Korea Forest Service Minister Nam Sung-hyun at his office in Daejeon with a Chinese saying displayed behind him which means “Put yourself in someone else’s shoes” / Courtesy of Korea Forest Service
By Ko Dong-hwan
Korea Forest Service Minister Nam Sung-hyun carries a sapling during a tree-planting event in Manatuto, East Timor, Jan. 12. Courtesy of Korea Forest Service
The Korea Forest Service (KFS) will dedicate this year to promoting how the country successfully recovered its vast forests from the 1950-53 Korean War that devastated its land and spreading the know-how to developing countries, according to the agency’s head.
In a recent interview with The Korea Times, Minister Nam Sung-hyun said the agency will seek cooperation with international organizations to better promote to the world how the country revived its wooded regions that cover 63 percent of its land and has been handling forest fires to protect the natural resource.
Nam expects such opportunities to be present at general assemblies for the U.N. Convention on Biodiversity scheduled for October, the U.N. Climate Change Conference and G20 Summit in November, and the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification in December. He said the agency will also introduce its mechanism on forestation and forest protection to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and Environment Programme.
“There are global forest-friendly initiatives we’ve launched, like Asian Forest Cooperation Organization in 2018 and 39 memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with advanced countries including Austria, Japan, Australia and Canada,” Nam said. “This year, we will form new MOUs with countries in Africa to combat desertification and with island states in the Pacific to recover local mangroves.”
Nam has already planned this year’s official development assistance (ODA) projects to support other countries. The agency has secured a 26.9 billion won ($20 million) budget for the projects. Among the amount, 5.8 billion won will fund recovery of mangroves in Vietnam and 2.1 billion won will support forestation in Guatemala, Guyana and Togo.
The projects also include transferring the agency’s forest fire control techniques to Mongolia and Indonesia, methods to introduce forest resort infrastructure to Cambodia and forestation in Vietnam and Tajikistan.
“Forest ODA is a key to the country’s green ODA projects,” Nam said. “Based on how we’ve been doing with our own forestation, welfare services using our local forests and forest protection from natural disasters, we’ve diversified ways in which we can offer the projects to different countries and enlarge their scales.”
Last month on his latest ODA-related overseas trip, Nam visited East Timor, a country Korea signed its 39th MOU with, and met the country’s Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao and minister in charge of local forests. He also joined a tree-planting event in the city of Manatuto where AFoCo is currently engaging in a forestation project. Ambassadors of Indonesia and the U.N. in East Timor, officials from AFoCo and central and local governments of East Timor and local residents joined the three-day event.
The event marked the beginning of the KFS’ ODA campaign in the country this year. The agency, upon request from the East Timorese government, will dispatch experts to the country to transfer techniques behind selecting proper trees to plant in different soils, improving quality of forest soil and preventing landslides.
A Korea Forest Service helicopter drops water to extinguish a fire over an industrial fan manufacturing factory in Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province, April 24, 2023. Yonhap
In addition to two ongoing forestation projects funded by AFoCo with a $1.7 million budget, the minister is now seeking ways to secure a $4 million budget for future ODA projects for the country during the 2025-28 period. He has also knocked on the doors of the Korea International Cooperation Agency under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for another $8 million for the country.
“More than 60 percent of East Timor’s land is forests, which now remain mostly devastated just like how Korea was in the 1960s following the war,” Nam said. “After failing a forestation project once in 2008, the country now badly wants our expertise and advice to not fail again.”
Part of the reasons the KFS invests in ODA projects for developing countries is that, under the country’s new law taking effect on Feb. 17, reduced carbon emission and greenhouse gas through the agency’s overseas forestation projects can be recognized as credit to the country’s comprehensive efforts for its own carbon neutrality.
Introducing a policy called REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation Plus), the new law encourages not just KFS but also other government agencies and companies to commit to similar efforts by transferring credits behind the achievement across borders.
“The new law’s commencement has allowed us to join the global movement of protecting forests in developing countries and using the outcome as a contribution to the country’s national efforts for reaching the greenhouse gas reduction goal by 2030 and carbon neutrality goal by 2050,” Nam said.
The minister last July saw his agency making headlines as a crew of 70 firefighters demonstrated their expertise in Quebec, Canada, where a large-scale forest fire engulfed the city of Lebel-sur-Quevillon. As the fire lasted for almost a month, the firefighters extinguished blazes across a 261-hectare site. Using drones equipped with thermal cameras, they also tracked and extinguished hidden embers below the ground.
Thanks to the demonstration, 12 developing countries have joined in the agency’s forestation education program, including Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines.
“This year also marks the 50th anniversary of Korea’s partnership with Germany on forestry,” Nam said. “Germany supported us with money and dispatched experts for 20 years. Korea’s forestation wouldn’t have succeeded without Germany.”