Nial Moores before the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Korea

Nial Moores is director of Birds Korea, an accredited NGO in the Republic of Korea. Its work covers birds and the habitats they depend on, in Korea and across the Yellow Sea more widely. This conversation was recorded shortly before the country hosted the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Conservation Congress.

Hosting a major international conservation event puts a government in an awkward position, and that was the substance of the discussion. The congress brought delegates, resolutions and considerable international attention to a country whose recent record included the enclosure of the Saemangeum tidal flats and an active programme of coastal reclamation and river engineering.

The question raised was what such an event actually achieves. A resolution passed at a congress has no force in domestic planning law. What a congress does supply is a moment when the host’s own practice is subject to outside scrutiny and to domestic reporting it would not otherwise attract, which is worth something, but is a much narrower claim than the language of these occasions usually suggests.

Birds Korea publishes its assessments of the Yellow Sea eco-region and of the reclamation programmes affecting it.