Protecting Wetlands For Our Common Future is the theme of the World Wetlands Day this year, which falls on February 2. It couldn’t be more precise as wetlands are the common resources that connect the globe, and the health of the planet depends on the health of these wet landscapes.
Although they cover only around 6 per cent of the Earth’s land surface, 40 per cent of all plant and animal species live or breed in wetlands, which include lakes, rivers, ponds, glacial lakes, underground water reserves, salt pans, dam reservoirs, mudflats, coastal ecosystems and many more. In fact, more than a million threatened species of plants and animals depend on wetlands for their survival.
“Maintaining wetlands as commons for our common future recognises that our wetlands are home to migratory species of birds, dragonflies, dolphins, turtles, and fish that migrate from our country to another, and also from one continent to another, thereby truly connecting our world,” says Taej Mundkur, a global expert on wetlands and Co-Facilitator of World Coastal Forum Coordination Group.
The World Coastal Forum is a multi-stakeholder global coastal forum that brings together key actors to facilitate the protection, management and restoration of coastal habitats, which are also global commons.
“If we are to protect the biodiversity which is common to us across the world, we need to do more to protect, manage and restore our wetlands,” adds Mundkur, who is based in The Netherlands and has been associated with Wetlands International for the past several years.
Simply put, wetlands occur wherever water meets land. These unique habitats include mangroves, peatlands and marshes, rivers and lakes, deltas, floodplains and flooded forests, coral reefs, underground Karst wetlands in limestone areas (Meghalaya, for example), and even the glaciers at several thousand metres altitude in the Himalayas.
Wetlands offer a wide range of ecosystem services. They are hydrological buffers that limit floods, maintain water supplies in droughts, manage the nutrients in soil, replenish underground water reserves and sustain freshwater biodiversity.
They also hold huge amounts of carbon — often many times more than rainforests. Peatlands, for example, cover only 3 per cent of the earth’s land surface but store 30 per cent of all land-based carbon. Similarly, coastal ecosystems including open mud flats, mangroves and seagrass beds also hold a large amount of carbon, often called blue carbon.
In a changing climate, it is being increasingly realised that wetlands are an answer to climate change, and a world without wetlands is a world without freshwater. Loss and degradation of wetlands is a root cause of droughts, wildfires and floods. Uncontrollable wildfires in Los Angeles (LA) in the US have already been making international headlines for the past one month now.
“The wide definition of wetlands reflects the wide variety of wetlands around the world. It also recognises that wetlands are both freshwater and coastal; natural and manmade. For instance, sewage farms, reservoirs, rice fields, et cetera across the world are important wetlands,” says Mundkur.
“A lack of understanding of the wetlands is a big threat because people or authorities reclaim or damage these commons. Urban wetlands are being filled in Bengaluru and Chennai for construction purposes, and both the cities are facing increased urban flooding because they have lost wetlands, which act as natural sponges in the times of heavy rainfall,” he adds.
Disappearing Wetlands
According to the Global Wetland Outlook 2021, wetlands are being lost at alarming rates. With 35 per cent loss globally since 1970, wetlands are our most threatened ecosystem, disappearing three times faster than forests. Land-use change is the biggest driver of degradation to inland wetlands since 1970. Agriculture, the most wide-spread form of land-use change, has damaged more than half of wetlands of international importance, warns the 2021 Outlook.
Climate change is also affecting wetlands as sea level rise, melting of glaciers, and changing rainfall patterns are impacting the hydrological cycle. Some other key threats to wetlands include domestic and agriculture pollution, reduced water supply to wetlands, unplanned urbanisation, and excessive tourism.
In India, wetlands account for 4.7 per cent of the total geographical area of the country. Nearly one-third of the natural wetlands have been lost to urbanisation, agricultural expansion and pollution over the last four decades, a study by non-government organisation Wetlands International South Asia found.
Mumbai tops the list with the maximum wetlands lost (71 per cent) between 1970 and 2014. Other major cities that faced wetland loss include Ahmedabad (57 per cent), Bengaluru (56 per cent), Hyderabad (55 per cent), Delhi National Capital Region (38 per cent), and Pune (37 per cent).
The United Nations notes that the “vicious cycle of wetland loss, threatened livelihoods, and deepening poverty is the result of mistakenly seeing wetlands as wastelands rather than lifegiving sources of jobs, incomes, and essential ecosystem services. A key challenge is to change mindsets to encourage governments and communities to value and prioritize wetlands.”
First-ever Guidelines for the Management of Wetlands
Despite the crucial role wetlands play in combating climate change and adapting to climate change, there are no global guidelines for the preservation and restoration of many of these wet landscapes.
But a beginning has been made in this direction with the launch of first of its kind evidence-based guidelines for management of two types of coastal wetlands — salt marshes and tidal flats.
The Guidelines for Restoration, Creation and Management of Salt Marshes and Tidal Flats are a collaborative effort between Wetlands International and the Conservation Evidence Group at Cambridge University, incorporating insights from an international panel of experts under the World Coastal Forum platform.
These guidelines are a critical resource and the first of its kind in supporting practitioners and decision-makers with evidence-based best practice guidance for the restoration, creation and management of salt marshes and tidal flats.
Salt marshes are coastal wetlands that are flooded and drained by salt water brought in by the tides. Tidal flats, mudflats or sandflats, are areas where sediments from river runoff, or inflow from tides, deposit mud or sand.
“These are the first guidelines ever produced for restoration of mudflats and intertidal zones. There has been a growing importance of the different types of coastal wetlands, particularly mangroves and coral reefs. Mudflats have not been seen as important because they do not have any vegetation that is visible. They are important for billions of migratory and resident birds and fish, but people don’t know this,” says Mundkur.
Salt marshes and tidal flats serve as vital habitats for biodiversity and are critical in protecting coasts against erosion and floods. They can reduce the necessity of or costs of hard engineering-based coastal protection, and will have an increasing importance as sea levels rise as a result of climate change.
These coastal wetlands are also crucial because coastal areas are the most active area for human activity. Almost 40 per cent of the world's population lives within 100 kilometers of the coast.
In India, nearly 250 million people live within 50 km of the Indian coastline (3.5 per cent of the world’s population). The 8,118-km long coastline is also home to more than seven million people who depend on fishing for their livelihood.
The recently released Guidelines note that about 16 per cent of tidal flats were lost globally between 1984 and 2016, while salt marshes are being lost at a rate of 0.3 per cent per year. Some of the main threats include land reclamation, reduced sediment supply, sea level rise, sinking river deltas, invasive species and habitat degradation.
“People have been conserving mudflats in many places but we have been losing large important mudflats all around the world because people do not realise their importance. So these guidelines hopefully should be useful to governments to protect and restore mudflats,” says Mundkur.
These Guidelines are the first module of the World Coastal Forum World Coastal Ecosystem Conservation Toolkit and are available in English, Chinese and Korean languages. They will soon be available in Arabic too.
Meanwhile, the year 2025 is especially relevant since the Conference of the Contracting Parties 15 (COP15) for the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar Convention) will take place in July this year in Zimbabwe. In this meeting, held every three years, the signatory parties will meet to agree on a work programme and budgetary arrangements for the next triennium and consider guidance on a range of ongoing and emerging environmental issues.
This story is supported by the Promise of Commons Media Fellowship 2024, focusing on the significance of commons and its community stewardship.
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