Have vision, reclaim Cooum

Yoon-Jae Yang, the former Vice-Mayor of Seoul, Korea, who visited the Cooum, said the river reminded him for the Cheonggyecheon stream, before it was restored into its present state. 

“Fifty years ago, the Cheonggyecheon was like the Cooum. In the 1960s, the stream was covered in concrete to move out the slum dwellers around the area. In the 1970s, the government put an elevated expressway over the stream. I had studied in the US and later visited countries like Germany, when they had started to naturalise their streams and rivers. Mayor Lee Myung-Bak chose the restoration of the stream as his election mandate and once he became the mayor, I got into the government to oversee the restoration,” said the senior advisor of the Korea Rural Community Corporation. 

Much like the nay-sayers of Cooum restoration, Yang said people’s first reaction to the Cheonggyecheon project was that it couldn’t be done. “Almost 95% of the Seoul Metropolitan Government officials thought that it was impossible. But once I gave a presentation, 65% changed their mind and supported me. We created a special task force. The biggest challenge was convincing  people that restoration would be beneficial. It took us three years to restore and we managed to demolish the expressway and created a transport system, to reduce the number of cars. Once the restoration was done, there was a change in the climate and the stream also had an increase in species like fish and birds. Now, Cheonggyecheon stream, which is in the heart of Seoul, is a popular tourist place and an important part of the city,” he said. 

The academician, who was here for the Chennai Water Forum organised by the Goethe Institut, said Cooum and other rivers too can be restored – through political will. “Chennai has fantastic technological skills and genius architects, planners and urban designers. You need a strong political leader, without which it is impossible. The citizens should push the government to restore the waterbodies – which in the longer run can be economically beneficial too,” added Yang. 

Dr Regina Dube, from the Municipal Department for Immission Protection, Waste Water, Toxic and Nuclear Accidents of Hamburg, said community participation helped create an integrated management plan to ensure ecological protection while fostering industrial growth. “The plan has been designed by the local people and authorities from the city of Hamburg and adjacent states. The idea was to understand the ecological needs of the river and how they can be coor dinated to meet the economic needs of industries like shipping, fisheries and the harbour. This has been done and a lot of projects have been defined in this plan, which is a guiding document for ecological restoration. The plan came out of a participatory process. The communities have been involved from the beginning and this was an important part. It took a lot of time to negotiate but once it was done, it helped in implementation. Keeping the community in line was important  to meet the goals of such a project,” said Dr Dube. 

Petra Dobner, Professor for Political Science at Martin-Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg and author of ‘Water Politics’, said there is an urgent need to create sustainable solutions for water. “If you look at our rivers, much of our water is poisoned and it is not in a shape that can be used. Our global water use  is not sustainable at all. We need to urgently move away from the broad global principles and look at the local level. The Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development is far too generalised. While restoring a river in a small city somewhere in south Germany or south India, you have the local knowledge. So, there is a dire need to elevate the local experience and get more ideas to run things on a national level,” she concluded.