Environmental experts, public officers and civic activists from home and abroad will gather on Jeju Island next month to pool ideas for the environmental preservation of the De-Militarized Zone, a strip of land along the border between South and North Korea that has turned into a wildlife haven.

Organized by the Ministry of Environment and the Gyeonggi Research Institute, a workshop on the DMZ will be held on Sept. 7. The ministry said it will try to reflect ideas presented at the session in its future policies for the border zone.

The participants will discuss the ecological value of the DMZ and ways to best preserve it. Community-level preservation efforts and the government’s plan to build an ecological park there will also be among the main topics.

Qunli Han, the director of the UNESCO regional science bureau for Asia and the Pacific, will give a presentation on international natural heritage and successful cases of community participation in preserving them. Uwe Riecken, the manager at the German federal agency for nature conservation, will introduce natural preservation in other border regions.

The workshop is a sideline event of the World Conservation Congress, which will be held from Sept. 6-15.

Around 10,000 participants from 180 nations are expected to participate in the quadrennial event. The theme of this year’s congress is “resilient nature.”

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)