Lawmaker Yoon pushes bill to curb unplanned development with 'environmental capacity' concept

Rep. Yoon Jun-byeong of the Democratic Party of Korea, who represents Jeongeup and Gochang-gun in North Jeolla Province and sits on the National Assembly's Agriculture, Food, Rural Affairs, Oceans and Fisheries Committee, said Wednesday he had introduced a bill to prevent unplanned development by codifying the concept of "environmental capacity" and strengthening development requirements in ecologically protected areas.

Under current law, environmental impact assessments are required before any plan or project that could affect the environment is drawn up or carried out, with the aim of predicting and evaluating potential harm and establishing conservation measures.

Critics have long argued, however, that such assessments measure only the absolute volume of pollution or environmental damage a project would generate, without adequately accounting for a region's natural "self-purification capacity" — its ability to cleanse and restore itself — undermining environmentally sound and sustainable development.

The bill would define "environmental capacity" as the maximum self-purification and restoration ability an area's environment can sustain to maintain a consistent quality level, and would incorporate that concept into the basic principles governing environmental impact assessments and the list of items they must cover.

The legislation would also require that development projects in Grade 1 ecological and natural zones — areas deemed to have the highest conservation value — undergo a small-scale environmental impact assessment whenever the project footprint reaches 5,000 square meters or more. The measure is expected to block so-called "piecemeal development," in which projects are artificially subdivided to avoid review thresholds and damage high-quality ecosystems.

"Nature's capacity to purify itself is weakening, so we must go beyond simply capping total pollutant emissions and instead establish environmental capacity limits that allow development and conservation to coexist," Yoon said. He added that he hoped the bill would make the environmental impact assessment system "a genuine solution for preventing reckless unplanned development and achieving region-specific environmental management."