The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands

35th Meeting of the Ramsar Standing Committee

CONVENTION ON WETLANDS (Ramsar, Iran, 1971) 35th Meeting of the Standing Committee Gland, Switzerland, 14-16 February 2007

Agenda item 13

DOC. SC35-10

1. It is perhaps worth reflecting on the role and purpose of the National Report. Too often Parties may have the impression that it is simply an imposition on their time, and too often the reports are not particularly well used.

2. There are three main functions for the Convention's National Reports:

• providing data on how the Convention is being implemented;
• capturing lessons/experience, so as to allow Parties to develop future action; and
• providing a means for Parties to be accountable against their obligations under the Convention.

3. In addition, a number of indicators in the National Reports on Parties' implementation will provide key sources of information for the analysis and assessment of the "ecological outcome-oriented indicators of effectiveness of the implementation of the Convention" currently being further developed by the Scientific and Technical Review Panel for Standing Committee and COP10 consideration.

4. Bearing these functions in mind, the annexed document has been prepared as a trial mock-up of the proposed COP10 National Report Format.

5. Some additional "free-text" questions have also been suggested. These include, under Section 4.4 (CEPA):

• What are the country's CEPA targets?
• Describe national campaigns, programmes and projects to raise community awareness of the ecosystems services provided by wetlands as well as their social, economic and cultural values.
• Summarize World Wetlands Day activities with a few notable examples.
• What support do you provide for wetland CEPA activities delivered at the state or local level or wetland networks?

6. It has also been suggested that some general free-text questions should be included at the start of the report format, so as to form a summary of national implementation progress and challenges. These would include:

"In your country, in the past triennium:

• what new steps in implementing the Convention have been taken?
• what have been the five most successful aspects of implementation?
• what have been the five greatest difficulties in implementing the Convention?
• what proposals are you making about future implementation?
• what recommendations would you make for the Ramsar Secretariat to assist in implementation?
• what recommendations can you make for the International Organisation Partners (IOPs) to provide in terms of assistance to implement?
• how can implementation of the Convention be better linked to implementation of other MEAs, especially those in the Biodiversity cluster?"

7. So that Parties will have sufficient time to compile and complete their National Reports and submit them to the Secretariat sufficiently in advance of COP10 to then permit the Secretariat to analyse and prepare global and regional implementation reports for COP10 consideration, it will be necessary for the COP10 National Report Format to be finalized and issued to Parties by mid-2007.

Annex

Draft National Report on the Implementation of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (National Reports to be submitted for the 10th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties, Republic of Korea, 2008)

An unedited version of the draft National Report form is provided as a separate document.

Readers will note that in this Word version of the National Report form, responses are to be made by choosing among options found in the drop-down menus following each question.

For further information about the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, please contact the Ramsar Convention Secretariat, Rue Mauverney 28, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland (tel +41 22 999 0170, fax +41 22 999 0169, e-mail ). Posted 15 December 2006, Dwight Peck, Ramsar.