Our Actions

International Symposium on Water and Wetlands in the Mediterranean “From Grado to Agadir: The next 20 years”

International Symposium, Agadir, Morocco, 6-8 February 2012

RESTORE - Restoring Europe's Rivers

Wetlands International encourages the restoration of European rivers towards a more natural state to deliver increased environmental quality, flood risk reduction, and social and economic benefits.

In the partnership RESTORE we share knowledge to policymakers, river basin organisation and practitioners and promote best practice on river restoration in Europe.

Reducing the impacts of oil sand mining

Canada's oil sands (also called tar sands) are one of the largest oil deposits on Earth. Mining destroys the peat marshes covering these deposits, and alters the water flows within a much wider area. Oil sands oil is controversial due to these impacts and the fact that higher greenhouse gas emissions are produced than from this form of extraction than from conventional sources of oil.  Wetlands International is exploring activities with Shell to limit impacts and enable restoration once mining has ended. 

Arctic wetlands: reducing the impact of the oil and gas sector

The nature in the Arctic region is fragile, recovery is slow. The impact of just a new road in the permafrost marshes may impact a much wider area, for decades.  Wetlands International aims to minimise the impacts of the oil and gas sector on the onshore and coastal Arctic wetlands by working with Shell on guidelines.

UNFCCC Climate Meeting in Durban (28 Nov - 12 Dec 2011)

Wetlands International participated at the 2011 climate summit in Durban, South Africa. The overall steps taken by the 194 governments are dangerously minimal. Regarding wetlands, we are content that wetland-carbon is finally recognised in different decisions. This may have a great impact for saving carbon rich wetlands (see final press release).

UNFCCC Adaptation Fund Board

The Adaptation Fund was created to finance climate change-related adaptation projects and programmes in developing countries that are Parties to the Kyoto Protocol and vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change. We advocate solutions that help ensure environmental safeguards are built into the Adaptation Fund so that all projects and programme the Board finances fulfil strong envrionmental criteria.

Making the case for saving Asia's mangroves

Wetlands International runs a large-scale programme to conserve and restore the remaining coastal mangrove forests of Southeast Asia. The main focus is to convince and enable authorities at all levels, the private sector and civil society to safeguard these important coastal forests.

Saving water for the Mujib Reserve, Jordan

Together with the Royal Society for Conservation of Nature (RSCN) we worked in Jordan to reduce the impact of the dam upstream on the Mujib reserve, involve the local population in agricultural activities to save water and preserve water quality, and make sure that the Mujib reserve water needs are fulfilled in water management plans and decisions of the government.

Peatlands in UN Climate policies

Since 2005 we have stressed the importance of preventing further carbon emissions from peat soils at the UN Climate Conference (UNFCCC). We aim to include carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from the degradation and loss of peatlands in a new climate treaty that is currently under negotiation.

The UN Biological Diversity Summit 2010 (Nagoya, Japan)

Wetlands International was present at the Convention on Biological Diversity in Japan. Via presentations, publications and advocacy, we pushed for an ambitious strategic plan, in which countries committed themselves to actions for the coming decade. Although our ambitions on some issues were higher than the outcomes, we are content with the consensus reached between all countries (see www.cbd.int/nagoya/outcomes).