The Ramsar Archives

West Africa Subregional Meeting
Dakar, Senegal, May 1997

Statement by Delmar Blasco
Secretary General of the Convention

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to join you at this Ramsar regional meeting. These occasions to bring together the Contracting Parties from a particular region, to exchange views and experiences with the implementation of the Convention, are extremely useful. I am most grateful to the Government of Senegal, and in particular to the Director of National Parks, Dr. Seydina Issa Sylla, for having taken the initiative, in his capacity of Regional Representative for Africa in the Standing Committee of the Convention, to organize this meeting. Senegal, as Alternate Representative in the triennium 1993-1996, and since its election as Regional Representative at the Conference of the Parties held in Australia in March last year, has shown tremendous leadership and dedication to making the Ramsar Convention a useful instrument for the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands in Africa. We are indebted for this level of commitment and support.

We are also very grateful to the Government of Switzerland for its financial support for this meeting, and to the Regional Office of IUCN - The World Conservation Union for its assistance in the preparation of the event. The IUCN network of regional and country offices throughout Africa provides very solid support to the Convention and I would like to take this opportunity to publicly recognize IUCN for that assistance.

We are very pleased to have among us representatives of all the Contracting Parties in this region – Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, The Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, and Togo – as well as Benin, Nigeria and Sierra Leone as Observer States that hopefully will join soon. We are pleased that a number of agencies and NGOs have also been able to join this meeting. The Convention secretariat is very eager to strengthen its working relations with other environment and sustainable development institutions, so that together we can provide better services to the African countries and their people.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The Convention on Wetlands is making significant progress and is being recognized more and more, by Contracting Parties and by the international community in general, as an important treaty for catalyzing national action and international cooperation for sustainable development.

Last month, we welcomed Contracting Party number 100, and a few days later Contracting Party number 101. And we know that several countries are in the final stages of preparation to join the Convention, among them the Republic of Congo. Botswana was the most recent African country to join, and it has designated the largest site in the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance, the Okavango Delta, covering 6,864,000 hectares.

Contracting Parties have so far designated 872 sites for the Ramsar List, covering 62,568,445 hectares, an area larger than Kenya. At the same time, a number of countries have adopted or are developing national instruments in the form of wetland policies, or plans, or strategies, to address the questions of conservation and sustainable use of all the wetlands in their territories. In Africa, the prime example is Uganda, which together with Canada were the first two Contracting Parties to adopt National Wetland Policies.

As you are aware, the most significant development at the last Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties, held in Australia in March last year, was the adoption of the Ramsar Strategic Plan 1997-2002. The Plan constitutes a very useful instrument for guiding Contracting Parties in the application of the treaty at the national level, and also for guiding the Standing Committee of the Convention, the Ramsar Scientific and Technical Review Panel, the NGO partners and the Convention secretariat in their endeavors to assist countries in achieving the goals of the Convention.

A important development, in my view, within the Strategic Plan was the adoption of the Mission Statement, which says: "The Convention’s mission is the conservation and wise use of wetlands by national action and international cooperation as a means to achieve sustainable development throughout the world". The concept of "wise use" embodied in the text of the Convention is understood as "sustainable use", defined by the Conference of the Parties as "sustainable utilization for the benefit of mankind in a way compatible with the maintenance of the natural properties of the ecosystem". The acknowledgement that Ramsar’s mission is to contribute to achieving sustainable development places the treaty squarely within the context of Agenda 21 and the post-Rio frame of mind, with conservation and development being perceived as the two sides of the same coin. If one side is altered, the coin loses its value.

The need for greater synergy among the environment-related conventions and agencies, in particular those that have emerged from the Rio Conference on Environment and Development, is also addressed in the Ramsar Strategic Plan. The Ramsar secretariat has signed memoranda of cooperation with the secretariats of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species, and it intends to establish close working relations with the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, since in arid lands wetlands represent a crucial element for biodiversity and human survival.

The most recent Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted a decision inviting Ramsar "to cooperate as a lead partner in the implementation of activities under the Convention related to wetlands" and, in particular, requested "the Executive Secretary to seek inputs from the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance in the preparation of documentation concerning the status and trends of inland water ecosystems for the consideration of the [CBD] Conference of the Parties at its fourth meeting".

The Ramsar Conference of the Parties in Brisbane last year also broke new ground by adopting a resolution on Ramsar and water and a recommendation on toxic chemicals in wetlands. In my view, the resolution on Ramsar and water is of high significance, because for the first time the Conference of the Parties is addressing the question of "the important hydrological functions of wetlands, including groundwater recharge, water quality improvement and flood alleviation, and the inextricable link between wetlands and water resources". As I said in my opening statement to the Brisbane Conference, "only three percent of the world’s water is fresh water, and a considerable amount of it is retained in the ice caps and glaciers. Lakes and rivers account for only 0.014 percent of all water, and even less is represented by ground water. And yet most biodiversity on our planet, including our amazing human adventure, depends upon that tiny amount of this essential component of life. Fresh, high quality water is already critically scarce in many places, and looks set to become scarce in many other locations. Water may well be the critical environment and development issue of the 21st century."

I very much hope that this meeting in Dakar will provide an opportunity for the counties and institutions present here to analyze and make recommendations on how they can work towards the implementation of the Ramsar Strategic Plan, how the secretariat and other instruments of the Convention, such as the Scientific and Technical Review Panel (chaired by a distinguished African, Dr. Yaa Ntiamoa-Baidu) and the Ramsar Small Grants Fund, can better assist the Contracting Parties in their endeavors. Let’s also see how the Ramsar Administrative Authorities in each country can work more closely together with the institutions responsible for the application of other conventions, and how the Ramsar Convention can cooperate more effectively with the external support agencies, including NGOs, for the benefit of the recipient countries.

Finally, let’s also start identifying the most significant issues for this region that should be addressed at the next Conference of the Parties, to be held in Costa Rica on 10-18 May 1999, under the overall theme of "People and Wetlands - The Vital Link".

Thank you again to Senegal, and in particular to Dr. Seydina Sylla for hosting this meeting. I wish you a very productive and enjoyable time.

For further information, 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 ). This address was delivered by Mr Blasco to the West Africa Subregional Meeting in Dakar, Senegal, on 12 May 1997 and posted here on 14 May 1997, Dwight Peck, Ramsar.