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Benefits of Ramsar designation (09/03/07)

Good morning everyone:

Here's a recent message sent to the Ramsar Forum by my colleague Dwight Peck. It describes a recent publication on the benefits of Ramsar designation. Definitely worth a read to help you 'sell' the benefits of Ramsar site designation, or even understand them better yourselves!

"One of the most important questions about the Ramsar Convention, and one of the most difficult to answer reliably, is what benefits can be expected to come from designating an eligible wetland as a Wetland of International Importance, or "Ramsar site". There have been case studies and anecdotes, but no recent attempts to answer the question systematically. Now we have an answer, a very positive one, and a great deal of supporting material for it, at least for the 22 Ramsar sites in the United States. A new article by Royal Gardner and Kim Diana Connolly, "The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands: Assessment of International Designations Within the United States," presents background on the Convention followed by analysis of the results of a thorough survey of the site managers and related people at all of the USA's Ramsar sites, and concludes with a number of cogent recommendations for strengthening Ramsar within the USA. In brief, the benefits that were found are discussed under the headings 1) Increased Funding Opportunities, 2) Support for Protection of the Site and Surrounding Areas, and 3) Science and Tourism, and virtually no negative effects were reported.

The article, from Environmental Law Reporter (February 2007), has been made available to us in PDF format with the gracious permission of the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C.: http://ramsar.org/wurc/wurc_gardner_elr2007.pdf

Royal C Gardner is Director of the Institute for Biodiversity Law and Policy at the Stetson University College of Law in Florida, USA, as well as current Chair of the US National Ramsar Committee and the North American Representative to the Convention's Scientific and Technical Review Panel. His co-author, Kim Diana Connolly, is Associate Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina School of Law and faculty member of the Vermont Law School."

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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