Several weeks ago, my school had gone to Jeju Island, which is the biggest island in Korea, for our annual school trip. When we had arrived at Jeju airport, my classmates and I saw some government officials at the arrival sector of the airport searching for participants for the 2012 World Conservation Congress(WCC). At that time I did not know anything about the WCC. So I looked up on the Internet to find out what the WCC was after I came back from my school excursion, and realized that it was something that the Korean government was heavily investing on, and that it was something of great magnitude.

  The World Conservation Congress is the quadrennial meeting for the ICUN, which is the abbreviation of International Union for Conservation of Nature. The ICUN is a union dedicated to finding "pragmatic solutions to our most pressing environment and development challenges", as stated in its official website, and its highest decision-making body is the World Conservation Congress, aiming to improve how people manage our natural environment for human, social, and economic development. And it was this conference that was held in Jeju, Republic of Korea, from September 6 to 15, 2012.

  Leaders from government, the public sector, non-governmental organizations, business, UN agencies and social organizations all joined together at Jeju to discuss, debate and decide solutions for the world's environment and development issues and concluded on signing the Jeju Declaration.

  Key resolutions of the Jeju Declaration include preserving biodiversity and development of the economy at the same time. In addition, the IUCN proposed that it will initiate a forum known as the Jeju World Leaders' Conservation Forum through the declaration. The Jeju Declaration will serve as the basis for environmental issues at the IUCN that will be led by Zhang Xinsheng of China for the next four years. He was chosen as new IUCN president, replacing Ashok Khosla of India.