Ramsar COP8 - Brief report and photos: day six
| "Wetlands: water, life, and culture" 8th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971) Valencia, Spain, 18-26 November 2002 |
Day Six of the Ramsar COP
Day 6, Saturday, 23 November, ended early, a pleasant surprise for everyone, but not before the plenary heard progress reports from the four Conference Committees -- the Committees on Credentials, on the Strategic Plan and the Work plan, on Finance, and on Future COPs -- and a series of chairpersons' summary reports on the work of the five Technical Sessions of the previous days: Challenges and Opportunities (Ruhakana Rugunda, Uganda), Baselines for Sustainable Use (Nadra Nathai-Gyan, Trinidad and Tobago), Ramsar List of Wetlands (Louise Lakos, Hungary), Wetlands Management (Natalya Kasymova, Uzbekistan), and Culture and Wetlands (Clayton Rubec, Canada).
In addition, Gonzalo Castro, Team Leader for Biodiversity at the Secretariat of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), reported on a World Bank / WWF study on "The impact of Ramsar designation on management effectiveness", and, among other things, a double ceremony took place for the signing of memoranda of cooperation between the Ramsar Bureau and, on the one hand, the Lake Chad Basin Commission, and on the other, the Niger Basin Authority. In the free afternoon, some of the contact groups on contentious issues, most notably the group on the World Commission on Dams report, continued their negotiations away from plenary. For further details, consult the ENB's daily reports at http://www.iisd.ca/linkages/ramsar/cop8/.
COP8 Vice-President Hector Condé of Cuba was in the President's chair for the Saturday session, with Secretary General Delmar Blasco on the left, Vice-President Javad Amin Mansour of the Islamic Republic of Iran on the right, and Ramsar Regional Coordinator Anada Tiéga behind.
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Gonzalo Castro of the Global Environment Facility reported on a World Bank / WWF study of Ramsar effectiveness.
The delegations of Costa Rica and Congo
The delegations of Côte d'Ivoire and Croatia
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The delegations of Trinidad and Tobago and Paraguay
The delegation of Denmark
The signing of Memoranda of Cooperation between Ramsar and the Niger Basin Authority and the Lake Chad Basin Commission
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| Delmar Blasco and Muhammad Sani Adamu, Executive Secretary of the Lake Chad Basin Commission [text here] | Mr Blasco and Mohammed Bello Tuga, Executive Secretary of the Niger Basin Authority [text here] |
The delegations of Albania and Algeria, with Argentina to the right
The delegation of Spain (right)
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The delegations of Papua New Guinea and Ukraine
The delegations of Sierra Leone and Senegal
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The delegations of the United Kingdom and Austria
Wetlands International
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| Former Ramsar Bureau colleague Satoshi Kobayashi, Japan | Edith Wenger, WWF-Auen-Institut, Germany |
Demonstration
