Branding K-REDD+ and its implications for South Korea's middle power diplomacy

ABSTRACT

The need for new and stronger middle power diplomacy is growing as global challenges are increasingly governed by various horizontal inter- and trans-national networks. Climate change is one of the most complex and urgent global challenges that require collective action, and it is an issue for which more middle power leadership is greatly needed. The Republic of Korea (ROK) has been successful in becoming a primary actor in green growth governance, and its success has been attributed to its strategic middlepowermanship, integrating both material and ideational contents. Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) in tropical developing countries has been lauded as an immediate and effective solution to mitigate climate change. ROK's unique history of forest transition before rapid economic growth highlights the fact that improving forest management is possible even with imperfect governance, rapid population growth, and low economic development. The lessons learned from ROK's forest transition can be developed as a distinct contribution to the international effort to address forest-related impacts on climate change, and offer an important opportunity for ROK to play a constructive role and achieve enhanced stature within the international community.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate mitigation
• middle power
• South Korea
• REDD+
• forest transition
• reforestation

Acknowledgments

The writing of this paper has been supported by a research grant from the National Institute of Forest Science (NIoFS), Republic of Korea. We thank all those who participated in our interviews, focus group discussions and workshops.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no potential conflict of interest.

Notes

1. Web of Science shows 114 academic articles in the fields of social science/humanities with ‘middle power’ in their topic. The term has been in use at least since 1963 (e.g. Soward's, 1963 paper on Canada). Among the papers published during the last three years (since 2014, as of April 2017), about a quarter addressed the status of ROK as a middle power and its middlepowermanship (14 out of 58).

2. Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) is an effort to offer financial incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands while recognizing the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (UN-REDD programme, 2015).

3. The average ODA/GNI ratio is 0.32% among the countries that belong to the OECD Development Assistance Committee as of 2016. UN has the long-standing goal of achieving 0.7% among developed countries since 1970 (OECD, 2017).

4. GCF is an international fund organized under UNFCCC to assist developing countries in climate change adaptation and mitigation practices (Green Climate Fund, 2017). The fund currently totals at USD 10.3 billion pledged, with the goal of raising USD 100 billion/year by 2020.

5. Total budget for the Korea–Indonesia Joint Project for Adaptation and Mitigation of Climate Change in Forestry, which include a small-scale afforestation and reforestation Clean Development Mechanism (A/R CDM) activity in East Lombok; and a REDD+ pilot project in Central Lombok.

Additional information

Funding

National Institute of Forest Science (NIoFS), Republic of Korea

Notes on contributors

Yeon-Su Kim

Yeon-Su Kim is a professor of ecological economics at School of Forestry, Northern Arizona University, USA. She has worked on several international research projects for evaluating ecosystem services from tropical forests. Her research interests include global governance of forest ecosystem services.

Jae soo Bae

Jae soo Bae is a senior scientist at the National Institute of Forest Science, Republic of Korea. He earned his PhD degree from the Department of Forest Resources at Seoul National University of ROK. His research focuses on forest governance and REDD+ in South-East Asia.

Larry A. Fisher

Larry A. Fisher is a research professor at School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, USA. His research interests focus on environmental conflict and mediation, large landscape conservation, climate change adaptation, public lands policy, and international conservation and sustainable development, working primarily in the South Asia.

Jione Jung

Jione Jung is a research fellow at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy. The main area of her research is ROK's ODA policy focused on climate change and the environment. She has been advising the ROK government on the issues related to climate finance.