By Soh Ji-young
Staff Reporter

SEOUL - An Australian environmentalist March 8 called on Korea to use the World Cup as an opportunity to revive the environment of the Nanjido landfill, located in Sangam-dong, northwestern Seoul, where the sporting event will be staged in May next year.

"The Sydney Olympic Games held in 2000 acted as a big stimulus for environmental improvement in the area, and I think the World Cup games can do the same for cleaning up the Namjido area," said Dr. Kate Hughes, director of ecology programs at the Olympic Coordination Authority of Australia (OCA).

"The World Cup games can also contribute to enhancing public awareness of the environment," she said in an interview with The Korea Times.

Hughes, 50, came to Seoul on March 4 for a six-day visit at the invitation of the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement (KFEM) to exchange ideas on running a green World Cup.

The 2002 competition will be co-hosted by Korea and Japan.

An environmental advocate and campaigner for 20 years, she was in charge of drafting the environmental guidelines for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, which were well-known for their environment-friendly management.

"Although the scale is different, there are quite a lot of similarities between Australia and Korea, as they both dealt with landfill issues while preparing for an international event," Hughes said.

Homebush Bay, the site of last yearÕs Olympics, had been degraded for over 100 years, first by land reclamation and later by waste dumping.

"About 160 hectares of the 760-hectare site was used as a garbage dump for 50 years until 1988, which damaged the wetlands and polluted the waterways in the area," she said.

But through a remediation program launched by the Australian government in 1992, the natural environment of the area was revitalized. A total of 137 million Australian dollars were poured into the clean-up project.

"Now, many important birds and plants can again be seen at the site, including the Lathams Snipe, a bird which is also indigenous to Korea," Hughes said.

"The landfills have all been planted with native grasses and trees that suit the soil, and made into parks, walkways and playing fields," she said, adding that Korea could follow AustraliaÕs example in transforming the previous waste site into an environment-friendly one.

"I was flabbergasted after looking at the tremendous size of the garbage hills at the Nanjido site. The landfills in Sydney are quite big, but they look so tiny compared to the ones here," the director said.

Hughes toured the Nanjido site on March 6, which had been used as a waste dump for 15 years until it was closed in 1993 due to its massive pollution of the area.

She said the Korean government should provide people with more detailed information about Nanjido, to raise peopleÕs awareness about the harsh consequences of mass consumption.

"They could start by setting up a simple website, or making brochures explaining the cleanup program and giving them to people who visit the stadium," she stated.

"Community input is also essential in effectively monitoring the clean-up program," she said, adding that a non-government reference group had met every six weeks for nearly three years to keep track of the remediation of the Olympic site.