and trade distortions, and to encourage more environmentally sound use of land, soil, and water. In 2001, support to farmers represented 31% of the value of their farm receipts, compared with 38% in the mid-80s. Total support to the coal industry in OECD countries fell throughout most of the 1990s from USD 11.4 billion in 1990 to USD 5.4 billion in 2000. Subsidies distort prices and resource allocation decisions, altering the pattern of production and consumption in an economy. As a result, subsidies can have negative effects on the environment that are unforeseen, undervalued or ignored in the policy process. For example, fuel tax rebates and low energy prices stimulate the use of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions and subsidies for road transport increase congestion and air pollution. Agricultural subsidies can lead to the overuse of pesticides and fertilizers, and in fisheries to the overexploitation of fish stocks. Decoupling subsidies from input use, production and consumption would yield economic, environmental and social benefits. Recently OECD has developed a checklist that will assist governments and analysts in identifying subsidies whose removal would benefit the environment. The checklist focuses on two interrelated issues: the effects of subsidy removal on the decisions of consumers and producers; and the linkages between those decisions and the environment. The checklist process is then used the assess the key policy filters that are in place to ameliorate the environment effects of particular subsidies, the conditionality of the subsidy and the extent of technology lock-in that might result from imposition of the subsidy. The checklist can be used as a first-order "quick scan" to determine if removal of a subsidy will result in environmental improvements and to provide a ranking of subsidies in terms of their environmental harmfulness. This will assist in identifying the subsidy programmes that should be subjected to further detailed analysis. The checklistwas applied to a number of economic sectors in order to assess its usefulness as a policy tool. Those sectors were agriculture, fisheries, transport, energy and water, etc. The key finding from the cross-sectoral analyses was that there is significant scope for reducing environmentally harmful subsidies in most of the sectors. In this research, we can propose the policy recommendations for the environmentally friendly reform of current subsidies in Korea as follows. Firstly, we should classify current subsidies in detail and estimate the exact amount of those subsidies. This procedure would help drive the efficient subsidy reform and could serve as a basic data in order to reduce the side effects of removing environmentally harmful subsidies. Secondly, we should make current subsidies be more environmentally friendly and at the same time there should be a minimum economic burden in the society as a whole. For these purposes, we can apply the above-mentioned OECD checklist for the Korean economy as a whole. Using the checklist, we have to assess the key policy filters more carefully and find out the conditionality of the subsidy and the extent of technology lock-in resulting from imposition of the subsidy. Thirdly, in order to analyze the effects of subsidy removal we should estimate the general or at least partial equilibrium models, taking the responses of other sectors into account. The checklist, by contrast, only enumerates economic characteristics of subsidies that may serve as predictors for the first order effects on those industries that are directly affected by the removal of a certain subsidy. The reasoning behind the checklist ignores wider macro-economic implications, such as the effects of subsidy removal on governments’ budgets and consumers’ incomes and their effects on the economy when recycled. Lastly, we should implement the environmentally motivated subsidies in order to improve the environmental quality and promote the introduction of environmentally sound industrial structure. As an example for this case, we should introduce the environmentally motivated subsidies in the energy sector in order to diffuse the renewable energy and reduce the emission of carbon dioxide.