Questions/Answers

o. Introduction The GRDP in Dangjin increased by about 7 times from 1.6 billion $ in 2000 to 10.12 billion $ in 2016. During this period, steel industries were completely constructed, and Dangjin has turned from a conventional agricultural city to an urban-rural complex city. Whereas the remarkable economic growth, the biased industrial structure centering on the steel industry and drastic air pollution emitting from the coal-fired power plants emerged as serious issues in Dangjin. With the consideration and concerns for regional development, Dangjin established ‘2035 Dangjin Sustainable Development Plan' in 2017. o. Objective of the practice This practice has three main purposes; (1) reflecting the sustainable development principles in the whole of Danjin City administration, (2) building the sustainable development implementation mechanism in Danjin, and (3) securing the self-rectifying ability of the city administration through effective operation, evaluation, and feedback process in the Dangjin City sustainable development implementation mechanism. The first purpose is to adapt the sustainable development principles in the whole of Danjin City administration. Dangjin City declared the sustainable development vision and conducted the sustainable development education programs. The Dangjin sustainable development vision was established by active engagement of civil society and administration through diverse workshops and forums on sustainable development. Secondly, Dangjin City residents and administration set goals and strategies in accordance with the Dangjin sustainable development vision, and established the implementation plans for each strategy and developed sustainable development indicators for measuring sustainability in Dangjin City. The third purpose is to promote the departmental implementation plans, and to pursue continuous innovation of the city administration by building and operating an assessment and feedback mechanism for systematic implementation in every two years.

Dang City ensured the engagement of diverse stakeholders in the process of establishing the sustainable development implementation mechanism. Creating the map of goals and strategies helped the project managers of the city departments obtain information about other projects involving with same goals. In 2019, Dangjin City minimized overlap and conflict of the projects by revising the implementation plans (to be implemented in 2020), and facilitated cooperation by listing the tasks for each team with the same goals.

Dangjin City institutionally assured stakeholder participation in the establishing process of Dangjin sustainable development goals and implementation plans. Public awareness and engagement in the policy making process was encouraged by revitalizing Dangjin-type citizen autonomy so that local residents can build plans and conduct them. Dangjin City contributed to achieve Goal 16 and Goal 17 through developing independent and specialized evaluation mechanism for sustainable development implementation plans.

The Dangjin City Sustainable Development Council, the governance organization that stakeholders engage, organized the five subcommittees of Economy, Urban planning, Education and culture, Environment, and Society and is continuously monitoring social, economic, and environmental aspects of sustainable development in Dangjin City. Many departments in the administration are cooperating to complement the three aspects of sustainable development in the implementation plans mechanism under the Dangjin City sustainable development goals.

Dangjin is a small-sized city with a population of 160,000, despite rapid population growth due to inflow of industrial workers. As the citizen engagement was very low due to aging population, it was important to encourage the people to participate in decision making process and to establish an institutional mechanism. Dangjin City focused on improving public awareness for participation in policies by promoting residents’ autonomous activities such as residents’ general meetings and town planning group. The governance (Dangjin City Sustainable Development Council) was organized for public-private partnership and support to strengthen capacity of the members. Dangjin City assured public participation in the process of establishing the sustainable development goals and implementation plans by enacting the ordinance.

The committees participating in the city administration are required that a certain gender is not to exceed 60% of their members. These criteria also applied when the governance (Dangjin City Sustainable Development Council) was organized. In Dangjin City, women’s participation in civil social activities is active because of job shortage for women and deepening women’s career break.

Stakeholder’s right to know the city policy information is ensured by engagement of stakeholder groups (Dangjin City Sustainable Development Council). Dangjin City endeavored to strengthen citizen awareness and capability by providing educational opportunities about policy engagement process. The public-private partnership enhanced work efficiency of public officials by increasing policy acceptability of local residents.

Dangjin City designated the Planning and Budget Officer as the department in charge to promote sustainable development. In 2015, in order to develop circumstance of citizen’s engagement, Dangjin City enacted the Ordinance to organize and support the Dangjin City Sustainable Development Council consisted of 110 memberships representing civil society, businessmen, and public officials. In 2016, the City studied the status of sustainable development in Dangjin. Then Dangjin sustainable development vision, goals, indicators, and implementation plans were established in 2017. In 2018, the City built the revitalizing plan for Dangjin-type citizen autonomy and supported local residents to plan and carry out projects needed for the region. In particular, the goals of sustainable development indicators were set up by the public and private sectors together to form a joint evaluation-feedback system. In 2019, the city administration founded the department charging sustainable development policies, built evaluation mechanism to assess the performance of sustainable development implementation plans, and established the residents-lead evaluation committee. The mayor's interview was conducted with managers and directors of departmental or higher departments. A will of head of departments to realize the Sustainable Development Goals was checked. Subsequently, the Performance evaluation for the heads of department was made through the ability to implement election pledges and Sustainable Development implementation plans.

As public officials regarded sustainable development related works as new added ones, their abilities of execute were weakened. Then, the consensus for sustainable development was formed in the administration by providing education programs for raising awareness in the revising process of the implementation plans conducted in every two years. The city administration applied the performance evaluation system of the implementation plans to executive officers and public officers to align sustainable development with their organizational and individual targets and increase the execution ability of the plan.

S. Korea has driven economic growth through central government-led development projects. On the other hand, it is significant that Dangjin City, a local small-sized city, led the governance organization to improve the local sustainability, establish the plan, and develop the equitable and independent evaluation system. In particular, it was innovative that Dangjin City organized stakeholder groups, and supported them to participate in the planning process. Furthermore, the City adapted the UN’s 15-year long term goals to the local level.

Dangjin City studied a lot about the developing process of UNSDGs following the UNMDGs. The city analyzed various ways of engagement of experts and stakeholders. The city collected stakeholder’s opinions and shared the roles of public officials and civil society having policy planning capabilities.

Although many cities are implementing diverse projects to realize the UNSDGs, it is the first time that the local government established the plans connecting with UNSDGs. In doing so, Dangjin City studied many projects implemented in the diverse cities in Europe, which held the process collecting the stakeholders’ opinion and reflecting to the plans. In particular, Dangjin City referred to the energy conversion process in Denmark and the stakeholder participation in urban regeneration projects in Malmo, Sweden.

Most countries are promoting projects to achieve the sustainable development goals with civil society. The innovation of Dangjin City was observed in the process that the governance of civil society was established and the independent evaluation system was introduced. Like the case of Dangjin, it will be feasible that small-sized cities in many countries can establish the plans and the evaluation methods based on budget and manpower.The process involved fostering and supporting governance (including institutional engagement and financial assistance using local legislative power), sharing public and private roles and residents’ participation in the planning process, and establishing of independent evaluation system.

The city administration provides 68,346 US$ annually to governance (Dangjin City Sustainable Development Council) for operating costs and empowerment of participants. Dangjin City budgeted 62,366 US$ for the expert research to build the implementation plans, civil society engagement and promotion. Dangjin City recruited external experts and assigned team managers to operate the sustainable development system.

Dangjin City arranged the institutional foundation needed for sustainable development policies by enacting the Ordinance. The Ordinance set out the provision of budgetary support for the Dangjin City Sustainable Development Council, as well as provisions relating to the functioning of planning and the mechanisms to restrain a unilateral decision of administration.

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The evaluation is divided into (1) assessment of sustainability indicators (external), (2) evaluation of performance indicators in the implementation plan (internal), and (3) evaluation of work performance (internal) of the head of the implementation projects. The results of evaluation are reflected in the comprehensive performance evaluation system in the city administration and are designated to affect the incentive of public officials. The evaluation methods are determined by the Performance Evaluation Committee. The Performance Evaluation Committee consists of 19 people and 17 of them are experts of civil society and private sector.

The detailed works of the implementation plans are evaluated using the performance indicators. The performance indicators are indicators that can evaluate project results such as a satisfaction level of residents and achievement rate of relevant indicators. The department in charge sets the achievement targets in every year, inputs it into the web-based performance evaluation system according to the degree of achievement, and evaluates the performance of the department and reflects it to the performance incentive. The evaluation of sustainability indicators in Dangjin City is planned for the first half of 2020.

Many local government and civil societies in S. Korea and Asian countries are benchmarking to the case of Dangjin City. Dangjin City shares with civil society in region diverse information about the building process of the sustainable development plan and review and follow-up mechanism. - Main cases Dangjin City presented the case study of building the sustainable development plan and implementation plans at the 2018 Korea-China-Japan Local Government Exchange Meeting (Hunan province, China) Dangjin City shared the experience of establishing the sustainable development plan, implementation, and evaluation system at Seoul Mayors Forum on climate change 2019.

Dangjin Sustainable Development Council has the functions of establishing the sustainable development plan and evaluating sustainability (Article 6, Ordinance of Establishment and Operation of Dangjin Sustainable Development Council) In order to eliminate partitions between departments and to force integrated implementation, the city administration changed from department to team of the scope of responsibility for achieving goals when revising the Sustainable Development Implementation Plan. Dangjin City built the evaluation system for implementation plan by organizing the Performance Evaluation Committee composed of external experts, not stakeholders, for independent and fair review of performance. Those three institutional frameworks force integrated operation of sustainable development system by facilitating cooperation between departments within the administration and strengthening public-private partnerships.

The Dangjin sustainable development goals and strategies were derived through workshops attending major administrative team leaders, workshops engaging the members of the Dangjin Sustainable Development Council and civil society organizations, and joint meetings with the planning team in Dangjin administration and the Policy Subcommittee under Dangjin Sustainable Development Council. The selected goals and strategies were complemented in the workshop in which civil society groups, women, young people, disables, and businessmen participated. Then, it was confirmed after each department reviewed goals and strategies and the planning team of the administration and the Policy Subcommittee under Dangjin Sustainable Development Council reviewed together in the joint meeting. The implementation plan of sustainable development is evaluated independently and fairly by the Performance Evaluation Committee consisted of external evaluators.

Dangjin City established the sustainable development goals and implementation plan in order to promote local actions realizing from administrative innovation in a small sense to universal values of humanity in a great sense. The Dangjin sustainable development goals and implementation plan were confirmed through a three-year preliminary process that supported and fostered governance system deciding the city policies. After that, the plan was implemented in 2018, and one year is too short period to observe indicators change. Therefore, more changes are expected in the future. Dangjin City endeavored to change the perception that the local is regarded as a small unit for implementation under UN or the Nation, perceived that sustainable countries and global will be realized based on policies that local establishes plans. Accordingly, Dangjin City is increasing the implementing range from village to city as a whole.