South Korean growers sue state power utility, blaming climate change for crop damage

SEOSAN, South Korea -- Hwang Seong-yeol stood astatine the borderline of a aureate field, watching nervously arsenic a harvester harvester crawled done his rice, churning up mud and stalks. Its dependable hum filled the damp autumn aerial arsenic atom poured into a motortruck waiting astatine the different extremity of the muddy paddy.

It was the last time of what Hwang said was 1 of his toughest seasons successful 3 decades of farming. He and different farmers consciousness helpless against progressively erratic upwind that they nexus to climate change and harm to their crops. It has analyzable their enactment and formed uncertainty implicit their futures.

Hwang is 1 of 5 South Korean farmers who precocious sued the authorities inferior Korea Electric Power Corporation and its power-generating subsidiaries, alleging that their reliance connected ember and different fossil fuels has accelerated clime alteration and damaged their crops.

The suit raises questions astir whether powerfulness companies’ relation successful driving clime change, and the resulting cultivation losses, tin beryllium quantified. It is the archetypal of its benignant successful South Korea, said Yeny Kim, a lawyer with the Seoul-based nonprofit Solutions for Our Climate, who is handling the case.

The lawsuit underscores the challenges South Korea, a manufacturing powerfulness that industrialized agelong aft the Western nations present pressuring others to wantonness fossil fuels, faces successful transitioning to cleaner energy.

Hwang's fields are connected a reclaimed coastal plain on South Korea’s occidental sea, wherever glimmering waterways crisscross dark, affluent ungraded and flocks of migratory geese drift overhead, moving similar a giant, surviving quilt.

A remarkably rainy September and October followed a bitterly acold outpouring that stunted works growth. Summer floods caused further harm earlier the bedewed autumn bred fungal disease.

Hwang would person preferred to harvest successful drier upwind but had to bash truthful sooner arsenic relentless rains pushed atom stalks into the soil, causing the ripe grains to sprout. That time successful precocious October was lone the 2nd adust time aft 18 consecutive days of rain.

“It’s truly unsettling – we cognize however overmuch atom we should usually get from 30,000 pyeong (25 acres) of land, but the output has been steadily declining each year,” said Hwang, who expects this year’s harvest to beryllium 20% to 25% beneath normal.

“We began to question wherefore it’s ever the farmers — who haven’t done thing incorrect — that extremity up suffering the consequences of the clime crisis. Shouldn’t we beryllium demanding thing from those who are really causing it?”

Farmers are “inherently vulnerable" to clime change, said Kim, the lawyer.

In an yearly clime study successful April, South Korea’s authorities elaborate however a twelvemonth of utmost upwind events successful 2024, the country’s hottest twelvemonth ever, triggered a bid of “agricultural disasters” of dense summertime rains that destroyed thousands of hectares (acres) of cropland, followed by weeks of aggravated vigor that wrecked inactive much crops, mostly rice.

Kim and her colleagues decided to record the lawsuit, which represents plaintiffs from crossed South Korea, aft speaking with Hwang and others astatine farmers markets.

They accidental KEPCO, which holds a monopoly connected energy transmission and afloat owns its subsidiaries, should carnivore immoderate blasted for the destabilized weather, citing what they accidental are excessive c emissions and a lagging modulation to renewable energy.

From 2011-2022, the companies produced astir 30% of South Korea’s greenhouse state emissions and astir 0.4% of planetary emissions, based connected Kim's investigation of publically disposable data.

“Therefore, they should besides carnivore 0.4% of the work for the farmers’ losses,” Kim said.

The suit seeks archetypal harm claims of 5 cardinal won ($3,400) per client, an magnitude apt to beryllium adjusted arsenic the lawsuit proceeds. The plaintiffs are besides symbolically seeking 2,035 won ($1.4) each to impulse the authorities to signifier retired ember powerfulness plants by 2035, up of its 2040 target.

Renewable vigor accounted for lone 10.5% of the nationalist vigor premix successful 2024, and the 5 KEPCO subsidiaries relied connected ember for much than 71% of the energy they produced that year, according to authorities data.

KEPCO told The Associated Press it considers c simplification a cardinal responsibility, citing its extremity of cutting emissions 40% by 2030 from 2018 levels. But it declined to remark further connected the lawsuit, saying it “cannot stock accusation that could power the verdict.”

Experts accidental mounting debt, present astatine implicit 200 trillion won ($137 billion), that accumulated implicit decades of authorities policies that kept energy rates debased for households and industries, limits the utility's quality to grow and modernize the powerfulness grid oregon put successful renewable energy.

Yun Sun-Jin, a prof astatine Seoul National University, said the suit has symbolic worth but questioned whether blasted could autumn solely connected KEPCO, fixed that everyone benefits from its inexpensive electricity.

It would beryllium hard to beryllium the inferior straight caused workplace losses, erstwhile clime alteration is simply a “global problem,” she said.

It does gully attraction to South Korea's request for a much effectual attack to renewable energy, Yun said, including deregulating star investments, expanding sources specified arsenic offshore wind, and ending KEPCO’s monopoly implicit energy transmission to promote different competitors with divers technologies.

South Korea is expected to scope its people of 32.95% renewable vigor by astir 2038 — acold slower than the 33.49% mean successful 2023 among developed economies successful the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Some experts, including Yun, pass that South Korea’s dilatory displacement to renewable vigor could hinder its ambitions successful advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence, arsenic its tech giants look global pressure to run connected cleanable power.

“Climate alteration and c neutrality are not conscionable biology concerns — they are economical issues, yet astir jobs and our survival,” Yun said.

The interaction of utmost upwind resulting from clime alteration is acold reaching successful South Korea.

Farmers present look higher costs and indispensable usage much labour to nutrient the aforesaid oregon little yields.

Ma Yong-un, an pome husbandman successful the southeastern municipality of Hamyang, said helium is utilizing much pesticides arsenic pests and diseases go harder to power owed to prolonged vigor and humidity. The apples that thrived successful cooler upwind during his father's days are little plentiful and tasty, helium said.

From tangerine farmers connected Jeju land to strawberry growers successful Sancheong to the southeast, farmers are trying to devise ways to survive.

For the archetypal clip since helium began farming successful 2011, Ma coated each the effect connected his 2,200 trees with a substance of copper sulfate and lime to forestall fungal infections and tegument harm from aggravated sunlight.

He began to deliberation earnestly astir clime alteration successful 2018, erstwhile a dense April snowstorm damaged angiosperm buds, starring to 1 of his worst harvests. Farming is becoming harder each twelvemonth and helium perpetually wonders however overmuch longer helium tin transportation on.

“I deliberation astir that each day,” said Ma, who is raising 2 teenage boys with his wife. “The biggest interest is my children.”