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IUCN: Take action against the naval base on Jeju Island
By Save Jeju Island Global Campaign (Contact)
To be delivered to: Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN Director General and Ashok Khosla, IUCN President
Petition Statement
Dear IUCN Director-General Julia Marton-Lefevre:
We urge you to take three urgent steps to restore the ecological balance on Jeju Island.
1. Support assembly resolutions to shut the base and conduct a new Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Support the passage of IUCN Assembly Resolutions demanding that South Korea: 1.) End construction of this military base and restore all ravaged lands to their prior condition; and 2.) Conduct a new EIA of the naval base construction near Gangjeong, free of government control and censorship, that will include an accurate assessment of the dredging and other impacts on the soft coral reefs, and the killing of endangered species that are absent from the government’s document.
2. Let the Gangjeong people speak. Give them back the information booth that was promised to them and tell the Korean government that the villagers have a right to protest at the convention. The Korean government has banned demonstrations and picketing within just over one mile of the convention. In other words, they are barring information inside and outside. The IUCN should permit the villagers to have an information table inside the convention and to demonstrate outside. Invite Gangjeong villagers to address the full IUCN assembly at its opening or closing plenary.
3. Visit Gangjeong village and see with your own eyes the destruction of sacred ecological and cultural sites.
We urge you to take three urgent steps to restore the ecological balance on Jeju Island.
1. Support assembly resolutions to shut the base and conduct a new Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Support the passage of IUCN Assembly Resolutions demanding that South Korea: 1.) End construction of this military base and restore all ravaged lands to their prior condition; and 2.) Conduct a new EIA of the naval base construction near Gangjeong, free of government control and censorship, that will include an accurate assessment of the dredging and other impacts on the soft coral reefs, and the killing of endangered species that are absent from the government’s document.
2. Let the Gangjeong people speak. Give them back the information booth that was promised to them and tell the Korean government that the villagers have a right to protest at the convention. The Korean government has banned demonstrations and picketing within just over one mile of the convention. In other words, they are barring information inside and outside. The IUCN should permit the villagers to have an information table inside the convention and to demonstrate outside. Invite Gangjeong villagers to address the full IUCN assembly at its opening or closing plenary.
3. Visit Gangjeong village and see with your own eyes the destruction of sacred ecological and cultural sites.
Petition Background
From September 6-15, some 10,000 environmentalists will converge on Jeju Island to attend the World Conservation Congress (WCC) organized by the oldest environmental organization, the International Union of the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The WCC will take place only a few minutes away from Gangjeong where the construction of a naval base is threatening one of the planet’s last great soft coral reefs and other coastal treasures, assaulting numerous endangered species and destroying a 400-year old sustainable community of local farmers and fishers. Unfortunately, the IUCN leadership has ignored or whitewashed the naval base.
You can help give voice to the Gangjeong villagers who have been beaten and silenced, not just by their own government, but now kept out by the world’s largest environmental organization. Add your name to this letter to IUCN Director-General, Julia Marton-Lefevre and President Ashok Khosl, to be hand delivered by Gangjeong village mayor Kang Dong-kyun at the IUCN Congress.
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