News from the CEPA e-mail list

Ramsar and WLI sign an Memorandum of Cooperation (24/11/05)

Good afternoon CEPA list members :

Apologies for the rather long silence – as many of you know we have just finished Ramsar’s 9th Conference of the Contracting Parties (i.e. COP9) in Uganda, tired but triumphant after a largely successful meeting!

Quite aside from the many new Resolutions that have been adopted and will be reported on soon, a number of major events took place alongside the COP plenary sessions. The first I would like to report on is the signing of a Memorandum of Cooperation between the Ramsar Convention and Wetland Link International (WLI), an international network of wetland education centres managed by the UK-based NGO, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. Martin Spray, Chief Executive of WWT and Ramsar’s Secretary General Peter Bridgewater signed and exchanged copies of the MOC which now gives a reassuring formality to what I believe is an effective relationship between the Convention and WLI and it paves the way for further collaborative work.

You can see the details of the MOC here and a few pictures and further information on the signing ceremony here. There’s also a picture of WLI’s Coordinator, Malcolm Whitehead, who gave an excellent, animated presentation on WLI after the signing, explaining the network and the benefits of the network for wetland centres everywhere. Malcolm invited questions from the audience and particularly asked for guidance as to what materials WLI could usefully provide on their web site for wetland centres.

And the ‘stop press’ exciting news from Malcolm, following his return to the UK, is that WLI is moving forward with the development of some modular materials on how to set up wetland centres. More on this later.

Best regards, 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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