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Driving far out of the capital, I pass the former island of Munhaksan, now floating in a sea of sprawling development. From here westward, the numbing lines of identical apartment blocks and empty, geometrical parks all lie on artificial land, reclaimed mostly since the early 1980s.
Finally approaching the furthest edge of this advancing concrete, I glimpse its cutting edge: the rising skyline of Songdo City, intended as an international showpiece of environment-friendly development.
Promotional advertising does not mention that it is built on 1,500 acres of intertidal mudflat, a habitat known to science as one of the world's most productive ecosystems. Among the trumpeted credentials of this new city are energy-efficient cooling systems and traffic lights. Such green gadgetry seems irrelevant, however, when you realize that a vast natural paradise has been destroyed to create all this new office space.
Until only a decade ago, Songdo in Incheon was famous for its great diversity of fish. The highest quality surf-clams were produced here. These fertile mudflats, catering to abundant biodiversity and shadowed by impressive swirling flocks of migrant shorebirds stretched to the horizon and were locally known as Meon-eoh-geum, meaning "endlessly far."
Tidal flats play an important role in sustaining healthy environments and marine ecosystems. A 2006 study by the Korean Ocean Research and Development Institute found that the average economic value of mudflat (mostly due to its fisheries) was over $32,000 per hectare annually. Assessing Incheon's tidal flat in 2007, the Korea Environment Institute found that just one hectare provided $ 27,972 of benefits in water purification, and sequesters 10 tons of carbon per annum.
The economic and ecological value of tidal flats was also well-known in 2000, when Incheon publicly committed itself to its ``Charter for Tidal Flat Preservation."
Despite this, Incheon recorded the largest loss of tidal flats of all South Korean localities between 2003 and 2008 ― an area of 33 square kilometers. The Songdo development project was pushed through without so much as an environmental impact assessment, and the precious role of mudflats was ignored.
Today, a tiny segment of enclosed mud remains at Aham-do. This remnant is itself dissected by curving highways and bridges, echoing to the crash of thundering heavy-goods traffic. Beyond the revving of passing trucks can barely be heard a series of upbeat squeaks and squeals. A scan through binoculars reveals the charming, elegant Saunders's Gull ― a diminutive seabird with bold spotted wingtips.
A restless party picks its way methodically over the mud with dainty steps, eyeing the nervous crabs. The timeless ebb and flow of the tide has carved a snaking channel, along the margins of which one patrols on pacing wing beats. Suddenly he swerves back and plummets downward. Briefly alighting, he strains to wrest a worm from the mud, before fluttering up triumphantly.
This globally vulnerable species, with a small, declining population, has been well-known to developers and Incheon City Government since at least 2000. It has even been used at times to promote the environmental credentials of the development, which is simultaneously destroying the habitat that these birds depend on.
Their nesting colony, the last one left in the country, is now totally surrounded by construction. In summer busy adult birds find food for their chicks either at Aham-do, or fly some three kilometers southward to ``Section 11," the last significant mudflat remaining in Incheon, which is itself currently being destroyed by reclamation.
Even at this late stage, however, there is still time for Songdo developers to protect biodiversity ― by halting all reclamation of remaining mudflat, and protecting the breeding grounds of one of Korea's most charismatic birds.
The writer is a conservationist associated with various environmental organizations in Korea. He can be reached at gymnojene@yahoo.co.uk.
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