Wetlands in Japan and Korea

by Maggie Suzuki

What is it about tidal flats? Seemingly mere expanses of inaccessible mud, they lack the immediate appeal of gorgeous coral reefs or stately primeval forests. Nonetheless, they rival these ecosystems in biodiversity and often exceed them in productivity.

Migratory shorebirds stop to feed at tidal flats because of the abundant prey - crabs, shellfish, sand worms, and other benthic (bottom-dwelling) organisms. These amazing birds travel up to 12,500 miles each way on their annual migrations. A rufous-necked stint banded in Western Australia was discovered by researchers a week later in Shanghai - probably on its way to breeding grounds in Eastern Siberia.

Tidal flats form in quiet inner bays at the mouths of rich deltas. Washed by the tides, and with abundant sunlight, oxygen, and nutrients, tidal flats also support the eggs and juveniles of deeper-sea dwelling creatures. Many, such as the fugu, a toxic blowfish popular among intrepid Japanese gourmets, are of commercial importance. Tidal flat wetlands occur in an arc from Japan to the Korean west coast and the great river deltas on the Chinese mainland. These wetlands form a vital stage along the route of migratory shorebirds on the East Asia-Australasia Flyway, from Australia and New Zealand to East Siberia and Alaska. Government public works development is damaging the wetlands that form the narrowest link in this chain not only in Japan, but in Korea. Japanese NGOs are working with their Korean counterparts to counter the immense inertia of entrenched public works systems that have outlived their usefulness, but not their power. In this context, the decision to conserve, and not landfill, Fujimae tidal flat in Nagoya is of far-reaching importance.

Nagoya is the "Detroit of Japan," the center of automobile manufacturing and the third largest city. It's located on Ise Bay, about halfway between Tokyo and Osaka along Japan's Pacific (east) coast. The shorelines of most metropolitan harbors were landfilled during Japan's period of rapid economic growth. Tokyo Bay lost 90 percent, Ise Bay 95 percent, and Osaka Bay close to 100, percent of its tidal wetlands; nationally, Japan has lost about half its tidal flats.

The rich remnant known as Fujimae Tidal Flat (260 acres) was threatened by a Nagoya City garbage landfill project. After 15 years of resisting increasing citizen protest, the City finally decided in January 1999 to cancel the landfill, protect the site, and initiate a waste reduction program. Another landfill project targeting Sanbanze (2965 acres), a remnant tidal flat in Tokyo Bay, has also been suspended while authorities scrabble to retain a reduced-scale version of their project.

The key to this philosophical change is the tragedy of Isahaya Bay, Japan's largest tidal flat wetland (7400 acres). In 1997, completion of a 4.7-mile dike, part of a demonstrably useless land reclamation project, cut off Isahaya Bay's tidal flats from the sea. The extermination of this large, rich wetland ecosystem moved tidal flat protection and public works reform to the forefront of the conservation debate in Japan. Members of opposition parties in Japan's national parliament formed an association to protect Isahaya Bay and tidal flats. And Yamashita Hirofumi, leader of the Isahaya protection movement, won a Goldman Environmental Prize in 1998. The Isahaya Bay project is still under way.

The government under the Liberal Democratic Party has turned to public works with such vigor that Japan has become known as "The Construction State." Japan's public works budget rivals that of all other OECD countries combined, and the debts of the national and local governments now exceed the nation's GDP. The Isahaya project, conceived in the 1950s, went through so many incarnations that it has now lost all justification. Nagoya planned to dump garbage on its last remnant tidal flat while hundreds of acres of unused reclaimed land lay idle, merely because authorities were not required to consider alternatives. A national panel of scholars, activists, and other leaders identified Japan's "100 Worst Public Works Projects" in early 1998, and many of them, including all of the top ten, involved wetlands, five of them tidal flats.

Six months after Isahaya Bay was sealed off, the Environment Agency of Japan published an "Inventory of Shorebird Staging Sites" which showed that Isahaya had been the top site for shorebirds in Japan. The second largest number of shorebirds was counted at Fujimae Tidal Flat in Nagoya. Fujimae is a wetland of international importance. Environmental impact assessments (EIAs) in Japan have been marred by sloppy surveys and manipulated data. The Fujimae landfill EIA, published in July 1996, served as a primary example of the faulty old system, and by the time Nagoya City submitted the final landfill application to national authorities in late 1998, its exceedingly bad EIA made it unacceptable. The EIA's surveys of shorebird feeding behavior were conducted on only one day, outside the migration season. Only the top four inches of the tidal flats were surveyed to determine prey volumes. When members of the Save Fujimae Association surveyed the flats for burrowing shrimp, they found burrows nearly 40 inches deep, and photographed a shrimp brought up in a core from the 275-inch level.

After this, internal government EIA review committees were forced to reverse Nagoya City's conclusion that there would be "no impact." The city initially decided to go ahead with the landfill while undertaking a tidal flat restoration project as mitigation. Feasibility for the mitigation would be determined while the landfill was underway.

At a Japan Wetlands Action Network (JAWAN) International Wetland Symposium in Nagoya on December 3, the Environment Agency of Japan demanded a different course of action. Invited to comment, an Environment Agency representative stunned participants and media by officially stating that the Agency would not accept the mitigation project, and, if Nagoya City continued its application, would issue a strongly disapproving opinion to Japan's Ministry of Transportation. The Transportation Minister astonished everyone shortly thereafter by stating that the Ministry would not permit the project if the Environment Agency disapproved. Nagoya City was finally forced to look for an alternative site.

Korean Wetlands
Speakers at the JAWAN Symposium included representatives of the Korean Wetland Alliance, who presented astonishing information about tidal flats and destructive government public works projects.

Tidal differences of up to 30 feet and the intricately convoluted shoreline of the Korean peninsula's west coast contribute to the existence of extensive and very rich tidal flats. In some places the flats are over six miles wide. About 40 percent of South Korea's tidal flats have been destroyed, largely by government reclamation projects.

A land reclamation project at Saemankeum tidal flat in Chollabuk-do province in South Korea will destroy over 99,000 acres of tidal flats, cutting them off from the sea with a half-mile dike. The dike is just over half finished. South Korea became a party to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, an international treaty dating to 1971, in 1998. Japan has been a party since 1981. The Korean Wetland Alliance, a coalition of NGOs, works to conserve wetlands as understood under the provisions of the treaty.

In anticipation of the Seventh Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention in San Jose, Costa Rica in May, JAWAN and the Korean Wetlands Alliance increased their cooperation. At an NGO conference in Korea in December, 16 Korean and seven Japanese NGOs adopted the Saemankeum Declaration, urging the governments of Korea and Japan to recognize the cultural and ecological values of tidal flats, and to cancel all reclamation projects planned or underway. Because of the similarities of their wetlands and of the problems surrounding them, Japanese and Korean NGOs gave joint presentations both at an NGO pre-conference hosted by Friends of the Earth Costa Rica, and in an informal workshop at the government conference.

The Japan Wetlands Action Network has further proposed a joint survey of Japanese and Korean tidal flats, aimed at gathering data to substantiate citizens' claims that the benefits, for people and wildlife, of protecting these rich ecosystems will far outreach the benefits of landfilling them. The Japan Wetlands Action Network consists of about 70 local grassroots wetland conservation groups, with headquarters in Isahaya, Nagasaki, and Tokyo. Guided by a committee of regional block coordinators, volunteers make up its entire staff, and donations and grants its shoestring budget. JAWAN published a pamphlet and a report on the 1999 Ramsar Conference.

Please contact the author or see JAWAN's web site at <http://www.kt.rim.or.jp/~hira/jawan> for additional information. We also urge you to visit the Korean Wetlands Alliance web site at <http://ecoserve.kfem.or.kr/wetland/>.