Spent 10 Billion Won in Taxpayers' Money... Absurd and Flawed Climate Reports

[Anchor]

Last month, we reported that climate crisis adaptation action reports compiled by local governments across the country every five years are completely out of touch with reality. Upon taking a closer look at the reports from Daegu City and its nine districts and counties, numerous absurd details were discovered. It is estimated that around 10 billion won was spent nationwide to produce these reports, raising serious questions about whether such shoddy content can actually be used as policy data.

Here is a report from TBC's Ahn Sang-hyuk.

[Reporter]

Pyeongni 5-dong in Daegu is densely packed with newly built apartment complexes.

It has been designated as the area most vulnerable to heatwaves in Seo-gu.

This outcome remains unchanged even when looking ahead to the year 2060.

According to the climate crisis countermeasure report published by Seo-gu last year, for some reason, the neighborhood-by-neighborhood heatwave vulnerability rankings—predicted in 20-year intervals—are identical, as if they were simply copied and pasted.

[Official at Seo-gu, Daegu: Since conditions have changed, I think it is a part where we need to apply them flexibly to match those changes.]

Climate crisis countermeasure reports, compiled every five years, evaluate 36 items across six sectors for each local government and are made available to the public.

The problem is that there are far too many items detached from reality. The reports include assessments on whether a national park could be established in Jung-gu, downtown Daegu, or evaluating apple productivity in neighborhoods where no apple orchards exist.

[Official at Local Government A: There are various items for all vulnerability assessments. They are all fixed. We have to do all these items nationwide. If we leave them out, the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment won't approve it.]

Because forced data had to be created, serious errors stand out.

For instance, the green space areas of Seo-gu and Buk-gu in Daegu are identical at 65.29 km².

[Official at Local Government B: We confirmed that it was incorrectly entered by the outsourced agency during the drafting process.]

Meanwhile, the 256,000 vulnerable female population listed in Dalseong-gun's report last year turned out to be Dalseong-gun's entire population.

[Official at Local Government C: We check and identify errors and typos as much as possible, but it seems things like this still slipped through.]

Metropolitan and basic local governments spend around 20 million won every five years to produce these shoddy reports.

Even excluding cases where some local governments formulated them independently, it is estimated that over 10 billion won in taxpayers' money has been poured into producing these reports across three rounds so far.

The Ministry of Climate maintains that there are no issues.

[Official at the Ministry of Climate: No, I am telling you that we are conducting verifications. As I said earlier, we commission professional institutions to do so.]

While climate disasters such as heatwaves and torrential downpours are becoming increasingly commonplace, reports that serve as the starting point for climate crisis response policies continue to repeat analyses and errors that are detached from reality.

A sweeping inspection is urgently needed to determine whether such flawed reports should continue to be utilized as foundational data for policymaking.

(Video by Park Jong-young, TBC / Design by Kim Se-yoon, TBC)

Ahn Sang-hyuk, TBC

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