Talk:Environment of North Korea

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korean poeple have small sicks. true fact — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.189.118.87 (talk) 16:41, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Unreliable

I'd like to flag the fact that the sources are unreliable. There is an obvious disparity between the 2003 UNEP report and the media reports.

• Tenenbaum questions the reliability of the 2003 report but has no independent source of information.
• Tenenbaum and Kirby base their articles on the 2003 report, but it does not support their claims of a crisis.
• McKenna and the Atlantic Wire base their stories on the comments of a visiting delegation who are hardly in a position to be authoritative over the country as a whole. The implication there is minimal wildlife in the mountainous, forested interior is incredible.
• Raven's claim of 40% deforestation is incompatible with the figure of 70% forest cover in the 2003 report. This would imply that North Korea was completely covered in forest in 1985. Land-clearing to that extent also seems incredible, considering the rugged terrain and the shortages of fuel.

However, the claim of a crisis is clearly notable. It would be good to get some sources more grounded in evidence though.--Jack Upland (talk) 06:22, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

It looks like it will be difficult to get evidence. The Yale Environmental Performance Index [1] says that there isn't sufficient data to make an assessment but also that there is a "catastrophe". This seems more a case of anti-North Korean bias than useful analysis.--Jack Upland (talk) 03:15, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Now we have the report of the NZ birdwatchers which fits in with the 2003 UNEP report. It seems clear that some sources are assuming an environmental catastrophe without any evidence.--Jack Upland (talk) 12:34, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

I have taken off the "disputed" tag because we now have more balanced information.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:56, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Photos

The pre-existing photos (mostly taken by me) have all been replaced by photos purportedly showing ecological problems. The agricultural one is good, but I think the photo of "smog" merely shows a misty winter's morning, or something like that. I can show you plenty of shots of Pyongyang with brilliant blue skies. They seem just as relevant. I am not saying my photos were brilliant, but the picture of the Yalu delta and the picture of the forested hills round Kaesong do give some indication of what the environment actually looks like. To exclude pictures on the grounds that they don't illustrate environmental problems is very wrong. Arguably, this article should be changed back to "Environmental Problems", and most of the content switched to "Geography", but I'm not going to argue that, and I don't know why the change was made.--Jack Upland (talk) 17:39, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be a good idea to have a gallery of pictures, to give a broader impression of what the country is like.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:24, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

There being no objections over the past year, I have added one in. Some of the pictures, found on Commons, are quite good.--Jack Upland (talk) 23:33, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Deforestation

There seems to be a major discrepancy about deforestation, as mentioned above. The UNEP report of 2003 says there is 70% forest cover.

From this, which cites the World Bank, and the World Bank itself we get: 68% in 1990, 58% in 2000, 45% in 2012, and 42% in 2015. This roughly parallels the 40% loss mentioned by Raven. I wonder if some of the discrepancy is due to the differences between being on the ground and using satellite imagery. A lot of the forest is on steep slopes which would not be easily visible. The World Bank figures are extreme: forest cover is decreasing by 10% of total land area every decade. This is despite the recovery of the economy and despite the tree planting program.

It would be good to get an independent source that could confirm one version or the other.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:33, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

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Reforestation

We have two separate sections dealing with this. We should put them together somehow.--Jack Upland (talk) 07:53, 7 June 2021 (UTC)