Seoul to launch global institute on climate change in early 2010

(LEAD)
(ATTN: UPDATES with outcome of meeting between Lee and climate experts, additional
details)
By Byun Duk-kun

COPENHAGEN, Dec. 17 (Yonhap) -- South Korea will launch an international
institute early next year to spearhead global efforts to fight climate change and
also help supply mitigation plans and necessary technology to developing
countries, President Lee Myung-bak said Thursday at a U.N. climate conference.
The institute, tentatively named the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), will
help form a global partnership on climate change, according to Lee.
"The GGGI can act as a global think tank and bridge between advanced and
developing countries," the South Korean leader said in a keynote speech at the
conference in the Danish capital.
Lee arrived here earlier Thursday on a two-day visit. On Friday, he will attend a
climate summit involving the leaders of more than 100 countries, including the
United States, China and Russia.
The institute will be established in South Korea in the first half of next year,
according to the presidential office, Cheong Wa Dae.
South Korea plans to open at least five branch offices in advanced and developing
countries before the end of 2012, it said. The offices will be jointly funded by
the countries and other international regimes on climate change.
The institute will bring together the world's top scientists and climate experts
to come up with what Lee called "workable solutions" to environmental problems.
"The entire world agrees on the need to cut emissions, but the countries,
especially developing countries, are caught between the joint need and their own
urgent needs to develop their economies," Lee said in a later meeting here with a
group of scholars and experts who have agreed to take part in the new South
Korea-sponsored research group.
"Ensuring South Korea's green growth by gathering the wisdom and careful analysis
of various experts and offering solutions of green growth to countries that are
in need of our help is what I expect of the GGGI," he added.
Nicholas Stern, an economics professor and head of the Grantham Institute for
Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, noted South
Korea's pursuit of green growth represents a new, low-carbon development
paradigm.
Also at the meeting were Thomas Heller, a professor of international law at
Stanford University, Hal Harvey, CEO and president of ClimateWorks, and Andreas
Merkl, a ClimateWorks official who leads Project Catalyst, an initiative aimed at
providing analytical support for a successful post-Kyoto agreement on climate
change.
Heller, also the executive director of the Climate Policy Initiative, a group
funded by U.S. stock investor and billionaire George Soros, noted mitigation
efforts have been regarded as a "burden" by most countries, according to Lee's
presidential office.
"He said there now needs to be a change of perspective to take this as an
opportunity, as in the case of South Korea, and that that is the key to green
growth," Cheong Wa Dae said in a press release.
bdk@yna.co.kr
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