Expo city’s coastal plan

The port of Yeosu’s has been selected as the host for Expo 2012, reflecting Korea’s recent experience as the organiser of major international events and the city’s own concerns for the marine environment

Lights across the harbour: celebrating Yeosu’s
winning bid to host Expo 2012

Yeosu and its neighbouring coastline encapsulate all that is most appealing and yet most challenging about the marine environment. The city is a port with ambitions to become a major hub for world maritime trade. Fishing is an important local industry. And the port itself is host to large scale industrial complexes, including one of the world's biggest petrochemical production centres, a steel works and the world’s second largest container port. It is a scale of activity that supports Korea’s ambition to become one of the ‘five great ocean powers of the world’.

All of this is set around a peninsula which is surrounded by more than 300 islands of the Korean archipelago, which in turn include some of Korea’s most important conservation areas.

Aims of the Expo
The focus for Expo 2012 and its expected eight million visitors will be two programmes. The first and more high-profile of these is the Yeosu Declaration. It will be a rallying call to the world, addressing the mutual dependence of people and their coastal environment and how the former - led by governments, international organisations and other leaders of opinion - must act in concert to ensure that the sea’s resources and natural environment are protected for future generations.

Korea’s concerns for the future of its seas and coastline, and the industries they support, are far from confined to immediate sustainability. The Yeosu Declaration will address the threat to the future existence of the global community of coastal cities. At an international symposium held in the city in the run-up to its selection for Expo 2012, Korea's special envoy on Climate Change to the United Nations, Han Seung-soo, made a clear statement of the impending threat presented by global warming. “If sea levels rise, Korean ports like Busan, Incheon and Yeosu will face disastrous fates. So it is very timely that Yeosu intends to handle global warming and climate change issues,” he said in a keynote speech.

Environmental concerns
The other programme for Expo 2012, called the Yeosu Project, is already under way. Its wide-ranging remit is to coordinate and enhance activities dealing with marine environmental concerns of the moment: climate change and natural disasters, marine environmental pollution, preserving the diversity of biological species and coastal management.

The project is also dealing with sustainable exploitation of the oceans and their coastlines, from traditional industries such as fishing to the development and application of marine energy technology. Its aims include the promotion of an advanced marine biotechnology industry and the development of marine mineral resources and the marine environment as a focus of leisure.