Randolph T. Hester

Guest columnist

Last summer, while North Korea rattled its nuclear saber and South Korea boasted of its "Green New Deal," two bird chicks were born nearly unnoticed in an industrial-sewage pond in Incheon, South Korea. These endangered black-faced spoonbills (Platalea minor) warn us of how easily an American institution of otherwise high virtue can develop flimsy global networks, displace its moral compass and send a faraway species toward an extinction vortex.

Precarious politics may allow us to ignore when our allies violate agreements on conservation and biodiversity. But the participation of 11 major American universities (including my alma mater, N.C. State, and Duke University) in building satellite campuses in the middle of the world's largest privately developed real estate project, is alarming. Known as the Songdo International Business District (SIBD), this project is being developed by Gale Inc. in concert with a number of other American companies such as Cisco Systems, 3M, and United Technologies. Located in Incheon, South Korea, 30 of its proposed 50 buildings are under construction -- at buildout Songdo will provide 40 million square feet of office space and 22,500 thousand units of housing in an area that a decade ago consisted of over 12,000 acres of wetlands.

Among the migratory birds dependent on Songdo wetlands is the black-faced spoonbill, an elegant long-legged bird with a worldwide population of about 2,000. Their wintering grounds in Taiwan and Hong Kong enjoy extraordinary protection, but their nesting habitat in North and South Korea is vulnerable. In 2006, 58 spoonbills were counted among the remnants of Songdo; intact, Songdo probably could have fed a quarter of the entire spoonbill population. This year, desperate for a place to nest, eight pairs of spoonbills lived on a pile of rocks in an industrial-sewage pond about a mile from Songdo. As the birds crowd into the few remaining foraging areas, botulism and other diseases could drive them into an extinction vortex, never to recover.

I have a personal stake in this bird. In 1997, visiting colleagues in Taiwan, I learned that a proposed petrochemical plant would have destroyed the spoonbills' prime winter habitat and shattered the local way of life. I gathered experts in the Pacific Rim to found SAVE International, and our grass-roots campaign for a sustainable alternative eventually prevailed. A national scenic area stands in the place where the plant once seemed a sure thing.

Now the Songdo Tidal Flats are nearly gone and I must speak out. Although Gale International and the South Korean government are trumpeting the project as a sustainable "city of the future," their language is ecological double talk. The project has filled 10,000 acres (80 percent) of the Songdo Tidal Flats, wetlands that host tens of thousands of birds migrating along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. Filling wetlands disqualifies Songdo from any legitimate green-building certification. In the U.S. such a project would be illegal, not meritorious.

No one will mistake SIBD for the Research Triangle Park, but budget-strapped institutions with global ambitions are finding Incheon's offer too good to refuse. South Korea will pay US$50 million for N.C. State's facilities, due to open to 3,000 students in 2010. Who knows what deals Duke or the other nine universities involved in Songdo (Georgia Tech, SUNY-Stony Brook, the University of Missouri, the University of Southern California, George Mason, the University of Delaware, the University of Illinois, Carnegie Mellon, and Boston University) are being offered.

Any university considering operating in Korea (or Dubai, Singapore or elsewhere) should first do its homework on human rights and environmental policy. Even after pledging publicly in 2008 to protect its wetlands, South Korea still pursues outmoded and destructive engineering projects yet labels them sustainable. But the tide may be turning. Only a few weeks ago 10,000 people and 420 Korean organizations nationwide filed a suit to cancel the 4-Rivers Restoration Project, one of the government's flagship "green" projects which is suspected to have broken four separate laws. The plaintiffs claim 4-Rivers is nothing more than a construction boondoggle that will destroy river ecosystems through dredging and dam building, as well as pollute the drinking water the Korean government claims it will protect.

I think American universities have the greatest responsibility and leverage to save these threatened spoonbills and suggest signing on to Songdo only if South Korea and Incheon agree to do the following:

n Reaffirm Korea's policy of preserving wetlands and stop filling Songdo.

n Find more appropriate sites for the campuses.

n Repair the proposed campus area to bird habitat, and improve habitat along upstream creeks.

Leaders and institutions outside Korea could also help. President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might remind President Lee that the U.S. is concerned about Korea's environmental record. Diplomats might praise spoonbills in a toast after a day of nuclear-disarmament talks about North Korea. The United Nations should investigate the sustainability of South Korea's projects, from river engineering to land "reclamation"

Filling wetlands isn't exactly a Ponzi scheme, but it enriches investors only by cheating the ecosystem. N.C. State Duke, and the other nine universities have the entire world in their classroom. What lesson will they teach?

Randall T. Hester is professor and past chair, Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, University of California, Berkeley; and co-founder of SAVE International.