What's
New @ Ramsar
The Ramsar Bulletin Board
4 August 2005
Headline
story. Ramsar sites in Armenia. "I
am happy to inform you that an informational brochure "Convention
on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat"
has been printed in Armenian in the framework of the Program of the Ministry
of Nature Protection "Management of Natural
Resources and Poverty Alleviation" funded by the World
Bank. The A5 format brochure, which contains 28 pages, gives basic information
about the Ramsar Convention, introduces Armenian wetlands, their functions
and values, as well as provides information about implementation of the
Convention in Armenia. The text about Armenian wetlands and photographs
are provided by Karen Jenderedjian, Ramsar Focal Point in Armenia, currently
member of the Ramsar Convention's Standing Committee." -- Karen
Jenderedjian, PhD, Head, Division of Animal Resources Management,
Agency of Bioresources Management, Ministry of Nature Protection, Yerevan
(jender@arminco.com). [03/08/05]
From
the Ramsar Forum. Inquiry about
information on global river restoration projects. "Dear
Ramsar-Forum members: I am currently doing an internship, working on freshwater
habitat assessment. I would like to ask your advice on how to find information.
I am creating a database that shows the projects that are going on globally
on river restoration and integrated river basin management.We are trying
to list them by basin (or by river/watershed)not by project---. I have
checked major project sites, such as the ones by World Bank, GEF, IUCN,
WWF- does anyone have any ideas on where I would be able to get more information/or
good databases you know of? I thank you very much for your time and assistance.
Sincerely, Yukiko." - Yukiko Ichishima,
Candidate for Master of Environmental Management, 2006, Yale University
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (yukiko.ichishima@yale.edu).
[03/08/05]
Now
available. IAIA Information on Biodiversity
and Impact Assessment. From the
Wetlands Forum: "Hello everybody. Given the importance
which the Ramsar Convention places on applying impact assessment techniques
to situations where the ecological character of Ramsar sites and other
wetlands may be threatened by developments or broader policies and strategies
(e.g., in Resolution VII.16), I thought that you might be interested to
see the document 'Biodiversity and Impact Assessment'
just produced by the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA),
which sets out best practice principles for incorporating biodiversity
issues into EIA and SEA. This is available on the IAIA website at http://www.iaia.org/Non_Members/Pubs_Ref_Material/SP3.pdf.
The principles should help practitioners to integrate biodiversity into
impact assessment and decision-makers to commission and review assessments.
IAIA has an active Biodiversity Section and works with the Ramsar Convention
pursuant to a Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2001. It is also currently
running a Capacity Building for Biodiversity in Impact Assessment (CBBIA)
project - a targeted capacity building program intended to promote good
practice in biodiversity and impact assessment. If you have any queries
or would like further information please do not hesitate to get in touch
with me. Kind Regards, Helen Byron, Chair IAIA
Biodiversity Section." (Dr Helen Byron, International
Site Casework Officer, European Programmes & Training Department,
RSPB, The Lodge, Sandy, Bedfordshire, SG19 2DL, UK). [03/08/05]
Talks
on the Lake Chad Basin. On 26 July 2005, the Ramsar Secretariat
proudly received the visit of Eng. Sani Adamu,
the Lake Chad Basin Commission's Executive Secretary. Given the prominent
role of this institution in the region, which has as its members not only
the countries sharing Lake Chad, but also a number of those which are
part of its catchment area, many items were on the agenda for discussion.
One of the first points raised by the Secretary General, Peter
Bridgewater, was the Secretariat's concern with the ecological
health of the basin and the activities which are taking place around it,
which have the potential to further undermine its environment and the
local users' capacity to sustain their livelihoods. We learnt more about
the proposal being pushed forward by the member states as a solution to
the lake's shrinking levels: an inter-basin water transfer to carry water
from the Oubangui River in the DRC. While the Secretariat holds some reservations
about the effects of this plan, it looks forward to inputting to the terms
of reference currently being drafted for the feasibility study. Regarding
oil exploration in different sections of the basin, we share LCBC's concerns,
and both institutions will continue monitoring the activities taking place,
with what we hope will be increasing support from the Ramsar focal points
in the countries involved. Accession of new Parties in the region was
also discussed, as well as some of the difficulties encountered by the
Ramsar Secretariat to get countries like Cameroon and the Central African
Republic on board. Their adhesion to the Convention, especially as far
as Cameroon is involved, will ensure that the whole basin becomes a designated
Ramsar site. We look forward to meeting the LCBC at COP9 in Uganda in
November, where a number of these issues will surely be brought up for
discussion again! -- Lucia Scodanibbio, Ramsar.
[29/07/05]
Now
available. Meeting
on a High Andean Strategy for the Northern Andes. More progress
in implementing Resolution VIII:39: Colombia's Meeting report on Strategic
High Andean Wetlands in the Ecorregional Complex of the Northern Andes,
June 15 -17 2005, Ubaté – Cundinamarca, Colombia is now
available [in Spanish]!
Más avances en la implementación de la Resolución VIII.39: la Las memorias del taller corredor de humedales altoandinos estratégicos en el complejo ecorregional andes del norte, Junio 15 - 17 de 2005, Ubaté – Cundinamarca, Colombia esta ahora disponible. [28/07/05]
News
from the SGF. Capacity-building in mangrove-based
Kenyan communities. Kenya has just brought to completion a
very successful project aimed at empowering local communities to use mangrove
resources sustainably for their and the environment's benefit. The project's
objective was to provide training and technical assistance focused on
skills and knowledge related to beekeeping, beehive construction, crab
culture, crab cage and pen construction, mangrove re-forestation, conservation
and sustainable exploitation. As stated in the final report submitted
to the Secretariat, the project, headed by Dr.
Joseph Rasowo of Moi University, was carried out in a participatory
way by involving government institutions and local NGOs which either already
had working partnerships with mangrove-based community groups or assisted
in choosing grassroots groups for training by this project. Ramsar's
Lucia Scodanibbio summarizes the projects results here, accompanied
by the illustrated final report of the project team. [27/07/05]
News
from the SGF. Moldava reports on SGF project
for the Lower Prut Lakes. The Republic of Moldova has completed
its 2003 Ramsar Small Grants Fund project "Evaluation Study to Support
Implementation of Management Plan for the Lower Prut Lakes Ramsar Site
towards Wise Use and Sustainable Development". It was carried out
by the Moldavian Center for Strategic Environmental
Studies ECOS in Chisinau, which undertook a range of field
trips to carry out various analyses on water quality and identification
of causing contaminants; of soil and soil erosion as well as sediments
in the Ramsar site lakes and Cahul ponds. Meetings and discussions on
wetland issues with stakeholders accompanied the process in all stages
of the project and assisted to involve them in the development of the
Priority Action Plan, but also in the identification and prioritisation
sources of contamination of Ramsar Lakes. A
brief report of the project by Ramsar's Dorothea August can be seen here,
with the project report executive summary and some photographs into the
bargain. [26/07/05]
Now
available. Biodiversity Liaison
Group report from May 2005. The "Liaison Group of the
Biodiversity-Related Conventions" was established following a request
of the Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity
to enhance cooperation among the five biodiversity-related conventions.
The third meeting of the liaison group took place on 10 May 2005 in Gland,
Switzerland, at the headquarters of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.
The heads of the secretariats of the Convention on Biological Diversity
(CBD), the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), and Ramsar were present,
as well as representatives of the Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species (CITES) and the World Heritage Convention (WHC), and
the meeting was chaired by Peter Bridgewater, Secretary General of the
Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the host convention. The
report of the meeting is now available in PDF format. [21/07/05]
Speke
Resort, Munyonyo, confirmed as Ramsar COP9 venue. In a ceremony
and press event held on 15 July 2005, Ramsar's Secretary General, Uganda's
Minister for
Water, Lands and Environment, and that country's Minister of State for
Environment confirmed that the Speke Resort
on Lake Victoria, in Munyonyo adjacent to Kampala, will be the
venue for Ramsar's 9th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties
in November 2005. The resort, which is equipped with admirable facilities
for plenary and contract group sessions and staff workspaces, has been
contracted to provide most of the services associated with hosting a large,
modern conference. A press release
from the event, with some additional photographs, can be seen here.
[20/07/05]
Brainstorming
on the role of MEAs in supporting the Millennium Development Goals.
On 13-14 July 2005,
UNEP hosted in Nairobi, Kenya, a high-level workshop on the role of the
Multinational Environment Agreements (MEAs) in supporting the Millennium
Development Goals, attended by the heads of Ramsar, CBD, CMS, CITES and
Basel Convention secretariats, as well as representatives from the Ozone
secretariat, various UNEP divisions, and the United Nations University.
Ramsar's Secretary General reports
on the conclusions of the meeting. [18/07/05]
Austria
names two mire complexes as new Ramsar sites. The
Convention Secretariat is very pleased to announce that the Government
of Austria has designated two very interesting mire sites for the List
of Wetlands of International Importance, effective 13 and 15 December
2004. One of them, "Bayerische Wildalm and
Wildalmfilz" in the Tyrol in the west of the country,
is part of a mire ecosystem which may become a collaboratively managed
transboundary Ramsar site with German Bavaria just to the north of Innsbruck.
The other, "Moor-
und Seenlandschaft Keutschach-Schiefling", is a
mosaic of varied wetland types along a small valley in the south, in Carinthia
or Kärnten near Klagenfurt. Ramsar's Assistant Advisor for Europe,
Dorothea August, has prepared brief
descriptions of the sites based upon the Ramsar Information Sheets submitted
with the site-designation instruments, with a few photographs.
[14/07/05] 
Iraq
Marshlands Training Course. Iraq is not yet a Ramsar Contracting
Party but its government has indicated strong interest in accession in
the near future. As part of Iraq's development of a national wetland program,
training a cadre of wetland managers and scientists has been seen as a
key tool. Through its partnerships with the academic, government and non-government
community inside and outside Iraq, training programs are now being implemented.
The first Iraqi National Marshland Managers Training
Course was held 26 June - 6 July 2005 in the city of Basrah,
Iraq. Clayton Rubec, Associate Director of the Canada-Iraq Marshlands
Initiative, describes
this first edition of what will be an annual event. [07/07/05]
In a separate development, the Ramsar Secretariat, under an MOU with UNEP-IETC, worked with Wetlands International (WI), the International Agricultural Centre (IAC), and Institute for Inland Water and Waste Water Treatment (RIZA) to develop and present a "training module on wetland management" for Iraqi wetland and water managers in Cairo, Egypt, 19-26 June 2005; here is that report from a fortnight ago.
Now
available. Swedish National Wetland
Inventory online. The
Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
is pleased to announce that the Swedish National Wetland Inventory is
now available on the Internet at http://www-vmi.slu.se
(information so far in Swedish only). Here
is a description by Ann Wahlström of the Swedish Aquatic
Environment Section of the Naturvårdsverket or Swedish EPA. [08/07/05]
Also
now available. Presentations from
the Ramsar Asian regional meeting. In response to popular demand
and universal clamor, the presentations made at the Asian meeting held
in Beijing, China, in mid-May 2005, mostly PowerPoint PPTs with a few
PDFs, can now be downloaded from the Ramsar Web site. They range from
great big bloated PPTs (49MB) to smaller big bloated PPTs (20MB) to relatively
tiny bloated PPTs (8MB) and a small handful of realistically downloadable
PPTs and PDFs, and they will be available from this
link to the IUCN Indaba server until the end of August 2005. Similarly,
PDF versions of the PowerPoints at the African regional meeting in Arusha
in early April 2005 will also remain
available until the end of August, when they too, for reasons
of server space, will have to go off to join their PPT friends in the
electronic filing cabinets of the wetland world. [08/07/05]
Liberia
inaugurates National Wetlands Committee. The Ramsar Secretariat
is pleased to announce that Liberia has recently established a National
Wetlands Committee. Despite the instability the country has experienced
in relation to its civil conflict, Liberia ratified the Ramsar Convention
on the 2nd November 2003. In January 2005, the Liberian Government began
a Post-Conflict Wetland Assessment Project funded by the Ramsar Swiss
Grant for Africa (SGA) and the Ramsar Small Grant Funds (SGF), and as
part of that process in early June a multisectoral National Wetlands Committee
was created. More details here.
[06/07/05]
Resources
in French. Wetland information for the
francophone world. "Zones Humides Infos" is a quarterly
newsletter produced since 1993 by a wetland specialists' expert group
set up by the French Ministry of Environment in order to provide advice
on the implementation and further development of France's National Wetland
Action Plan and national policies having an impact on wetlands. The newsletter
grew from a small leaflet to a substantial forum providing information
and in-depth debates in French on specific wetland related issues, spanning
from legal aspects, to agricultural policies, economic valuation, pond
fisheries and aquaculture, cultural heritage, water management and river
basin planning. The first issue of 2005 is devoted to the Ramsar Convention.
Here are further details (in
French). [06/07/05]
Chilean
documentary wins Ramsar/MedWet film award.
The Chilean documentary 
'Veil
of Berta', by Esteban Larrain,
was crowned on Saturday 25 June as the Ramsar/MedWet best film for water
and wetlands for 2005, at the ecofilms international
film and audiovisual arts festival, Rhodes, 21-26 June 2005.
Set in a high altitude river basin in the south of Chile, the film highlights
the struggle of a community of native Pehuenche villagers against the
building of a dam that will change the flow of the Bio-Bio river and flood
the lands where they have lived for centuries. The golden deer statuette
of ecofilms was presented by Ramsar Secretary General Mr Peter Bridgewater
in a full house venue, hosted in the National Film Theater of Rhodes on
Saturday 25 June. Here are
the details, with some stills from the film. [05/07/05]
Morocco
adds 20 varied new Ramsar sites. The Secretariat is delighted
to be able to report that that Government of Morocco has designated 20
new Ramsar sites, in all parts of the country from the Atlas mountains
to the seacoasts on both the Atlantic and Mediterranean. As Ramsar's
Lucia Scodanibbio demonstrates in the accompanying story, there
is a great variety among the new sites, not only in their wetland types
-- from mountain lakes to estuaries, from oases to gorges to dammed reservoirs
-- but also in the services they perform in terms of biodiversity, hydrological
functions, and livelihoods in an essentially arid environment. Morocco
now has 24 Wetlands of International Importance covering a surface area
of 272,010 hectares. Lucia has prepared an synoptic story in English and
French on the new sites, as well as brief site descriptions to accompany
the story and fill out the Annotated Ramsar List. 
[29/06/05] 
Photos
available. Ramsar study tour of nearby
French wetlands. On 26 June 2005, Ramsar staff and friends
visited parts of the Ramsar site "Rives du Lac Léman"
near Thonon on Lake Geneva, proposed Ramsar sites in the plateau of the
Pays de Gavot overlooking the lake, and the Ramsar Information Centre
at Pré Curieux, in order to find out what's really going on there.
Here are 25 photos that partially
answer that question. [30/06/05]
Now
available. SC31 results. The
31st meeting of the Ramsar Standing Committee took place 6-10 June, and
the results are now available. The full
report is available only in English, for budgetary reasons, but
the decisions of the meeting can be seen in English,
Français,
and Español.
[29/06/05]
Czech
Republic lists two Ramsar sites on the Montreux Record. The
Government of the Czech Republic has informed the Secretariat of its wish
to include two additional Ramsar sites in the Montreux Record, as of 6
June 2005. The Montreux Record, created
by the Parties in 1990 (in Resolution 4.8 of COP4, held in Montreux, Switzerland),
is "a record of Ramsar sites where changes in ecological character
have occurred, are occurring or are likely to occur as a result of technological
developments, pollution or other human interference", intended to
bring them to international attention for support and advice towards positive
conservation action. The two sites are "Mokrady
dolního Podyjí (floodplain of lower Dyje River)"
and "Poodri" - the first
is part of the tripartite transboundary Ramsar site called the "Trilateral
Ramsar Site Floodplains of the Morava-Dyje-Danube Confluence" shared
by the Czech and Slovak Republics and Austria; the second is part of the
Odra/Oder floodplain in the northeast part of the country (with water
flowing to the Baltic Sea). The reason for the Montreux listing is that
"both of these Ramsar sites are in danger for reason of a planning
construction of Danube-Odra.-Elbe channel", and Austria's associated
Donau-March-Auen was included in
the Record in 1990 (and remains there) for the same reason. In coming
months, Czech officials and Ramsar Secretariat staff will be working together
to find a remedy and eventually be able to remove the sites from the Record.
There are presently
57 Ramsar sites listed in the Montreux
Record, which for complicated reasons is probably a small fraction
of the Wetlands of International Importance that should be included there.
Brief descriptions of the Czech Republic's extremely interesting Ramsar
sites can be found here,
and photographs of some of them are sprinkled all over the Ramsar Web
site. [28/06/05] 
Tragic
news. Passing of Robert Martel. The
Ramsar Secretariat is grieved by the news of the accidental death on 17
June of Robert Martel of Canada. Robert
was with us just a few weeks ago at the Standing Committee meetings, as
he represented Canada as the Chair of the Subgroup on Finance and guided
the week of budgetary debates with an enormous amount of skill, intelligence,
and good humor. He was new to Ramsar processes but fit in comfortably
from the beginning, and was well liked by all of us. The Chair of the
Standing Committee, Dr Gordana Beltram of Slovenia, has written
this graceful letter of condolence
(English, Français, and Español). [24/06/05]
Antigua
and Barbuda joins the Ramsar Convention. The Secretariat is
delighted to report that the Caribbean state of Antigua
and Barbuda has completed the accession procedure and joined
the Convention on Wetlands as its 146th Contracting Party. As UNESCO received
the required documents on 2 June, the Convention will enter into force
for Antigua and Barbuda on 2 October 2005. The new Party's obligatory
first Wetland of International Importance has been designated as "Codrington
Lagoon" in Barbuda - although the accompanying Ramsar
Information Sheet has not yet been received, according to Derek Scott
and Montserrat Carbonell, A Directory of Neotropical Wetlands (IUCN
and IWRB, 1986) Codrington Lagoon (17°40'N 061°51'W) at that time
could be described as "a large saline lagoon of 2,650 hectares, separated
from the sea by a sand barrier and with a narrow connection to the sea
at its north end; there are several small islands in the lagoon, about
900 hectares of mangrove swamps . . . and associated brackish to saline
marshes. . . . The area is known to be very rich in waterfowl, particularly
Ardeidae, migratory shorebirds and Laridae. . . . Sea turtles nest on
the adjacent beaches, and there is an important lobster fishery in the
lagoon." Antigua and Barbuda is warmly welcomed to the "Ramsar
family". [24/06/05]
Update
on the Danube Delta canal. A joint UNESCO (Man and the Biosphere
Programme) and Ramsar Convention mission visited Ukraine on 27-31 October
2003 in order to examine different choices to re-establish a navigable
waterway through the Ukrainian part of the Transboundary Danube Delta
Biosphere Reserve and Ramsar Site. In its report (Ramsar
Advisory Mission 53), the mission reflected on issues concerning
navigation vs. biodiversity and delta dynamics, the need for compensation
of ecological damage, and the need for transboundary cooperation. Much
has happened since then and the concerns of international bodies remain,
so it's timely that, following his visit there in April 2005, Ramsar's
Tobias Salathé has provided
this update on the situation
and prospects for the future. [24/06/05]
Feedback and
suggestions are welcome to the Ramsar Convention Secretariat, Rue
Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland (tel +41 22 999 0170, fax +41
22 999 0169, e-mail 
).
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