Establishing Meta-Governance to Resolve Public Conflicts in Offshore Wind Power Projects in Korea

The Korean government has established a goal of ‘carbon neutrality by 2050’ to prepare for an era of energy and carbon transition. As one of the measures to achieve the goal, the Korean government is also focusing on expanding offshore wind power generation. However, throughout the power generation project, delays and interruptions frequently occur due to public conflicts that arise between key stakeholders such as local residents, developers, and the government. The existing liberal governance model used to resolve public conflicts is revealing limitations due to the power imbalance between stakeholders and the uncertainty of the responsibility structure. In response, this study proposes a meta-governance model in which the government takes on the coordinating and mediating role among stakeholders as a meta-governor. Through qualitative research methods such as categorizing cases of offshore wind conflicts that have occurred in Korea and analyzing prior studies and policy reports, the analysis demonstrates that this framework can be more effective in resolving public conflicts between stakeholders. Notably, this article integrates the government’s roles as legislator, facilitator, provider, and enforcer mentioned individually in existing meta-governance model research. And it proposes an implementation system designed to manage public conflicts and increase project acceptance in the process of promoting offshore wind power generation. This paper addresses the limitations of existing liberal governance and redefines the role of the meta-governor in meta-governance, thereby providing sustainable implementation strategies for large-scale infrastructure projects including offshore wind power development.