The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands

About the Ramsar Convention's Web site

The Ramsar Convention Secretariat began this Web site in February 1996 in time to report on the progress of the 6^th Conference of the Parties in Brisbane, Australia, in March. Over the first few months, the Ramsar site’s philosophy and architecture evolved into the configuration that it has maintained since that time, with frequent endorsement by the COP and Standing Committee. Over the years, the site has grown considerably and presently contains more than 10,000 Web pages (720MB) and 7,700 images (240MB). By September 2006, an average of about 5,500 users were visiting the site each day, viewing about 25,000 pages per day and more than 900,000 pages per month, or 10.8 million pages per year. A number of educational Web site awards have been conferred upon the site.

The design of the Ramsar Web site has been mandated by the Standing Committee to be simple and clearly organized, with a "documentary" rather than an "entertainment" look to it. The pages are set up to be attractive but as clean and fast-loading as possible, with a white background and simple images. Because of the Convention’s mandate to reach readers in all parts of the world, the presentation is optimized for legacy hardware and software, with no JavaScript consoles, cgi forms, XML, or "Microsoft-optimized" Web technology. All of the files are organized into broad categories, with cascading menus leading deeper into the site through hierarchical subject breakdowns; there is also a general index to the whole site, a number of broad thematic indexes, and search engine for this site.

The Ramsar Web site is designed to accomplish the three main purposes set by the Contracting Parties:

• Information about Ramsar: to inform the public about the Ramsar Convention and its ‘wise use’ principles, its structures, history, objectives, and methods;
• Documentation: to make available all of the Convention’s documents, including the treaty, up-to-the-minute lists of Contracting Parties, Ramsar sites, etc.; the texts of all of the Convention’s Resolutions, criteria, guidelines, manuals, application forms; full texts of all of the Convention’s books and other publications; the National Reports and COP documentation prepared for the Conference of the Parties; agenda papers prior to all major meetings, for public comment; cooperation agreements with other organizations, and so on, most of these in the Convention’s three official languages, all of them in HTML but some in Word and PDF as well;

• Up-to-the-minute News: to offer to colleagues and the public a "clearinghouse" of the most up-to-date news of the activities of the "Ramsar family", i.e. the Convention’s Parties and the Secretariat, the five International Organization Partners, related conventions, and Ramsar sites, including reports of meetings, position announcements and staff news, stories on the accomplishments of NGOs and organizations with whom we have memoranda of cooperation, many of these with photographs, as well as links to other Ramsar-related Web resources.

The Ramsar Web site is updated almost every day and always bears a very recent date on its opening pages. Over time, the Web site has become the centerpiece of the Secretariat’s communication activities and a number of potential new initiatives are reflected in the Convention's CEPA Programme adopted by the Parties at COP8 in Valencia in 2002.

For further information, please contact the Ramsar Convention Secretariat, Rue Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland (tel +41 22 999 0170, fax +41 22 999 0169, e-mail ramsar@ramsar.org). Posted 12 March 1999, updated very slightly 15 April 2005, Dwight Peck, Ramsar.