The Global Green Growth Institute is considering moving to the international business district of Songdo, Incheon, to take advantage of a synergy effect with the Green Climate Fund and various incentives from the city government, officials told The Korea Herald.
The Incheon city government has recently offered the Seoul-based GGGI benefits including a 10-year free lease of office space and operating cost subsidies.
“We’re looking into the option after receiving an offer of free office space for 10 years from the city,” a GGGI official said on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been finalized.
The GGGI was set up in 2010 by the Korean government to bridge rich and poor countries in sharing technological knowhow for and funding environmentally-friendly development. Last October, it became an international agency with support from 17 other founding member countries.
If the plan materializes, the organization will move into Songdo’s I-Tower, where the GCF’s secretariat will be established, facilitating their coordination in research and policy and project planning.
Former Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan and other Seoul officials are believed to have informally raised the GGGI’s possible transfer during its second board meeting in January in Abu Dhabi.
The third board meeting scheduled for June may take place in Songdo with the relocation plan on its official agenda, observers have said.
Lee Kook-hwa, an official at the city office, confirmed the proposal but declined to discuss further because the talks were “still ongoing.”
The reclaimed island in the West Sea has been courting multinational bodies, major corporations and prominent foreign schools as part of the city’s efforts to become a regional business, logistics and tourism hotspot.
Incheon has promised the GCF to gradually provide 15 floors of office space at the 33-story I-Tower by 2020 and a right to use the Songdo Conventia conference center for 20 days a year, all free of charge for 10 years. It will also shoulder part of the GCF’s operating expenses along with the Finance Ministry.
The U.N. body is the first major agency to be set up there, planning to raise some $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to global warming.
In an interview last year with The Korea Herald, GGGI Director-General Richard Samans said he was expecting “whole synergy” between the two institutions.
“The success of the fund rests on operational capacity, which will need not only a strong policy plan but also investment case, and that’s the area in which the GGGI is very specialized,” he said.
By Shin Hyon-hee (
heeshin@heraldcorp.com)
