The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands

World Wetlands Day 2005 -
index page [WWD2005 reports]

What is World Wetlands Day? 2 February each year is World Wetlands Day. It marks the date of the signing of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea. WWD was celebrated for the first time in 1997 and made an encouraging beginning. Each year, government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and groups of citizens at all levels of the community have taken advantage of the opportunity to undertake actions aimed at raising public awareness of wetland values and benefits in general and the Ramsar Convention in particular. From 1997 to 2004, the Convention’s Web site has posted reports from more than 80 countries of WWD activities of all sizes and shapes, from lectures and seminars, nature walks, children’s art contests, sampan races, and community clean-up days, to radio and television interviews and letters to newspapers, to the launch of new wetland policies, new Ramsar sites, and new programmes at the national level.

Here is what the Ramsar Secretariat offers the Wetland Celebrants for February 2005

How to order WWD posters and stickers

This year we have sent a large number of copies of our World Wetlands Day materials to your country's Ramsar Administrative Authority, and it is to the AAs that you should direct your requests, providing your postal address and the number of copies required. If your AA should be unable to supply the materials to you, please contact the Ramsar Secretariat at wwd@ramsar.org and, again, don't forget to include your full mailing address. Please note that in that case the Secretariat must receive your request by 15 January at the very latest, and much earlier if you know that mail delivery from Switzerland takes a long time. Note, too, that due to budgetary restrictions we CANNOT send materials by express delivery except for very special reasons.

The list of contacts in each of the Party states can be found at http://ramsar.org/wwd/5/wwd2005_list.htm.
Full contact information for the Ramsar Administrative Authorities can be found http://ramsar.org/about_admin_auth.htm.

Electronic formats

For those who wish to print quantities of the poster or stickers for themselves or to adapt them to their own languages and imagery, we have also produced them in a variety of electronic formats. There are:

CD-ROM 1: For use with a MAC or PC, this CD includes the poster and stickers in QuarkXpress Passport 4.11. With this electronic version you will be able to edit the text (but not the images) to produce a personalised version of the poster and stickers. PLEASE NOTE THAT YOU (OR YOUR PRINTER/PUBLISHER) WILL NEED TO HAVE THE APPROPRIATE SOFTWARE TO OPEN THESE FILES.

This CD also includes the poster and stickers as EPS files, BUT PLEASE NOTE THAT YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO EDIT THESE VERSIONS.

CD-ROM 2: For use with a MAC or PC, this CD includes the poster and stickers as Adobe Photoshop files: Adobe Photoshop 6.0 (PSD). This version will allow you to personalise the poster and stickers, changing the text and the images as you wish. Please be aware that these will be very large documents and some computers may not be able to open them.

On this CD there are also Adobe Acrobat (PDF) versions that will simply allow you to print the materials without being able to edit them in any way. For this you will need Adobe Acrobat 5.0.

Once you have determined with your designer which of these formats would be preferable, please request either CD1 or CD2 from the Ramsar Secretariat, wwd@ramsar.org.

Examples of the translation and local adaptation of Ramsar materials:

Since its inception, the production and distribution of materials for World Wetlands Day have been financially supported by the Evian Project funded by the Danone Group.

For further information about World Wetlands Day or the 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 27 October 2004, Dwight Peck and Sandra Hails, Ramsar.