The government’s multi-billion-dollar efforts to revamp the country’s major river basins are about to bear some fruit as it nears a deal with foreign partners to transfer related technology.

The Lee Myung-bak administration has been ratcheting up its ambitions to export its much-touted recipe for refurbishing waterways and wetlands as a means to offset simmering criticism over the feasibility of the costly project and its potential side effects on wildlife conservation.

The government is expecting an agreement with Morocco and Paraguay for technical partnership next year, officials at the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs said.

King Mohammed VI of Morocco has sent several envoys here to discuss collaboration. Liz Rosanna Cramer Campos, the Paraguayan Tourism Minister, also paid a visit to Seoul to look into the technology, they added.

Another candidate is Thailand. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra is visiting Seoul on Tuesday to discuss collaboration with ministry officials. Her older brother Thaksin Shinawatra and Thai Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul have already taken a tour to the restored river basins in recent months.

“We have held talks with Morocco and Paraguay over a memorandum of understanding for technical cooperation, which is expected to come next year,” Shim Myung-pil, head of the Office of National River Restoration under the ministry, told The Korea Herald.

“With Yingluck, we’ll contrive substantive measures to collaborate on flood control and restoration works in Thai.”

As the 22 trillion won ($18.9 billion) program comes to end, the government invited policymakers, public officials and water experts from across the globe to prove its efficacy in raising water security and flood prevention.

“Many officials in Southeast Asia, Africa and some European countries officially expressed their interests in our four river project, saying they’d embrace similar methods in their projects at home,” Shim said.

Launched in 2009, the five-year mega project entails renovating some 900 kilometers of tributary streams and adjacent wetlands and building leisure and anti-disaster prevention facilities there.

The initiative was one of Lee’s flagship policies under his “low carbon, green growth” vision, which seeks balance between environmental sustainability and economic growth.

The ministry is wrapping up work on the primary courses of the four rivers with a completion rate of 93 percent. The establishment of small-scale hydropower plants, solar panels and windmills in the weirs is still in progress.

Ministry data estimated the country’s total flood damage during the rainy season at 94.5 billion won this year, about 9 percent of the cost in 1998 and 6 percent compared with 2006.

But while advocates tout the program as a means to help improve water supplies and tourism in the regions, the government has been grappling with persistent controversy over its possible impact on the environment.

Opposition lawmakers first branded the project a “lavish political venture,” demanding that the construction of large-scale river barrages, dams and bike roads be called off.

Some local governments then boycotted the work. Civic groups and environmentalists staged protests in areas along the rivers, slamming the government for its massive marketing budget and self laudation over the program’s “unproven” effects. They claimed that the program only squeezes local wildlife and ecosystem dynamics.

But residents, who once fiercely opposed to the project, have become increasingly positive as they see the watercourses in better shape and once-fragile streams survive floods, Shim claimed.

“The project had often been distorted as a political intention,” Shim said. “But this is not a political issue but a technical one, which requires technical discussions, not such ideological, political disputes.”

In efforts to address relentless environmental concerns, the ministry is keeping close track of the habitats of endangered species and striving to reinforce protection measures, he added.

Yet the river project remains controversial. Shim said the government is now ready to show “how it has realized what it had promised” by exporting the technology.

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)