Emerging as today's main topics are environmental issues, and these days the conception of LOHAS (Lifestyles Of Health And Sustainability) is prevailing over the idea of personal well-being.

Especially you can't overemphasize the importance of water among the various environmental issues: accordingly, each country all over the world has been accelerating its every effort to secure safe and clean water.

Water resource of Korea is 1,283mm of annual precipitation (rainfall) that is around 1.3 times over the world average 973mm. However, because of the high population density within the limited territory, water resource of annual precipitation per person is 2,705㎥ which is only around 12% of world average 22,096㎥.

The usable water quantity is 26% only except for the loss of evaporation among the total natural resources of annual precipitation. Even though the usable quantity of subsurface water is supposed to be around 13.3 billion ㎥per year, the actual quantity used in 1999 was about 4 billion only.

Korean government had not employed a comprehensive policy for water management until 1999. At that time, the government (Ministry of Environment) appraised the necessity of its being and so activated to set up the fundamental comprehensive countermeasures for water management by collecting systematic basic data, analysis and through scientific modeling for gauging water quality, which was indeed a different systematic policy compared with the previous one.

However, Korean government encountered with a big dilemma which was the trouble with upstream residents of Han River. The basin residents living in the vicinity of Paldang Reservoir and the local governments reacted greatly against the government policy and developed into group demonstrations. They worried if reinforcing the rules and regulations would be harmful in conducting their property right and would hamper their social and economic growth in the zones.

Accordingly, the government set up 'The Council for Paldang Water Quality Policy' in November, 2003, for discussing and formulating rules and regulations for effective preservation of water quality in Paldang Reservoir, and improvement of life quality of the basin residents, in cooperation with Ministry of Environment, the local governments of Kyungki Province and 7 cities and towns and the residents in the vicinity of Paldang Reservoir.

The launching of 'The Council for Paldang Water Quality Policy (hereinafter called as 'The Council')' was a big change after having taken the lessons learned from the trials and errors that the central government experienced in formulating the regulations on its own and thus creating social issues.

Recently 'The Council' has been being suffered from the internal troubles even though it is to be a prototype afterward for 4 big rivers in Korea by having its new frame for the policy in managing water quality.

It is no easy for 'The Council' to draw an agreeable conclusion as it is composed of Ministry of Environment (the central government), the local governments, citizen associations and the basin residents, and so each of them voices differently. Furthermore, an agenda related with the regulations that the residents want to ease even after being brought up from 'The Council' happens to be being held without any progress, in case Ministry of Construction & Transportation, Ministry of Commerce Industry & Energy, and The Presidential Committee on Balanced National Development as well as Ministry of Environment prevent its going.

The local governments and the residents agreed to collaborate for the policy in enhancing water quality in Han River on condition of revising and easing the rules and regulations that are illogical and repeated. However, they are in a position to say that their participation in 'The Council' is meaningless as long as there is no improvement in the regulations of the other ministries as well as Ministry of Environment. Namely, when the revision to reinforce the provisions related with the zones is made, there is quite a good possibility that 'The Council' is to be left as 'a shell without substance'.

It is presumed that there is to be lots difficulties for a while in the organization of 'The Council', as much hard as the troubles experienced in between the former central government and the local government and the residents. It is caused by their different expectations one another from the policy; i.e., the central government (Ministry of Environment) who likes to take the improvement of water quality as its first priority while the local governments and the residents anticipate some development in their districts through easing the regulations.

However, the ultimate goal everybody wants to achieve is the same that is preserving comfortable and beautiful nature and clean and safe water. Therefore, the central and local governments and the residents should not play separately but should play all together for one goal with the continuous discussions and concentrating their all efforts for reaching to agreeable solutions.

Now, it is time that we all should join our hands and hearts for the 'Miracle of Han River' once again for completing the advanced system in managing water quality.

by Lee Jung Sung THE ECOJOURNAL

※위 글은 경희대학교 영자신문 3월호에도 실릴 예정입니다.