Minister Maanee Lee Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9G U

Minister of Environment Telephone 020-3353 2000

Ministry of Environment guardian.co.uk
88 Gwanmoon-ro,
Gwacheon-si,
Gyeonggi-do,
427-729,
Republic of Korea

October 5, 2010

Dear Minister of Environment,

I am writing on behalf of the Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom and our readers
worldwide to ask you to consider a proposal for protecting South Korea’s biodiversity.

The action has been proposed by our online readers and developed by professional scientists. It
is based by scientific evidence.

We believe it will both protect an important species and habitat and send a clear signal to the
negotiations at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity COP10 in Nagoya later this month
that the decisive, concrete actions can and must be taken to halt the alarming decline in global
biodiversity.

Our campaign, Biodiversity 100, has identified 26 achievable actions in a number of countries
and has the support of the international scientific community. We are sharing our proposals with
journalists around the world, who will be able to measure the success of their national and local
governments in implementing the actions we have put forward. For more details of the
campaign please go to guardian.co.uk/biodiversity100.

The specific proposal we request that you consider is to scale down the Four Rivers Restoration
Project (more details below).

We kindly request you to react publicly to our recommendation, both through national media
and through your statements to the CBD COP10 plenary. We also urge you to consider
including our proposed action when you revise your National Biodiversity Strategy and Action
Plan after COP10.

As a major international media outlet with a global audience, the Guardian takes seriously its
responsibility to report on the planet’s biodiversity crisis. We would be very keen to hear back
from you about your country’s efforts to protect the natural environment and, especially, to hear
of your reaction to our proposal.
Yours Sincerely,

Alan Rusbridger
Editor-in-Chief
The Guardian
CC: Vice minister Jeong-ho Hun
Mr. Suh Sang-pyo, Director, Economic Organization & Environment Division
Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive secretary, CBD

Four Rivers Restoration project

Action: Scale down the Four Rivers Restoration project

Description: Earlier this year, the South Korean President, Lee Myung-bak was awarded a
prize for his work on protecting biodiversity by the executive secretary of the Convention on
Biological Diversity. At a Ramsar Convention meeting in 2008, hosted in South Korea, Lee said:
“South Korea will keep increasing the number of wetland protection areas and Ramsar sites”.
However, the Four Major Rivers Restoration project, which will cost an estimated US$17.8bn by
2012, faces bitter opposition by environmentalists both locally and internationally. It involves
building 16 dams on four of the country’s largest rivers, creating live tributary dams, the raising
of 87 irrigation dams that are already in place; reinforcing hundreds of kilometres of riverbank
and 570 million cubic metres worth of dredging. The impact on biodiversity is not fully known,
as the environmental impact assessment for the project is not reliable, conservationists allege.
Wetlands are rich habitats for biodiversity and over 100 of them, including two wetland
protection areas, will be affected. Scientists say the Four Rivers project needs to be stopped to
avoid destroying more Ramsar sites and their biodiversity.

Evidence: “Four Rivers will be an ecological disaster,” said Jeung Mingull, an ecological
geneticist at Kongju National University at a hearing in Seoul administrative court in April, on an
injunction to halt work on the South Han River. A group of 2,800 academics have also accused
the government of twisting data and ignoring scientific recommendations.

For the full version of this text with links to scientific papers, please visit the Biodiversity 100 site:
guardian.co.uk/biodiversity100