Sustainable community development has become a cornerstone for the overall sustainability movement in the recent years. Island provinces, due to the unique make up of their communities can and should adopt sound community development process for sustaining their futures growth. Civic engagement and citizen input are crucial for planning sustainable growth of island communities. This is primarily due to the fact that most island communities are inundated with rapidly growing tourism industry that threatens to affect the future of their environmental assets, island cultures and living standards. The purpose of this article is to highlight the importance of environmental governance and citizen participation for sustainable growth of island communities. In addition to discussing the importance of citizen participation in sustainable development of island communities, this article also provides a brief case study of Jeju island and its recent attempts to promote sustainability in the wake of rapidly growing tourist industry. Two emerging and important planning processes that can enhance sustainable community development of island provinces are also discussed with specific applications to Jeju

Scientific analysis and inter-Korean cooperation are needed to reduce North Korea’s environmental pollution and deforestation. Many efforts to reduce North Korea’s environmental issue have a fundamental weakness because they are generally influenced by internal and political conditions. To overcome such a weakness, two approaches may be effective; the first is to use new technology such as Google Earth and the second is to build collaborative governance that is invulnerable to political conditions. This study focuses on building collaborative governance models based on Google Earth data investigation, a previous research’s release of Google Earth database, and literature review of North Korea’s environmental issues. This research’s results are as follows. First, North Korea’s industrial regions suffer from environmental pollution and many other regions experience severe deforestation according to Google Earth-based spatial images. Second, we can discern environmental pollution such as air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, and deforestation using Google Earth-based spatial image. In reality, we are able to identify deforestation and partially soil pollution with Google Earth-based spatial image. Third, there are different environmental problems among North Korea’s local regions. South Korea has to prepare and plan various collaborative governance models depending on North Korea’s local needs on environmental problems.