President Nishida of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society,
Mayor Huh Nam-sik of the City of Busan,
Incoming President Lee Dong-kyou,
Distinguished participants from the scientific community,
Ladies and gentlemen,
I would first like to thank President Nishida and Council members of AOGS for their kind invitation to speak to you on this special occasion of the 5th General Assembly of Asia Oceania Geosciences Society.
On behalf of the government of the Republic of Korea, I extend my warmest welcome to the guests and members of AOGS from all over the world and representatives of international organizations.
The progress in science and engineering has been the most important driving force for the development of our modern world. Science has brought enormous changes into various areas – politics, economy, education and society to name a just few. Asia is one of the regions that have benefited most from those blessings of the scientific progress.
The rapid growth, however, is not achieved without cost. We are under the loom of ever-growing global crises. The natural resources to fuel our society which we took for granted for decades are diminishing at an alarming pace, and for the first time in history, the human activity is taking its direct impact on the global environment in unpredictable ways.
Not only natural resources but also water and air, which we once considered free and unlimited, can no longer be taken for granted. We must join our hands not only to find solutions to these problems but also to convey our ideas and the actions we must take to the public.
Building public consensus is highly important. In this vein, the role of earth scientists and engineers should not end in labs or in classrooms. They should reach out to the public, all levels of governments and corporate boardrooms as advisors to relevant policy makers. In that sense, I would like to address what kind of role we, citizens of the modern society, expect from the scientific community to play from my own personal perspective and experiences.
Before I was asked to serve as Prime Minister of the Lee Myung-bak administration, I traveled many corners of the globe in my capacity as UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change, a Member of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB), and Chairman of the UN High-level Expert Panel on Water and Disaster.
In these capacities, I have been directly involved in tackling the crucial issues concerning the mankind; climate change, water, and natural disasters. All these environmental problems cannot be recognized without solid scientific evidence, and viable solutions to these challenges cannot be devised without scientific wisdom.
It was the priceless lesson that I learned from the painstaking process of finding how to address the global environmental issues.
For example, nowadays one hardly argues climate change is a just exaggerated fear for an uncertain future by a handful of civic environmental activists and obsessed scientists. Public awareness of the gravity of the challenge of climate change is now heightened more than ever before. In making climate change from once backburner issue to global top agenda, I believe, that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) played a key role.
It is the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC released last year that has virtually ended the debate on the scientific uncertainty of climate change. The report warns us that the global temperature will rise up to 6.4 degrees celsius and the sea level up to 59 centimeters by the end of the 21st century if our current pattern of development that depends heavily upon fossil fuels is maintained, that is, if we continue to do our business as usual (BAU). Considering that the rise of global temperature for the past ten thousand years was just less than 1 degree celsius, we all can easily see how serious the IPCC's warning is.
It was the scientific community that provided reliable evidence and solid theoretical foundation to prove climate change is so rapidly taking place and human activities are responsible for this.
Without science, we could not have even embarked on the currently ongoing negotiations to combat global climate change and might be wasting our time like a frog in slow-boiling water.
Besides, the scientific community has made an enormous contribution to renewing and consolidating public efforts to address the common problems facing humanity. Science is by nature a public science and service to the common good.
I have heard that AOGS is a young society whose importance is being recognized not only by people in Asia and Oceania but also by the scientists in the other continents. Asia and Oceania currently holds the largest population in the world, and is perhaps the most rapidly growing economy on our planet.
Unfortunately, natural disasters such as extreme weather events and large earthquakes often inflict on the populated places. The recent extreme events, for example, the snow storm in Mongolia in late May and cyclone in Myanmar last month, have caused great human and economic loss, not to mention the recent tragic earthquake in Sichuan, China that has taken tens of thousands of people’s lives. Only on early last Saturday morning, the earthquake ripped across Iwate Prefecture in the Northeast region of Japan.
These natural disasters may not be prevented, but certainly can be alleviated. What scientists can do is to understand their mechanism, make good prediction and offer theoretical support for the decision makers. And these tasks would require all the geoscientists to work together.
I believe that AOGS presents such a platform for scientists of different disciplines of earth sciences to communicate and collaborate. I am pleased to see that many Korean scientists have registered for this conference, and would like to see closer coordination and cooperation among them and with government policy makers in Korea.
Ladies and gentleman,
The Korean government stands committed to the international efforts to mitigate global disasters and protect the environment. Korea is ready to share its accumulated experiences and technology with other countries. We recognize that such knowledge sharing and cooperation go a long way in promoting social welfare through public safety and the benefits therein for all of our respective citizens and the humanity.
I am heartened to know that more than 1700 scientists representing over 55 countries from Asia and Oceania and in other continents of the world are attending the conference. It would be an unparalleled opportunity to strengthen the collaboration among the participants as well as to advance the geosciences in Asia and Oceania.
I hope you all have a productive time in this wonderful city of Busan and that this conference will contribute to solving geoscientific problems facing Asia and Oceania.
Thank you for your attention.
이 누리집은 대한민국 공식 전자정부 누리집입니다.
