What's New @ Ramsar

International Navigation Association working group meeting

On 21-22 June 2000, the Bureau  hosted the 2^nd meeting of the Wetland Restoration Working Group of PIANC, the Permanent International Association of Navigation Congresses (also known as the International Navigation Association), which groups all the major business interests in harbours, maritime and river navigation. The group is ably chaired by Russ Theriot of the Waterways Experiment Station (US Army Corps of Engineers), and is mandated over the next two years to produce guidelines on wetland restoration for the use of private sector concerns involved in harbour development, maintenance, and dredging. Ramsar’s Dr Tobias Salathé, among others in the group, brings the perspective of environmental organizations and sees this kind of cooperative participation in industry’s efforts to be environmentally-friendly as a promising field of endeavor.

The next meeting will take place during the week of 13 November 2000 at Rosario, Argentina, where a canal is currently under construction, passing through the Paraná wetlands, a highly contentious issue.

Russ Theriot, the Working Group chairperson, expressed his gratitude to the Secretary General and the Bureau for its hospitality in hosting the 2nd meeting, and intends to liaise closely on restoration issues from the Ramsar perspective with Dr Bill Streever, his colleague in the United States Army Corps of Engineers' Waterways Research Station in Vicksburg, Miss., USA   (Dr Streever is an observer member of Ramsar's Scientific and Technical Review Panel (STRP) representing the Society of Wetland Scientists.)

Here's the entire PIANC gang convivializing right in amongst IUCN's special nature garden. (Photos: Alexander Belokurov, Ramsar)

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 ). Posted 23 June 2000, Dwight Peck, Ramsar.