ID :
26218
Thu, 10/23/2008 - 23:33
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://www.oananews.org//node/26218
The shortlink copeid
Wildlife experts gather to weigh DMZ peace project
ILSAN, Gyeonggi Province, Oct. 23 (Yonhap) -- Wildlife experts gathered for a global forum on Thursday to examine ways of preserving endangered wildlife in the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone that divides the Korean peninsula and turning it into a peace park.
Korea hosts the two-day International Conference on DMZ Conservation as a prelude
to a larger global meeting on preserving wetlands, called the Ramsar conference,
set for next week.
Environmental experts and officials from around the world are to discuss ways of
turning DMZ, an off-limits military buffer zone that separates South and North
Korea, into a global peace park, while local leaders are to suggest holding a
U.N. General Assembly meeting there as a symbolic step.
The DMZ is a 250-kilometer-long and 4-km-wide strip of land rich in biodiversity
stretching from coast to coast, where plants and animals have flourished in the
absence of human contact for over 50 years since the end of the 1950-53 Korean
War.
"Ironically, the fact that it has been severed from human contact so long has
made DMZ a site of nature and life's revival" after the devastating war, Kim
Jin-hyun, president of Seoul-based non-governmental Green Growth Forum and former
minister of Science and Technology, said in the conference.
"By designating its ecological revival as a starting point of environmental
conservation in the Korean Peninsula, we hope to transform the DMZ from a symbol
of the worst and longest tragedy of the 20th century to a model for ecology and
peace," he said.
Alan Weisman, author of the critically acclaimed book on a post-human senario,
"The World Without Us," is to propose his ideas of setting a global peace park in
the no-man's land. In the book, Weisman says of the DMZ, "The sorrow that divides
the Korean Peninsula has, strangely enough, also created a miracle."
Also present at the forum are Natarajan Ishwaran, directory of the UNESCO
division of ecological and earth sciences, and Herb Raffaele, a senior official
of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
As part of peace projects for the DMZ, the provincial government of Gangwon on
the east coast launched an official drive last year to turn the DMZ into a UNESCO
World Heritage Site.
Proponents of the DMZ preservation include Ted Turner, founder of the U.S.
television network CNN, who visited North and South Korea in 2005 to promote his
initiative.
Korea will host the 10th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to
the Convention on Wetlands, or Ramsar COP10, in Changwon, South Gyeongsang
Province, will open in the city from Oct. 28 through Nov. 4. The convention
signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971, is an intergovernmental treaty that provides the
framework for national action and international cooperation for the conservation
and wise use of wetlands and their resources.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)
Korea hosts the two-day International Conference on DMZ Conservation as a prelude
to a larger global meeting on preserving wetlands, called the Ramsar conference,
set for next week.
Environmental experts and officials from around the world are to discuss ways of
turning DMZ, an off-limits military buffer zone that separates South and North
Korea, into a global peace park, while local leaders are to suggest holding a
U.N. General Assembly meeting there as a symbolic step.
The DMZ is a 250-kilometer-long and 4-km-wide strip of land rich in biodiversity
stretching from coast to coast, where plants and animals have flourished in the
absence of human contact for over 50 years since the end of the 1950-53 Korean
War.
"Ironically, the fact that it has been severed from human contact so long has
made DMZ a site of nature and life's revival" after the devastating war, Kim
Jin-hyun, president of Seoul-based non-governmental Green Growth Forum and former
minister of Science and Technology, said in the conference.
"By designating its ecological revival as a starting point of environmental
conservation in the Korean Peninsula, we hope to transform the DMZ from a symbol
of the worst and longest tragedy of the 20th century to a model for ecology and
peace," he said.
Alan Weisman, author of the critically acclaimed book on a post-human senario,
"The World Without Us," is to propose his ideas of setting a global peace park in
the no-man's land. In the book, Weisman says of the DMZ, "The sorrow that divides
the Korean Peninsula has, strangely enough, also created a miracle."
Also present at the forum are Natarajan Ishwaran, directory of the UNESCO
division of ecological and earth sciences, and Herb Raffaele, a senior official
of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
As part of peace projects for the DMZ, the provincial government of Gangwon on
the east coast launched an official drive last year to turn the DMZ into a UNESCO
World Heritage Site.
Proponents of the DMZ preservation include Ted Turner, founder of the U.S.
television network CNN, who visited North and South Korea in 2005 to promote his
initiative.
Korea will host the 10th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to
the Convention on Wetlands, or Ramsar COP10, in Changwon, South Gyeongsang
Province, will open in the city from Oct. 28 through Nov. 4. The convention
signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971, is an intergovernmental treaty that provides the
framework for national action and international cooperation for the conservation
and wise use of wetlands and their resources.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)
