Community Advances
Politics of Sustainability in High-level Nuclear Waste Management
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Young Hee Lee
Nuclear waste management system is a typical case showing the politics of sustainability. Politics of sustainability includes the struggle and negotiations among various social actors around what is the best way to secure sustainable management of nuclear waste. Who to participate in the policy making process regarding such risk management is the key issue. This paper analyzes the evolution of high-level nuclear waste management system in South Korea from the perspective of sustainability politics. Korea is currently confronted with very difficult task of high-level nuclear waste management coming from 25 nuclear power plants. Korean government’s nuclear waste management paradigm can be characterized as technocratic: it has pursued elitist approach so far relying exclusively on experts and technical bureaucrats. No significant participation of civil society has been allowed until recently. However, Korea’s anti-nuclear and environment movement organizations have been expanding its influence after Fukushima nuclear disaster and German government’s declaration of nuclear phase-out policy, strongly demanding public dialogue program on nuclear waste issues as well as phasing-out existing reactors. Confronted with these challenges Korean government officially announced recently that they are going to launch “Public Dialogue and Participation Program” regarding high-level nuclear waste management this year as a way of securing sustainable risk governance. Can this be understood as an paradigm change from technocratic to participatory risk governance with regard to nuclear waste management policy? And, is that dialogue program going to end the bitter social conflicts so far and help promote sustainable management of high-level nuclear waste?
Smart Villages: Communities in Action
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Veronika Zavratnik, Argene Superina, Andrej Kos, Emilija Stojmenova Duh
Within the European Union (EU) Smart Villages are becoming an important concept for enhancing sustainable and smart rural development. The paper promotes a multidisciplinary smart village concept that advocates for participative and community-oriented approaches to sustainable rural development. Special attention is given to various levels of sustainability which is often understood as either environmental or economic sustainability, but should be understood broader. The authors also advocate for more fieldwork-based approaches and discuss the importance of social and cultural sustainability if smart village concepts and solutions are to be holistic, successful and wide-accepted. Great emphasis is also given to the policy level. Firstly, the need for harmonization of local, regional, national and EU aspirations is accelerated. This is connected to the importance of finding synergies between EU-governed, top-down political frameworks and giving the voice to community-led bottom-up initiatives for the community development. Finally, the smart village concept advocated in this paper is strongly promoting a cross-sectoral integration and collaborations across various areas: environment and spatial planning, rural development, agriculture, social affairs, labour opportunities, education etc. that should be reconciled in order to guarantee the most sustainable results/solutions possible.
