The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands

The 8th Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention -- Regional and subregional meetings

(list of meetings)

Regional and subregional meetings to reinforce the implementation of the Convention on Wetlands and to prepare for its next meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties
(Valencia, Spain, 18-26 November 2002)

The Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971) holds meetings of the Conference of the Contracting Parties every three years. The most recent meeting (COP7) was held in Costa Rica in May 1999 and the next meeting (COP8) is scheduled to take place in Spain in November 2002.

Ramsar COPs are very substantive meetings. COP7 in 1999 adopted a significant array of guidelines and resolutions for the implementation of the Convention, which were published in the three official languages of the Convention as a series of nine "Ramsar handbooks for the wise use of wetlands".

The Standing Committee of the Ramsar Convention has decided that a series of meetings should be held in 2001 and 2002 in the six Ramsar regions (Africa, Asia, Europe, the Neotropics, North America, and Oceania) to review the current implementation of the Convention and prepare for the next Conference of the Parties, to be held in November 2002. Given the significant output from Ramsar COP7 and the developments that have taken place since the COP, the proposed regional meetings should serve to review the progress made by Contracting Parties in using the tools put at their disposal, and to analyze the bottlenecks that they may have encountered.

These will be working meetings hosted by a Contracting Party, with the full assistance of the Ramsar Bureau, but will not constitute "official" meetings of the Convention. Thus, the meetings will make recommendations but not pass "resolutions" as such.

Each subregional meeting will analyze the major issues and concerns that characterize the expansion of the Convention and its work in the subregion. There will be opportunities for sharing experience and for discussions of common problems, of the major achievements, and of the needs for future actions.

Those meetings for which more information is available on this Web site are indicated by links above.

For further information about the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, please contact the Ramsar Convention Bureau, Rue Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland (tel +41 22 999 0170, fax +41 22 999 0169, e-mail ramsar@ramsar.org). Posted 7 August 2001, updated 14 January 2003, Dwight Peck, Ramsar.