ICC in Korea for 10 years: Review and Perspectives

ICC in Korea for 10 years: Review and Perspectives Sunwook Hong, Jongmyoung Lee, Bukyeong Park Our Sea of East Asia Network (OSEAN)

※ From the speech in '2010NOWPAP International Coastal Cleanup and Workshop on Marine Litter       Management (Kaijio Hotel, Hirado, Nagasaki, 26, March 2010).

ICC Korea was started as a marine litter (ML) monitoring program of governmental research project. The first national coordinator was a researcher of Korea Maritime Institute who was in charge of ML monitoring by NGOs. Most of site captains were local leaders of that monitoring program. ICC had been partially supported by governmental research projects, which was helpful for organizing events and building partnership between government and NGOs. Thus we can say that ICC in Korea was born with research project of government.
Sunwook Hong got involved in that project as a researcher and became the ICC coordinator of Korea in 2002. But she moved to NGO and ICC Korea has been mainly organized by NGOs since 2004. And most of local events have been organized by local groups without financial support from government.

 

Growth of ICC in Korea

 

 

 

Fig. 1 Number of People and site of ICC Korea (2001~2009)

 

Fig. 1 shows numbers of the people and site of ICC Korea for the last 9 years. At the very first year, ICC was limited to ML monitoring sites, 23 in number. Many volunteers were not good at filling data cards. Only 17 hundred people reported data cards although 25 hundreds of people actually participated. Participants had been continuously increasing to reach over 6 thousands in 2008. And Number of sites was over 60 last yaer. But typhoons and heavy rains cause decrease of participants in some cases.
In 2006, after five times of experiences, we got to know there were some unique items found in Korean coast, which were not included in ICC data card. So, we changed the data card to reflect the Korean status of marine litter. We added 10 abundant items to the original version of ICC card and required for site captains to record width as well as length of cleaned coast for standardization.

 
Information from ICC Data
 

ICC data card is designed to find out the source of ML, thus it iscategorizing sources of ML as 6 kinds of activities. Fig. 2 is showing the major source of ML in Korea.

 

Fig. 2 Result of ICC Korea (2001~2009)
You can see that ‘Shoreline & Recreational Activities’ is the most important ML source. We can guess that about a half of ML in Korea are coming from land. ‘Ocean& Waterway Activities’ is shown as 20%~35%. However, the percentages of this category in global report of ICC are always around 5%. It means the rate of ML related to fishery and shipping activities in Korea is higher than that of world average by more than 4 times.

 

Top 10 in Korea (2001-2009)

 

 

Most abundant Item found in ICC Korea for the last 9 years is Cigarettes (Table 1). It’s the same as the world ‘Top 10’ of ICC. Bouys/ Floats’ are ranked fifth. But usually we can not find this item in that of world result. In 390 thousands of litters which ICC participants of Korea recorded so far, Top 10 items account for 70%. Thus we should focus on controlling of those10 items. It can be an effective way to reduce ML in Korea.

 

 

Fig. 3 Change of abundant items in ICC Korea

Fig. 3 (a) is showing the increase of Cigarerrets and Cigarettes filters. But we don’t know whether Cigarettes are actually increasing in Korean coasts or participants are becoming to collect comparatively small items more than before. Bags are also increasing continuously since 2002 (Fig. 3 (b). However, Beverage cans (Fig. 3 (c)) and Beverage bottles (Fig. 3 (d) are decreasing. We guess that it’s an effect of reinforced recycling policy. Most of cans and bottles are collected and recycled by waste management system in Korea. We can see that waste management policy on land can influence the generation of ML on coast. But recycling rate of filmy materials - like plastic bags - is still low. It can be a partial explanation of increase of plastic bags on the beaches.

Outcomes
 The result of ICC does not mean just numbers of marine litter. It has been influencing the ML management of Korea. It is the first data-base about source of marine litter in Korea. Before ICC, there were many cleanup events in Korea, but people only picked up the litter. With beginning of ICC, people started of record the items they collected. The data people collected have been accumulated and anylized.
Experiences and data from ICC provided the basement of the protocol of ‘Korea National Marine Debris Monitoring Program’. We modified ICC card to the monitoring card of the government survey project. And we can compare the result of monitoring program and ICC data.
But the most important outcome of ICC is raising public awareness. More than 25 thousands of people participated in ICC and became to know what is making sea dirty. I believe that the awareness about cause of marine pollution can change behaviors of the people.
Last year, we developed ‘Marine litter education kit for fishermen’ with KOEM (Korea Marine Environment.

 

Management Corporation). I’ve already told you that we found out fishery related ML are significantly abundant in Korea. MLTM decided to put the priority on fishermen education and supported the development of the education kit. Main contents of the material are ‘damage of ML’, ‘major policy measures of the government’ and ‘guides to which fishermen easily accommodate’. It contains brochures, posters, presentaion file, video clip and manual for instructors. Almost everyone can give a lecture to fishermen with this education kit.
ICC Korea also has contributed international cooperation. ICC coordinators of Korea and Japan have been leading the cooperation between civil societies of both countries. And they also helped promotion of NOWPAP ICC campaign from Yamagata in 2006 to Hirado today. With ICC, civil organizations of East Asia are enhancing the network for reducing ML in the region.

 

Perspectives

 

However, we have long way to go for ML free Sea of East Asia. For the development of ICC Korea, we need the enterprise participation and fund from diverse sources. And we have to develop effective pubic relation strategies including the media involvement. We need to develop roles of zone captains, who are in charge of organizing the ICC event around their own local regions. We also need active participation of land waste related organizations. And we have to use the ICC data more effectively for ML management policy.