There is a saying ?Anthropocene,? what we call Ilyuse in Korean. The word refers to a new geological period, because humans have changed the climate and ecosystem of the earth. Anthropocene follows the final stage of the Cenozoic), ?Holocene.? Ten years ago, a Dutch chemist, ?Paul Kruchen? introduced the concept. The new concept has not been regarded as one of the established theories by the scientific community. However, scientists supported the idea in a Euro Science Forum held in Stockholm, Sweden in August 2004. This year, the concept has been discussed by scientists centering on the U.K. and the U.S.

In reality, most of people have not heard the new geological period, ?Anthropocene.? Why is the new era important to us at the moment? According to geological evidences, organisms have experienced extinction five times up to now. At the new era, the sixth extinction caused by humans is expected to occur for 500 years, while 20% to 50% forms of life can be exposed to the sixth extinction.

Considering such conditions, I believe that wetlands are very important to the survival of species, including humans; wetlands are part of the carbon cycle and thus mitigate climate change; and finally wetlands hold 25~30 percent of the carbon in terrestrial ecosystems, twice as much as of the world?s forests. For these reasons, the Ramsar Convention on wetlands was made in 1971.

     What is the Ramsar mission? It is the conservation and wise use of all wetlands through local and national actions and international cooperation, as a contribution towards achieving sustainable development throughout the world. The Ramsar Convention defines the types of wetlands, including lakes and rivers, swamps and marshes, wet grasslands and peatlands, oases, estuaries, deltas and tidal flats, near-shore marines areas, mangroves and coral reefs, and human-made sites as fish ponds, rice paddies, reservoirs and salt pans.

      I mentioned the concept of Anthropocene and the Ramsar Convention, but from now on, I will compare economic development and the protection of wetlands. At the moment, we humans are at the crossroads between extinction and survival. With the economic growth rate staying the same level or becoming higher, we don?t have any choice but to destroy our Mother Nature and we can leave plants and animals of the earth exposed to extinction that cannot be resolved with our hands. Even now, the lungs of the earth, ?the Amazon Forest? and ?the Borneo Forest? have been cleared out due to logging. The construction of ?Three Gorges Dam? in China converted ecosystem nearby the Yellow River dramatically, affecting the water quality of the Yellow Sea. Overfishing by bottom trawling is driving fisheries in the Yellow Sea to extinction. The problem is that we human beings are focusing on only development and paying no heed to our environment and Mother Nature, but we are misunderstanding that those problems are too far away from us and that we can leave them to our descendants.

This summer, how many catastrophic natural disasters on the Korean Peninsula did we experience? Think about it. If we keep pouring efforts on development, we can produce more materialistic happiness. However, on the contrary, the diversity of species is expected to disappear and humans are also threatened with extinction.  Our gross national happiness cannot be acquired. See the country, Butane. The people of Butane are not enjoying economic development like us, but they are enjoying more spiritual happiness than any other people on the globe. This fact hints that if we take this issue - ?Which is more beneficial for us, economic development or environmental conservation?? - more seriously in the mid & long term, coexistence with nature is not a better but the best way for us. Therefore, I came to conclude that we should pay more attention to environmental conservation, namely, protecting wetlands.