A review of wetland policies and related guidelines of leading nations and Korea with emphasis on creation of artificial wetlands

Abstract

Legal regimes of major countries actively involved in wetland programs including USA, Japan, Germany, Netherlands, and Denmark, show that these leading nations have developed their own legal regimes and policies for the conservation and restoration of wetlands since early 1990s. The main feature of their position is to preserve, create and restore wetlands, including tidal flats. However, this approach, so called mitigation policy, is thus far, not a fully established policy but an evolving one. For Korea, there are only a few laws and policies which hint at the importance of creating coastal wetlands as a conservation measure, however, most of those systems only exist as vague provisions which lack any tangible and compulsory implementing procedures and technical guidelines. It seems that it is necessary to strengthen the legal measures for conserving coastal wetlands in Korea including specifying economic assessment methods and funding sources for the creation, restoration and rehabilitation of tidal flats to firmly establish a national wetland mitigation policy.