A Shift Towards Integrated and Adaptive Water Management in South Korea: Building Resilience Against Climate Change

There is growing evidence that the global meteorological cycle, on which most countries depend for water security, is deviating from traditional patterns due to climate change. The global response to this has been to adopt more integrated water resource management (IWRM) and adaptive management (AM) approaches, but the question of ‘how’ remains largely unanswered. This is because ‘one size fits all’ no longer applies, as IWRM and AM denote flexible, situation-tailored, and area-specific management systems. Understanding how water policy in a region or country has historically evolved and sometimes failed, offers a good starting point to shed light on the next step or ‘how next’; however, this aspect remains underexplored. This study focuses on South Korea, one of the medium-high water stress countries affected by climate change. For a structural and theoretical analysis, the Hall’s theory of paradigmatic policy change was applied, which revealed that South Korea is currently in the ‘contestation’ stage following the ‘fragmented authority’ stage due to failures in the ‘policy experiment’ stage. The analysis identified continued administrative rigidity and a construction-centric culture as the main causes of the failure of transition attempts made during 1994–2013. Hence, to answer the ‘how next’ question, this study proposes that the IWRM and AM be institutionalised in South Korea through the educational system at all levels, by enhancing the learning process and cultural adoption. Without garnering general support, the structural reforms of 2018–2020 can be overturned easily if the next government endorses traditional values.