An Environmental Governance Approach Surrounding Unwanted Facilities-focusing on the Northern District Office(Buk-Gu) citizen jury case in connection with food recycling facility -

Abstract

The location conflict caused by unwanted facilities is problematic in that it decreases the originally intended benefit of the facilities by the installation's delay stemming from strong opposition, and it increases unnecessary social cost paid to solve the existing conflict. This paper aims to study the possibility of environmental governance as a new device for solving location conflict, by analyzing the citizen jury case introduced to resolve the food recycling site-related conflict between local government[the Northern District Office(Buk-Gu)] and residents in the Northern District Office(Buk-Gu) in the Ulsan Metropolitan City of South Korea. To this end, this article is divided into five major chapters. The first chapter is the introduction of this article. The second chapter briefly considers the concept of an environmental conflict and an environmental governance even though it is very difficult to define what a conflict is and what an environment is. And then, this essay covers the principles of an environmental governance. The third chapter is on an environmental grievance. The fourth chapter examines the citizen jury case introduced to resolve the food recycling site-related conflicts between local government and residents in Northern District Office(Buk-Gu). The fifth chapter is the conclusion of this essay. The implication and evaluation of citizen jury case surrounding food recycling site-related conflicts are as follows. First, it is argued that the progressive political climate of Ulsan Metropolitan City, known as a main industrial center in South Korea, which a civil society has been well developed owing to a strong labor movement tradition and lots of well organized NGOs, pushed the Head of Northern District Office(Buk-Gu) who was from Democratic Labor Party to accept a citizen participation mechanism as a means of consensus building. Second, the residents' consciousness of participation and reliable regional NGOs through their continual activities played a pivotal role in Northern District Office(Buk-Gu) case. Especially, the citizen jury panel who was nominated by NGOs, not by stratified random sampling method, arbitrated between residents and local government[Northern District Office(Buk-Gu)]. Third, the jury panel system, output of this strong network of civil society must have contributed to the consensus on the matter between the local government and local residents. Fourth, in addition to political and social environmental factors, we cannot emphasize the importance of the strong will of the Head of Northern District Office(Buk-Gu) too much. The acceptance of the idea by local residents was positively influenced by the strong leadership of the Head of Northern District Office(Buk-Gu). Fifth, citizen jury case in Northern District Office(Buk-Gu), Ulsan Metropolitan City, has been applied to the last stage of the site-related environmental conflict, rather than used as a means of the policy consideration at the earlier stage.