Published : Aug. 30, 2012 - 20:40
The World Conservation Congress is organized by IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, every four years and is decidedly a global event in every sense of the word.
Its participants come from all parts of the world, the topics of its discussions concern the predicament of the entire planet’s resources, and its messages are aimed at the international community.
Having said that many thousands of participants will be in Korea and will no doubt have an opportunity to see the dynamism of the region’s economy and culture but their primary concern will of course be how well everyone in this, as in other regions, is looking after biological diversity and the natural resource on which the future of all regions depends.
Both Korea in general and Jeju in particular have old civilizations with long traditions of living in harmony with nature, the subject that lies at the heart of the World Conservation Congress.
In just a few decades, Korea has regenerated from scratch a vast forest cover, an achievement that stands unique in the world.
Jeju boasts numerous natural and cultural heritage sites.
Both the nation and the province have made a major commitment to greening their economies. The significance of this venue for the WCC is of enabling conservationists from all over the world to see for themselves and judge the successes or shortcomings of these initiatives.
The significance for the hosts is that they will have access to some of the world’s most knowledgeable experts whose views could be of the greatest value in assessing the results and making any needed corrections.
The Congress is just a few days away.
Enormous efforts have been made both by the Council and staff of IUCN and by the numerous institutions in the host country and the province of Jeju to make this a highly productive meeting.
We certainly have every expectation that this will be the case.
Several thousand participants, will be coming from every corner of the world, to meet in several hundred workshops and thousands of smaller encounters, to see numerous exhibits and visual presentations.
This cannot be but transformative ― all the people going back to their daily work renewed with energy, fresh ideas and new networks and partnerships.
It is my personal hope that this will be the best ever World Conservation Congress ― and with a little goodwill on all sides, I don’t see why it would not be.
We have had the best of support and cooperation from the Korean Organizing Committee, and indeed from all levels of government, both in Seoul and Jeju.
Even given the very different cultures and expectations of the different parties involved, the preparations for the Congress have been a model of good team work.
The Congress theme, Nature+, means that investing in nature gives benefits not just to nature but to all aspects of our lives, including the economy, society, human well-being ― and of course, the climate.
Nature+ also means that nature, as a part of all creation has a right to exist simply for itself, not just for what it can do for us humans and our economies. And while pure mathematicians might object, for me Nature+ also means that our small investments in nature get multiplied many times by the tricks she has evolved over the ages to produce so much from so little.
WCC is a four-yearly event, with a focused agenda and participants who have come after years of field work and preparation to exchange views and make agreements that most of them basically believe in. There will, of course, be some contentious issues and lots of debates, but at the end of our 10 days in Jeju, we can expect a very large number of agreed resolutions. Of course, the matter of commitments remains more or less the same in both cases since money is a scarce resource.
A very large number of initiatives are being discussed and launched at Jeju. Many of these are embodied in the Resolutions that the Congress will pass, though of course the resources needed to implement them may still have to be obtained. The big outcomes of 2012 will be approval of the new programs and approaches that IUCN plans to take to minimize the threats to biodiversity. One of these will be a renewed emphasis on ecosystem management, which needs to be brought up in the Union to the same level as our pioneering work on protected areas and species conservation.
The past four years have been very eventful and I have had a wonderful time working with IUCN over this period. As president, my job was to work with the Council to provide policies and guidance to the Union and this I think we did with reasonable impact ―- on the program, on the business approach and on the governance mechanisms. Having been associated with IUCN for some 35 years, it is unlikely that I will completely disappear from its radar screen, but my next few years will take me back to working in the rural economy of my country, India, where I hope that we can eliminate poverty just as was so successfully done in Korea.
Ashok Khosla
By Ashok Khosla, President of International Union for Conservation of Nature
Ashok Khosla is the outgoing president of IUCN, the world’s largest and oldest global environmental network. He was elected as president in November 2008 for a four-year term. The IUCN World Conservation Congress will be held on Jeju from Sept. 6-15. ― Ed.