News from the CEPA e-mail list

The launch of Waterbirds around the world (19/03/07)

Good afternoon everyone:

Launched today in Edinburgh, Scotland, (and in the Hague in the Netherlands last week) Waterbirds around the world gives a useful overview of the current status of the world’s waterbirds and documents examples of best practice from successful conservation actions taken in many countries.

The publication is an impressive tome for policy makers and on-the-gound wetland conservationists but is also worthy of attention from the world of wetland CEPA. It’s a product of a meeting three years ago when technical experts and policy maker from around the world gathered in Edinburgh, Scotland, to discuss how to protect the world’s migratory waterbirds and the crucial wetlands upon which they depend. Their publication looks at past experiences, lessons learned, and charts the way forward, especially through its Edinburgh Declaration agreed at the end of the meeting.

The Declaration emphasizes that the although significant progress has been made to conserve waterbirds and their wetland habitats, leading to some major successes – and many of these have been presented at the conference – overall there remain important challenges that requires further efforts. The Declaration includes a 12-point Call for Urgent Action – one of which notes the need to “Invest in communication, education and public awareness activities as a key element of waterbird and wetlands conservation”.

The six main sections of the 960-page publication include Introduction, Plenary papers, Geographic regions, Cross-cutting issues, Integrated approaches to waterbird conservation – and the best bit of all – Waterbirds and people! It is this last part that will be of most interest to CEPA, covering:

Conflict resolution (11 papers);
Let the waterbirds do the talking (6 papers)
Sustainable waterbird harvest (10 papers)
Financing global flyway conservation: innovation, linkages, options (2 papers)
Building and sustaining capacity for wetland conservation and research (4 papers)

In particular have a look at the section on Let the waterbirds do the talking. The convenor of this workshop, Christine Prietto, noted in her introduction that “Waterbirds, through their often charismatic behaviour, their international migrations, and association with ‘untamed nature’ have great potential to increase support for biodiversity conservation at all levels. The processes of communication, education and public awareness (CEPA) are all invaluable complements to waterbird conservation but must be valued and funded accordingly.” In this section you can read about, for example, the Shorebird Sister Schools Program that has been spectacularly successful in connecting teachers, students, youth groups, nature center interpreters, and protected areas educators at sites that support breeding, migrating, or wintering shorebirds along migration flyways. Or the impact of Ten years of International Migratory Bird Day . . . and more.

And where to find this wealth of information? At this URL http://www.jncc.gov.uk/page-3891 you will find the main page with links from there to all the major sections. Each paper in the publication can be downloaded individually in PDF format so no worries about 960 pages downloading all at once in a massive PDF!

With best wishes, Sandra Hails, Ramsar Secretariat

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Sandra Hails, CEPA Programme Officer
Ramsar Convention Secretariat
Rue Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 999 0176; Fax: +41 22 999 0169
E-mail: hails@ramsar.org
Web Site: http://ramsar.org
CEPA mini-Web site: http://ramsar.org/outreach_index.htm

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