PARENT SESSION
Special Session 7: Social capacity development for environmental management: International cooperation and ecological solution
Organized by: S HONG and N NAKAGOSHI
Monday, August 8, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Exhibit Hall 210a-e, Level 2, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Socio-environmental issues and its solution in coastal cities in western Korea.
Ihm, Byung-Sun1, Song, Jee-June*,2, 1 Mokpo National University, Mokpo, Korea2 Mokpo National University, Mokpo, Korea
ABSTRACT- Coast cities of western Korea are adjacent to huge tidal flat zone of Yellow Sea and then most economy system of the cities is strongly connected with those environmental circumstances and nature resource. In current, coastal cities and its environmental conditions in Korea are threatened by several environmental quality problems such as land reclamation and population concentration. One of the big issues is focusing on Saemangeum land reclamation project in southwest coast. This government project had started to secure agricultural land for high rice production and to establish industrial complex by reclamation of a huge scale of tidal flat. This project has been conflicting with nature conservation since this project was started. Saemangeum land reclamation project have been miscarried at the level of a national development strategy as the whole and gave rise to conflict with environment resource protection. Some cases in The Netherlands and Japan are model for this project related to land development. We are showing notable inferior to the reclaimed land development performance of the Netherlands (94.0%) and Japan (89.0%) that has narrow country land and high-density population. During 20 years, the consciousness of Korean people on government policy and nature conservation was changed with life style. However, most important change was environment and nature itself in global change. Therefore, the emerging issues in coastal cities in Korea are significantly related to establish the national environmental consensus for balancing between resource management capacity, social satisfaction, and environmental security.
Key words: coastal ecosystem, land reclamation, environmental management, capacity building