물환경 거버넌스를 위한 의사결정체제 구축

Abstract

Since the 1990s, Korea has faced widespread conflicts and disputes over its water environment as rapid economic growth, urbanization and industrialization triggered water shortages and aggravated water contamination in many regions. Given the increasing plurality of social functions, resolving such conflicts and disputes by means of sole decision-making and execution of the central government has seen limited results. To overcome such constraints, discussions on introducing governance of water environment conservation involving the central government, local governments, private enterprises, the civil society and other stakeholders in the process of decision-making and collaboration are now under way. In formulating the water policy in Korea, a vast amount of research has been continually conducted to ascertain viable approaches to mediate and resolve conflicting interests. However, these efforts have been geared more toward analyzing existing cases of conflicts rather than developing and applying specific, effective tools that would facilitate mediation among stakeholders. Also, governance was utilized to mediate conflicts and disputes only after they had occurred and taken their toll rather than as a preventive approach. Therefore, improving the decision-making process through the pursuit of involvement and consensus of stakeholders, the key to effective water governance, and developing a process of enabling broad concurrence is required in order to reduce conflicts and disputes arising in the process of implementing various water policies and plans. Case studies have revealed that effective water resources management is challenged by the fact that water planning is reviewed and established exclusively by expert groups in government agencies and that there is no assurance that the heads of such agencies in charge will collaborate with other related agencies and local actors in the planning or policy-making stage. It has also been shown that, during the implementation stage, engagement of local residents is largely restricted to public hearings or group inspections, giving rise to further conflicts and disputes. Conflicts and disputes are primarily caused by the disparity between the developmental focus of executing parties and the environmental focus of end-users, and based on the differences in determining the amount of damage compensation. The variance in the value systems arises from skepticism about the legitimacy of policies and plans. Securing legitimacy requires a great deal of effort, and when such efforts are lacking, the situation exacerbates, yielding complex and uncertain search for the veracity and implementation of legally and institutionally warranted procedures become problematic. At the root of these issues are administrative convenience favored by bureaucrats as well as a lack of transparency and commitment to involve stakeholders in the decision-making process. In particular, the harder it is to sustain the efficacy or economic feasibility of a policy, the more important it is secure procedural rationality. Recently, various efforts have been made to address such problems, one of which relates to governance. Most notably, governance of water environment conservation has drawn much attention as a direction to move beyond central government-oriented governance and top-down decisions towards a more multi-stakeholder approach to encourage interaction and cooperation in achieving a common goal. To uncover a fundamental solution to water environmental problems, good governance requires specific methodologies to engage the participation and collaboration of all interested stakeholders to build a durable consensus. Moreover, concentrating on governance in the broad connotation of the term is required to improve social institutions and build consensus rather than governance in a more narrow implication that seeks joint resolution to pending irrigation, flood control or other environmental issues. Factors that impact collaboration and successful operation of water governance are classified into those related to stakeholder participation ？ the degree of stakeholder engagement, characteristics of and relations among individual stakeholders, and the unique characteristics of individual water environment projects - and those related to consensus building - how information and strategies are shared, how roles and responsibilities are assigned among stakeholders, how decisions are made, how the interests of stakeholders are represented, and how internal protocol is enforced to control and manage interactions among various actors. This paper proposes a consensus-building support system to engage different stakeholders, transparently disseminate information, ensure objective decision-making, and reflect the views of stakeholders as a methodology or tool for resolving conflicts that may arise in the process of implementing water policies and plans. The system suggests ways to resolve issues by engaging all interested actors and not just a few influential groups of stakeholders imposing their solutions upon local users. The system provides an environment where stakeholders can find solutions to conflicts through their own efforts, mediating competing interests through negotiations and conciliation to reach a consensus. To verify the applicability of the proposed consensus-building support system, simulated role-playing albeit restricted was conducted on the case of the Hantangang River Dam construction. The simulation validated that open discussions and negotiations with the local community by the government increased the efficacy of negotiations.