Short abstract:

This paper explores the ongoing revaluation of rice fields as a wetland ecosystem in South Korea. Focusing on biodiversity monitoring on paddy fields by citizen scientists, the paper sheds light on the knowledge infrastructure that cultivates rice fields as habitats for multi-species worlds.

Long abstract:

This paper explores the citizen science of biodiversity monitoring in rice fields and its onto-political implications for the future of agriculture in South Korea. For the past half century, rice fields have been considered part of the food production system in South Korean agriculture. However, at the 10th meeting of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands held in South Korea in 2008, rice paddies were acknowledged as wetland ecosystems supporting a wide range of species. Unlike some Western countries, which recognize rice paddies as a source of methane gas, South Korean rice paddy conservationists see them as refuges for wild birds, amphibians, reptiles, and aquatic insects, especially given the drastic decline of natural wetlands in the country.

This paper conducted participatory observation and interviews with the Non-Sal-Lim Social Cooperative, a science-based conservation group focused on paddy fields. Based on the results, this study argues that biodiversity monitoring is 'an art of attentiveness (Tsing, 2015)' for creating new human-nonhuman connections that lead to responsible human intervention. In multi-species studies, scholars have found that coordinating time between different species is key to achieving coexistence in this era of catastrophe (Tsing, 2015; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2015; Gan, 2017). Building on this, this paper explores how humans can be attentive to the time and place of the multi-species world through sensing experiences in the monitoring program. This attempt will demonstrate that a biodiversity monitoring program on paddy fields can serve as a knowledge infrastructure for caring for the multi-species world in the Anthropocene.