생태유토피아 섬의 다양한 경로들

Diverging Paths of the Island of Eco-Utopia

Villages in Sardinia island are the only places in the world where men live nearly as long as women and a home to six times as many hundred-plus-year-olds as in any modern city (Pinker, 2014). It is believed the Sardinian longevity is attributed to its indigenous food, working conditions and social cohesion. The area s geographic isolation as an island created its tightly bonded families and communities, and social bonds influenced their sense of satisfaction with life and how resistant they are to diseases (ibid.). Recently, Sardinia is paying attention to sustainable ecotourism to attract tourists with unpolluted, clear waters of its coast, and to keep the waters clean for future tourism. On the other hand, the island is the site of highly advanced military complex where 80 percent of Italy s military bases are concentrated. Post World War II, Italy s largest rocket-launching station was built in Sardinia in 1956. Through several years of expansion, the Inter-Service Test and Traning Range (PISQ) will become the most important military experimental weapons testing and training center in Europe. Building military bases on the island aimed at defending against external threats, attacking for war, and preventing independence movement or activism of the island. Under the frame of modernization, technological innovation and job opportunities, the construction was more dominantly understood as the alternative to Sardinia s underdevelopment, convention, poverty and backwardness was prevalent. By such reason, the negative impacts of the military bases over the past 60 years have not received much attention. However, the eastern coast of Sardinia now has high rate of cancer and leukemia caused environmental pollution such as water and soil pollution, and it is becoming a land of death witnessing animals born with deformities. The social resistance to the negative influence of the bases is also on the rise. Nevertheless, there is still strong confidence in the economic effects of the military bases such as job creation. Many among the opinion leaders such as civil servants and intellectuals interviewed by the researchers made a very paradoxical claim that the presence of military bases enabled the preservation of ecosystems by controlling the access of people. How can this incompatible reality be possible in Sardinia, an ecological utopia? This paper analyzes Sardinia s situation and conditions behind having an image as a sustainable eco-utopia and becoming the ground for the worst environmental pollution, thereby providing a comparative perspective for Jeju s future development model. By juxtaposing Sardinia, emerging as the eco-paradise of indigenous food culture, social bonds and natural environment, and another Sardinia as the site of the worst pollution from the concentrated military bases, it analyzes what various courses can be taken by the special condition of being an island . It further discusses how Sardinia s case can form a reference for the future development of Jeju as the ecological/peace island.