We often mention the Ramsar Convention (Ramsar) on 10,000 Birds (most often in the failure of South Korea - a Ramsar signatory - to recognise the Saemangeum wetlands as a Ramsar site, and most recently in our Latest News post about BirdLife’s “Think Pink” campaign to protect Tanzania’s Lake Natron), but I would guess that not so many of us know exactly what The Ramsar Convention is? Well, simply put, The Ramsar Convention is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands, i.e. ‘to stem the progressive encroachment on and loss of wetlands now and in the future, recognizing the fundamental ecological functions of wetlands and their economic, cultural, scientific, and recreational value’.

Based in headquarters in Gland, Switzerland, which are shared with the World Conservation Union(IUCN), the official title of Ramsar is actually ‘The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, especially as Waterfowl Habitat’. Why is it known as Ramsar? The convention was developed and adopted by participating nations at a meeting in Ramsar, Iran on February 2, 1971 and came into force on December 21, 1975.

Though the central Ramsar message is the need for the sustainable use of all wetlands, the ‘flagship’ of the Convention is the List of Wetlands of International Importance (the ‘Ramsar List’). Currently the Parties have designated for this List more than 1,675 wetlands for special protection as ‘Ramsar sites’, covering 151 million hectares (1.51 million square kilometres), larger than the surface area of France, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland combined. These sites can be quite small - the wonderfully named Fardrum and Roosky Turloughs in Northen Ireland, for example, is just 0.41sq km - but also include areas such as the huge and important Queen Maud Gulf site in Canada, which is a more substantial 62,800 sq km!

The criteria used to designate a wetland as a Ramsar site (ie internationally-important) are quite wide-ranging but fairly specific:

1. Criteria for representative or unique wetlands - A wetland should be considered internationally important if:

(a) it is a particularly good representative example of a natural or near-natural wetland, characteristic of the appropriate biogeographical region

(b) it is a particularly good representative example of a natural or near-natural wetland, common to more than one biogeographical region

(c) it is a particularly good representative example of a wetland, which plays a substantial hydrological, biological or ecological role in the natural function of a major river basin or coastal system, especially where it is located in a trans-border position

(d) it is an example of a specific type of wetland, rare or unusual in the appropriate biogeographical region.

2. General criteria based on plants or animals - A wetland should be considered internationally important if:

(a) it supports an appreciable assemblage of rare, vulnerable or endangered species or subspecies of plants or animals, or an appreciable number of individuals of any one or more of these species

(b) it is of special value for maintaining the genetic and ecological diversity of a region because of the quality or peculiarities of its flora and fauna

(c) it is of special value as the habitat of plants or animals at a critical stage of their biological cycle

(d) it is of special value for one or more endemic plant or animal species or communities.

3. Specific criteria for using waterfowl to identify wetlands of importance - A wetland should be considered internationally important if:

(a) it regularly supports 20,000 waterfowl

(b) it regularly supports substantial numbers of individuals from particular groups of waterfowl, indicative of wetland values, productivity or diversity

(c) where data on populations are available, it regularly supports 1% of the individuals in a population of one species or subspecies of waterfowl.

Marievale, South Africa - part of the Blesbokspruit RAMSAR site. Photo © Charlie Moores

1,675 wetlands sounds like a fair number of protected sites, but how effective is Ramsar in policing them? As the Ramsar website explains: “The Ramsar Convention is not a regulatory regime and has no punitive sanctions for violations of or defaulting upon treaty commitments“ nevertheless, its terms do constitute a solemn treaty and are binding in international law in that sense. The whole edifice is based upon an expectation of common and equitably shared transparent accountability. Failure to live up to that expectation could lead to political and diplomatic discomfort in high-profile international fora or the media, and would prevent any Party concerned from getting the most, more generally, out of what would otherwise be a robust and coherent system of checks and balances and mutual support frameworks. Failure to meet the treaty’s commitments may also impact upon success in other ways, for example, in efforts to secure international funding for wetland conservation. In addition, some national jurisdictions now embody international Ramsar obligations in national law and/or policy with direct effect in their own court systems.” How effective? If you break down that extraordinarily tangled paragraph you find that it depends entirely on the government in charge of the ‘protected’ sites unfortunately…as the threats to Lake Natron only go to prove.

Do wetlands really matter though? As defined by Ramsar a wetland is “an area of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt and including areas of intertidal marine water“: whether they matter depends on whether you think fresh water is important, whether migratory shorebirds have a right to find food, whether you’d miss birds like the Snowy Egret (right) if wetlands disappeared, whether the nursery grounds of countless fish should be protected, whether wetland plants and wetland insects like dragonflies “matter”, whether unique eco-systems are simply ours to destroy, or even whether you think that standing on the edge of a tidal-flat or a lake with the wind in your face is one of the most uplifting experiences left to our battered 21st Century souls…

The next Ramsar meeting (or as they grandiosely like to call it, the Conference of the Contracting Parties) is being held in exactly one year in, ironically, South Korea (Changwon, 28 October - 4 November 2008) - home of the one of the world’s most destructive wetland developments ever. Hopefully the world’s wetland specialists and conservationists will use the opportunity to bang some heads together, and - hopefully - Ramsar will go from strength to strength. As the pressure on the world’s remaining wetlands grows ever stronger participants really do need to work some magic to protect some of the most ecologically-important habitats left on the planet.