The Grand Canal: South Korea’s Grand Folly
By Charlie • July 25, 2008 • 4 commentsAs Mike mentioned in his Where are you birding this final weekend of July 2008? post, I’ve been wearing one of my other hats for the last two days as a co-founder of the conservation organisation Birds Korea. I was extremely happy/pleased/honoured to be able to help organise the UK part of a Europe-wide trip by Mr Nial Moores, Director of Birds Korea (and my brother); the Rev SuKyung, Korea’s most revered Buddhist leader and an ardent conservationist; Mr Park Jin Sub, Vice President of the South Korean NGO ‘Eco-Horizon Insitute’ and Ms Jang Jiyong, Researcher at Eco-Horizon; and Mr Kim Sang Kuk, a South Korean political student who has been co-ordinating opposition to “The Grand Canal” project in Germany.
The delegates at The Lodge, RSPB HQ. From left to right: Miss JANG Jiyong, Mr KIM Sang Kuk; Mr Nial Moores; Rev SuKyung; Miss Sona SUTHERLAND (Birds Korea); Mr Martin SUTHERLAND (Birds Korea).
At BirdLife HQ, Cambridge. From left to right: Mr Nial Moores; Mr Richard GRIMMET, BirdLife’s Global Conservation Manager; Dr Mike RANDS, BirdLife’s Chief Executive; Rev SuKyung; Dr Mike CROSBY, BirdLife Asia Division; Mr PARK Jin Sub.
(Where am I, you might reasonably asking? Taking the photos that’s where…)
 Stage One of the Grand Canal Project: Han and Nakdong Rivers. Map created and © of the Korean NGOs Alliance. |
Hey, hang on there - “The Grand Canal” project? What’s that then and why should a group of Korean activists who are fighting the project be welcomed by senior figures at RSPB and BirdLife International, including - in fact - Dr Mike Rands, BirdLife CEO and one of the most respected names in bird conservation worldwide?
Because “The Grand Canal” project is one of the most illogical, illegal, and mindless construction projects in the world today (sadly South Korea seems to be gaining quite a reputation for such, as anyone who followed the Saemangeum reclamation will know).
And if it goes ahead it will - in its first stage alone - involve canalising the country’s rivers by dredging, deepening and widening approximately two thousand kilometers of shallow river courses! Seven IBAs (Important Bird Areas) will be impacted, and a whole clutch of East Asia’s threatened birds will be even more threatened than they are now.
That’s why the RSPB, BirdLife, the IUCN, Wetlands International, and Ramsar have ALL welcomed these delegates to Europe (and look set to offer their support to get this nonsense STOPPED dead before the damage is done).
There is far more information on the Birds Korea website than I can include in this brief post (I’m too fired up to spend the weekend writing a long post - I want this thing on 10,000 Birds now!), but essentially imagine this….
You’re a Korean with an interest in conservation and environmentalism:
- Having seen your government send the Spoon-billed Sandpiper and a host of other shorebirds into steep decline by destroying virtually all of the staging tidal-flats lining the Yellow Sea (BirdLife will be announcing soon that a survey on the Russian breeding grounds this summer found virtually no pairs of Spoon-billed Sandpipers…),
- you then wake up to find that your new President (Lee Myung-bak, who was described by The Guardian newspaper in December 2007 as a scandal-tainted former businessman”) has pledged to drive a canal from one end of the country to another
- despite the fact that Korea is mountainous
- which means that a 26km tunnel must be carved through the spine of the country
- and that fresh water from Korea’s rivers is depended on by two-thirds of the human population
- and rivers are the last of Korea’s habitats to remain relatively intact.
How heart-broken would you be?
Staggeringly the “Grand Folly” - which will irrevocably damage the country’s only Ramsar site (Upo Wetland) - was defended by the Korean government in the same year that it’s holding the 10th meeting of the Ramsar Contracting Parties!
Not only that but the Korean Environment Minister (who was hand-picked by President Lee to SUPPORT the Canal project) is a contracting party to the IUCN, an organisation whose mission statement is to “ influence, encourage and assist societies throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable.” and Korea itself is a contracting party to the Convention on Biological Diversity!
On top of everything else there are also multiple conservation laws in South Korea, and many of the species which will be significantly impacted by the Project are both already protected by domestic law and are designated as National Natural Monuments.
You simply couldn’t make this stuff up could you?
How serious is the threat to Korea’s birds?
Have a read of these facts taken straight from the Birds Korea website:
| “Easy to draw in an engineer’s office, the Grand Canal in reality will require the dredging, deepening and widening of approximately two thousand kilometers of shallow river courses in South Korea (and apparently another thousand kilometers in DPRK). These shallow rivers are presently used by a broad range of bird species (from e.g. breeding Long-billed Plover Charadrius placidus and Mandarin Duck Aix galericulata, to roosting globally Vulnerable Hooded Cranes Grus monacha on southward migration, to large numbers of wintering waterbirds, including small numbers of the globally Endangered Scaly-sided Merganser Mergus squamatus.)”
The Grand Canal system will also further cause significant impacts on (at least) three internationally important estuaries (as defined by Ramsar criteria):
and
|
There is every chance that this hugely destructive project can be halted. The Korean President has showed appropriately good leadership and responded to public concern - a massive 83% of the Korean public oppose scarring their country in this way - by saying that the “Grand Folly” is currently ’suspended’. International NGOs (INGOs) intend to make sure that President Lee keeps his word, and say they will support Korean domestic NGOs and push hard to get it stopped altogether when the Ramsar meeting is held in the autumn.
In the meantime they are sending letters of concern to the President explaining the ramifications to international treaties and laws if this project is allowed to proceed.
What can we do about it though?
We can either accept that the world is going to Hell in a handbag, OR we can add our voices to the protest and support the overwhelming number of people who DO NOT want this project. There is a petition on the Birds Korea website at http://www.birdskorea.org/Habitats/Grand_Canal/BK-HA-Grand-Canal-Petition.shtml - please take a few moments to sign it.
The South Korean government is extremely sensitive to overseas protest at the moment. By signing we can support Korea’s NGOs, Korea’s people, AND give the birds of East Asia a fighting chance to survive what looks increasingly like being a century of constant threat and danger…
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Signed it. It seems like a strange project. Do you have any idea what the purpose is?
I thought that building looked familiar… pop in and say hello next time! :o)
John: It’s supposed to kickstart the economy in the President’s home constituency by creating lots of (temporary) construction jobs - the fact that if thing ever got built it would destroy Korea’s rivers seems not to matter…
Katie: Doh! I wish I’d thought of saying hi! I dare say the next time Korea’s politicians come up with a way to destroy their country I’ll be back…
[...] Representatives from three Korean organisations have visited BirdLife International in Cambridge to highlight the environmental impacts of the proposed Korean Grand Canal Project. [...]