Phil-Environmental Tide Land Reclamation and Korean Agriculture

친환경간척농지개발과 우리농업

In Korea, It was natural and inevitable to reclaim tidal land for farming due to over-population in small territory. Looking back upon the history of tidal land reclamation in Korea, We can find the first case of it in 13th century KangHwaDo(Island), and also find several records of small scale reclamations of western sea-coast from Korea dynasty to Chosun dynasty. A lot of wide fertile agricultural areas on western sea-coast have been developed through tidal land reclamation for about 1000-year after Korea dynasty. and on these areas, we have produced rice which we live on. An average areas of farming land per capital in korea is only 0.04ha, which is one sixth of global average. For water resources, similarly, capacity of water resources alloted to one person is $11{\%}$ of global average. So, without supplementary water development, we will have suffered from a severe deficiency of water Therefore we must prepare for these predictable short water and food problems. and tidal land reclamation may be suitable alternative to settle these problems. However, tidal land reclamation is a work of closing estuary, intercepting sea water inflow, developing a freshened estuary lake and farming lands etc. therefore it apparently causes a change of ecosystem, water quality and littoral environment. Nowadays, widely recognized the importance of environmental preservation, it is desirable or requested to make phil-environmental and sustainable development minimizing the environmental influence due to tidal land reclamation project. In this paper, the role of tidal land reclamation project in the development process of Korean agriculture was reviewed and the direction of afterwards tidal land reclamation project was suggested.