Sustainability: Korea

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Sustainable development prioritized at Asia Future Forum

“The operating principle for an East Asian community needs to be sustainable development.”

The 2011 Asia Future Forum (AFF) wrapped up Wednesday with this proposal of five tasks for the future.

KT was selected as the world’s most sustainable communications company by Dow Jones.

Korea Productivity Center announced that KT was selected as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) supersector leader in communications, compiled jointly by global financial information provider Dow Jones Indexes, and Swiss-based sustainability evaluation agency SAM.

Korea is to play host to the world’s biggest gathering to combat desertification for the first time in Asia in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province.

Slated for Oct. 10-21, prominent desertification experts and government officials from 194 member nations of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification will visit the southern city of South Korea to promote reforestation projects in Asia, Africa and other regions facing the problem.

Image via Wikipedia

UN chief Ban Ki-moon today called on his native South Korea to take the lead in promoting sustainable development and finding solutions to global hunger, climate change and other pending challenges.

"The Republic of Korea should be in the forefront of tackling global issues and achieving sustainable development," the secretary-general told a forum hosted by an influential South Korean business lobby group, referring to South Korea by its official name.
Ban arrived in South Korea on Tuesday for a six-day official visit, his first since he was elected to a second five-year term as UN leader in June. He has said that sustainable development, which aims to reduce global poverty while preserving the environment, would be the top priority during his second term that begins January 1 next year.

Clarkson University Associate Professor of Political Science Christopher C. Robinson has been named a Fulbright Scholar to the Political Science Department at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea, for the fall semester.

He will have research and teaching duties, offering courses in human rights and environmental political theory.

Robinson will use the environmental movement in Korea as a case study for a book he is writing. The Politics of Sustainability: Ecological Economics and Radical Democracy addresses the problem of how to achieve a sustainable political economy through nonviolent, democratic organization and action.

Two years after it succeeded the G7 as the world’s primary venue for economic cooperation the G20 is running into a reality that limited its predecessor and is only more constraining since China, India, Brazil and 10 more interests took seats at the big table: Different national conditions demand different policies.

Here’s another stark fact: When you’re biggest economy on the planet you can do pretty much as you please, and describe it in whatever terms you choose. Thus the US Federal Reserve embarks on a second round of quantitative easing, despite the damage it may do to the US dollar and the implications for other countries that already do or would like to export their way to economic health.

Turning to another front with important implications for investors, in the wake of a resounding defeat in Nov. 2 midterm elections Congressional Democrats and President Obama are more likely to pass and sign a bill that merely extends preferential tax rates on dividends and capital gains rather than enact a permanent policy. Events of the last 24 months have also re-shaped the debate on this issue.