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A review of climate change adaptation policies applied to landscape planning and design in Korea

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Abstract

This paper reviews how recent climate change policies in Korea have affected practices in landscape planning and design. By illuminating the gaps between government policies on climate change and actual practices in planning and design, the study aims to provide useful directions for future research and practices. The primary problems we found are as follows: (1) the government’s recent aggressive climate change policies have partly resulted in an adverse effect on the environment; (2) planning and design tools to implement climate change policies do not tend to consider local characteristics and different biophysical and sociocultural contexts; (3) climate change policies in Korea developed by different governmental departments are not coordinated well enough to effectively meet the policy goals; and (4) design tools or guidelines intended to aid the implementation of climate change policies at site level must be improved through the use of creative ideas and empirical tests. For future research, we recommend hunting for critical evidence as to why climate change policies are not implemented effectively in a particular local context, and determining how such failures can be overcome by applying adequate measures in planning and design.

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Notes

  1. “Green growth” first emerged as an alternative path that goes beyond the sustainable development rhetoric at the Fifth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Development (MCED) held in 2005 in Seoul (UNESCAP 2008). The green growth approach seeks to harmonize economic growth with environmental sustainability, while improving the eco-efficiency of economic growth. Green growth strategies aim to guide the process of mainstreaming climate resilience and low carbon development into key sectors of the economy (UNSDKP 2014). In 2008, partly in response to the Global Financial Crisis, Korea adopted Low Carbon, Green Growth as the country’s new development vision, which was followed by the release in 2009 of the National Strategy for Green Growth and 5-Year Plan for Green Growth (accompanied by the enactment of the Framework Act on Low Carbon Green Growth).

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Acknowledgement

This work was carried out with the support of "Cooperative Research Program for Agricultural Science & Technology Development (Project No. PJ00996001)" Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea.

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Correspondence to Joo-Hwan Suh.

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Kim, JO., Suh, JH. A review of climate change adaptation policies applied to landscape planning and design in Korea. Landscape Ecol Eng 12, 171–177 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11355-014-0261-z

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