Happy World Wetlands Day (02/02/06)

Hello CEPA List members:

Let me wish you all a Happy World Wetlands Day, even though I know most of you won’t be celebrating until this coming Saturday and Sunday!

We have already received reports from all Ramsar regions on planned activities and we will no doubt soon be swamped with information to go on the Web to record the enthusiasm, dedication and creativity that governments and NGOs have invested in WWD 2006. I’m always heartened by the diversity of activity on WWD – a quick look at our What’s New page will show that some of our WWD actors like to use it to highlight a new Ramsar Site designation but others will focus on working with schoolchildren, or with local communities or on launching a major campaign.

To focus on the latter, I would like to highlight a report from the Danube Delta Environmental Forum which shows how WWD can be used as a focus point for a multi-national river basin approach to wetland and water management.

First a little background. The Danube Environmental Forum (DEF) includes 170 NGOs from 13 European countries (Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine). Their goal? To create a Danube River Basin-wide platform of NGOs that has a common understanding in, and approach to, environmental protection of the 2,857 km-long Danube River. DEF has decided to use World Wetlands Day this year to launch an international campaign to protect the Danube wetlands and waters. The campaign will encourage national water planners to learn more about, and better apply, wetland protection – working with water planners to safeguard wetlands is an area of work that is a current Ramsar focus.

From the campaign launch today (read their press release here http://www.daphne.sk/def - (click on press release)) DEF intends to monitor the progress of Danube national governments in including wetland protection measures in their national water plans, disseminating the results publicly on Danube Day, June 29, 2006 and World Wetlands Day 2007.

According to my DEF contact, Ms Monika Chrenkova, all 13 member countries will be organising a WWD event – and some of them have planned several events at different locations These include press conferences, a wetland tour that crosses political borders, a focus on specific threats from planned navigation projects, a national wetland conference, new Ramsar Site designations, and more.

While you are on the Daphne web site (the DEF Secretariat is hosted at this institute), have a look at Daphne’s Environmental Education page, a lot going on here!

And the Ramsar Secretariat- what are we doing (apart from endlessly clacking away at our keyboards)? Most of our senior staff will be taking part in WWD celebrations in different countries around the world (in the Netherlands, Republic of Korea, South Africa, and Slovenia) and a number of our staff will be taking part in an event organised by a local NGO in Geneva at the Rhône genevois-Vallons de l'Allondon et de La Laire Ramsar Site.

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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