PRESS BRIEFING SPONSORED BY DIVISION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING SPONSORED BY DIVISION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The world's attention must be drawn to the urgent necessity of looking comprehensively into freshwater matters, Claude Martin, Director-General of the World Wide Fund for Nature International (WWF) said this morning at a Headquarters press briefing sponsored by the Division for Sustainable Development of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Emphasizing the need for an ecosystems approach to freshwater management, Mr. Martin said it was not good enough to consider the purely quantitative or qualitative aspects. "We need to look at the whole watershed if we want to manage freshwater resources in the long run."

He said that the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (1971) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) were of crucial importance for the preservation of biodiversity and the management of freshwater for nature and for people. The aim of the press conference was to draw the attention of the United Nations, the participants in the current session of the Commission on Sustainable Development and the public to the need for a far stronger commitment by governments to those treaties.

The press briefing was also addressed by Delmar Blasco, Secretary- General of the Ramsar Convention; Ger Bergkamp, Freshwater Resources Coordinator of the World Conservation Union (IUCN); Serap Kuleli, Deputy Director-General, Ministry of the Environment of Turkey; Nergis Yazgan of Turkey's Society for the Protection of Nature (DHKD); Orapin Wongchumpit, Director of Thailand's International Environment Affairs Division; Prakarn Virakul, Thailand's Minister-Counsellor for Agriculture; and Gerard Early, First Assistant Secretary of the Environment, Australia.

Mr. Blasco said that the Ramsar Convention, named after the city in Iran where it was signed, aimed at conserving both freshwater and marine water wetland resources. To do so, countries had to designate wetlands identified as of international importance for the Ramsar List. Almost 1,000 wetlands around the world had been included by member countries of the List, covering almost 70 million hectares, including shallow-water wetlands as well as rivers and lakes.

He denied that the Convention had an "anti-people message" and that it cared more about ecosystems and the environment than about the more than 1 billion people without water supplies and the more than 2 billion people without sanitation. "We care very much about them, and because we care we want to conserve the basic resources that we need to preserve in order to satisfy people's needs. The ecosystems approach will preserve the good health of the water resources in such a way that, hopefully, soon all people on this planet would have water.

Outlining the ecosystems approach to freshwater management, Mr. Bergkamp said it was goal-driven, and put the conservation of ecosystems at the heart of integrated water resources management. To implement that approach it was important to support such existing treaties as the Ramsar Convention.

Ms. Kuleli said Turkey had dedicated four new sites to the Ramsar List - - Gediz Delta in the west, Uluabat in the north-west, Akyatan in the south and Kizilirnak in the north. In addition, full protection had now been given to the Kus Lake in north-western Turkey and Burdur in the south-west, which previously had only about 50 per cent coverage under the Convention. Through publications, meetings and symposiums, the government, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), had raised public awareness of the importance of wetlands and convinced farmers to change some of their irrigation and drainage projects that would have adversely affected the wetlands.

Turkey, Ms. Yazgan said, was a country of many different eco-regions, each with its own climate, topography, habitat, fauna and flora. It was also home to two of the eco-regions on which the WWF was basing its forthcoming conservation programmes -- the north-eastern Black Sea region and the Mediterranean. However, as elsewhere, that biodiversity was under considerable threat: environmental protection was not keeping pace with the significant rate of human growth, consumer demand and economic development. More than 20,000 hectares of forest was lost annually, 80 per cent of sand dune habitats had already been lost and 60 per cent of Turkish wetlands had been lost in the last three decades.

Ms. Wongchumpit said Thailand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs was in the process of ratifying the Ramsar Convention. It had designated two Ramsar sites in the south of the country, including a 45,000-hectare non-hunting area listed by the IUCN as one of the 42 most important wetlands in Asia.

However, Mr. Virakul said the two sites faced a problem of land deterioration arising from agricultural activity, an issue that was being considered by the National Wetlands Committee and related bodies. It could take Thailand three to four years to recover from its financial crisis. The country would thus find it difficult to implement environmental conservation or rehabilitation. Therefore, wealthy developed countries were urged to transfer environmental technologies to the developing countries to fulfil their commitments smoothly, particularly during the economic crisis.

Mr. Early said that freshwater management was a particularly important issue for Australia, the second driest continent after Antarctica. With 49 sites on the Ramsar List, 17 of which already had formal management plans, the Australian Government had recently adopted a Commonwealth wetlands policy, setting strategies and actions that would implement the Ramsar Convention. Another recent initiative was an agreement by Australia's state and federal Government that implementation of the Convention was a matter of national

Sustainable Development Briefing - 3 - 22 April 1998

environmental significance. A review of environmental legislation would give the Ramsar Convention a special mention as being of particular importance and would give Ramsar sites a status above and beyond that enjoyed by national parks or reserves.

Asked what was the global relevance of wetlands, Mr. Blasco said, "Maintaining those wetlands means maintaining the good health of the hydrological cycle and biodiversity issues of the planet".

Asked by another correspondent why it had taken so long for governments and people to recognize the importance of wetlands, he said some countries had lost up to 80 per cent of their wetlands. The new awareness was very important and some countries, especially developed ones, were investing millions of dollars to restore wetlands.

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