The “Yellow Sea Partnership for Enhanced Public Awareness and Participation”
session focused on how public awareness and participation activities undertaken
through the joint efforts of partners can reach out to a wider stakeholdership.
Sustainable use of coastal and marine resources worldwide cannot only depend on
scientific knowledge and policy implementation, but also needs input from all
sectors of the population. As such, the public should first understand the
environmental concerns and their associated social, economic, and political
issues. Furthermore, the public should participate, where possible, to
contribute to coastal and marine environmental protection and management.
Increasing public awareness of the issues surrounding us in the Seas of East
Asia can only lead to more efforts to save our environment.
Enhancing public awareness is a large task, but can be efficiently accomplished
through the collaborative efforts of many parties. A partnership where members
share resources and the work is one way to spread public awareness to a wider
audience.
The seminar shared experiences of the various partner’s public awareness
activities, and also how to improve the function of the partnership for the
benefit of the entire Yellow Sea region, such as:
• lessons learned and challenges in public awareness activity implementation;
• how to improve communication and co-ordination of activities amongst partners;
and
• how to better manage a partnership for maximum benefits.
For future implementation, the seminar discussed and recommended the following
new joint initiatives to be collaboratively implemented amongst the various
partners:
1. Preparation of a common logo for the Yellow Sea Partnership to illustrate the
collaborative effort of the Yellow Sea partners’ activity (WWF-Japan and the
YSLME PMO).
2. Publication of a book listing recommended Ramsar sites for Republic of Korea.
YSEPP will provide existing data, and YSLME will work with KFEM to produce the
publication (KFEM, WWF, and YSLME).
3. Youth programme to raise public awareness of school children. Wetlands
International-Beijing Office and YSLME will coordinate implementation of youth
programmes in 2007, continuing the on-going efforts by WI, Ramsar Japan and
Pusan National University-ROK (WI China and YSLME).
4. World Wetlands Day 2007. ROK MOE, MOMAF and Korean NGOs will organize
activities in the Han River Estuary. KFEM may organize public campaigns about
the importance of wetland conservation. KFEM and Global Village Beijing will
discuss how to further co-operate on their planned activities (KFEM and GBV).
These proposed joint activities will be examples of a group of partners with
common goals who join hands in sharing resources to implement common activities
to achieve their mutual objectives to protect the Yellow Sea’s marine and
coastal environment. These co-operative efforts may serve as a lesson and be
replicated in other regions, in order to expand public awareness to a wider
stakeholdership through the pooling of resources.
