News from the CEPA e-mail list

World Wetlands Day 2005 - time to get started! (22/06/04)

Hello everyone:

Okay, time for the CEPA world to get busy again with World Wetlands Day plans, although I know some of you are ahead of us here at the Secretariat and have already started! Here's the announcement from Dwight Peck to the whole Ramsar community - please pass this on to other colleagues that you think be interested.

Best wishes, Sandra Hails, Ramsar Secretariat

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World Wetlands Day takes place on or about the 2nd of February every year and offers governments at all levels, NGOs, schools, and citizens alike an opportunity "to undertake actions aimed at raising public awareness of wetland values and benefits in general and the Ramsar Convention in particular." For February 2005, as for the past seven years, the Ramsar Secretariat will be making promotional materials available free of charge - this year, in addition to inspirational messages suitable for quoting in press releases, there will be a new poster and stickers, available in physical format in English, French, and Spanish and electronically in QuarkXpress for those who may wish to produce them in their own languages or with local content added.

For this year the Standing Committee has adopted the suggested overall theme of "cultural and biological diversity of wetlands", and our poster will be promoting the slogan "There's wealth in wetland diversity - don't lose it!"

Now's a good time for all of our WWD collaborators to begin planning their WWD activities, and we will be striving mightily to have our materials ready for mailing by mid-October 2004.

Our general index page for World Wetlands Day can be found at http://ramsar.org/wwd_index.htm, and reports on WWD activities this past February in over 80 countries can be found at http://ramsar.org/wwd2004_reports.htm and will provide ample suggestions and examples - especially for those unimaginative far northerners who keep complaining that February is a bad time of the year for a party in a wetland. Examples of what some of our collaborators have recently done in producing their own customized WWD materials based upon ours can also be viewed at http://ramsar.org/outreach_materials_translations3.htm.
Some of the free materials left over from WWD 2004 - http://ramsar.org/wwd2004_index.htm - will also be available next year as long as supplies last.

As always, we will welcome learning of your plans beforehand and receiving reports and photos afterward for posting on our Web site, and, as in past years, the production of Ramsar WWD materials is being generously supported by the Evian Ramsar Project of the Danone Group (France).

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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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