Wetlands In Dubai
Fito Coulter
In the UAE, wetlands include coastal areas, wadis, sabkhas, shallow seagrass and coral reefs, mudflats, salt marshes, and mangroves but also numerous artificial lakes, ponds created for recreation, water storage, or sewage plants.
What we need now is urgent action. Governments, businesses, and civil society must collaborate to scale up the safeguarding and restoration of wetland ecosystems, as well as tackle the drivers that destroy wetlands. With the conclusion of the first Global Stocktake at COP28, wetland actions need to increasingly be included in Nationally Determined Contributions, as well as in national adaptation and disaster risk reduction plans. Improving the protection, management and restoration of wetlands is critical to our collective well-being and to protecting our planet.
The Mangrove Breakthrough is a science-based, measurable, and achievable goal for non-state actors and governments to collectively restore and protect mangroves at the scale needed to secure their future. Launched by The Global Mangrove Alliance in collaboration with the UN Climate Change High-level Champions, it aims to secure the future of 15 million hectares of mangroves globally by 2030 through collective action on:
Friday, 1 Dec 11:00-12:00 at the Nature-Positive Pavilion: Renowned experts and officials will convene at the COP28 Climate-Forward Ocean Conservation Strategies event to discuss the Mangrove and Coral Reef Breakthroughs within the broader context of international agreements, as well as strategies to bolster the resilience of marine biodiversity.
Monday, 4 Dec 08:30-09:30 at the Nature-Positive Pavilion: This event will feature the launch of the Mangrove Breakthrough Financial Roadmap. Co-developed with investors, experts and practitioners, the Roadmap provides actionable recommendations for scaling mangrove-positive business models and developing innovative financial instruments to accelerate investment in mangroves.
Friday, 8 Dec 15:00-16:30 in Room 6: The role of peatlands as nature-based solutions (NBS) is recognised as an integral part of reaching the 1.5-degree target of the Paris Climate Agreement. Facing the Global Stocktake at COP28, this event will focus on the potential of scaling up peatland action and how to overcome the obstacles ahead.
Saturday, 9 Dec 10:00-11:30: This event seeks to highlight the interlinkages between agriculture and nature, showcase examples of action to reduce the impact of agriculture on nature and highlight both the pathway and challenges ahead.
Sunday, 10 Dec 12:40-14:30 at the Azerbaijani Pavilion and online: Transboundary basins are home for Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar Sites). This side event will provide an occasion for decision-makers and experts to share experiences, lessons learned and best practices in wetland restoration and conservation to reduce water scarcity and drought risk in transboundary basins.
Sunday, 10 Dec 13:00-14:30 at the Panama Pavilion: In this event, the panellists representing three regions (Africa, Asia, and Latin America) will present how their experience has been in positioning mangroves on national and regional agendas including notes on The Mangroves Breakthrough and the Global Alliance for Mangroves.
Sunday, 10 Dec 14:30-15:45 at the IUCN (Unite for Nature) Pavilion: This event will explain the challenge and demonstrate how the leading eight countries are mobilising to achieve the two targets to support their climate ambitions. The Freshwater Challenge is one of three official water outcomes from COP28.
Sunday, 10 Dec 16:00-17:30: The ministerial roundtable on the Freshwater Challenge will announce new country signatories and their commitments to protecting and restoring freshwater ecosystems, which are essential to mitigating and adapting to climate change and currently the most degraded type of ecosystem worldwide.
A trello board where you can download our social media cards, captions and key messages showcasing the vital role that wetlands play. Show your support and tag us in your posts! Click here to access the toolkit.\
Please reach out to Arin for any media-related inquiries including quotes, interviews and sound bites. Our experts at COP can comment on The Mangrove Breakthrough, The Freshwater Challenge, the Water, Peace and Security partnership, and more broadly on the intersection between wetland restoration and the climate, biodiversity, and water crises.
Cautioning that it is not enough to merely designate new wetland sites for protection, the GWO emphasizes the necessity of developing effective wetland management plans and integrating wetlands into the planning and implementation of national plans on sustainable development, climate change and other key global commitments.
The report also stresses the role of good governance and effective institutions at local, national, and regional levels as a crucial factor in preventing, ending, and reversing trends in wetland loss and degradation. It calls for more accurate data on wetland extent and wetland inventories to help countries identify priority sites for restoration, highlighting indigenous and local knowledge, as well as citizen science, as invaluable resources on the state of wetlands that should be better used.
Drawing on successful examples across the world, the report recommends using existing funding mechanisms to apply economic and financial incentives for communities and business to protect wetlands through tax benefits. Perverse incentives for farmers and business such as subsidies for agriculture that encourage wetland conversion or pollution should be ended.
The GWO builds on a number of complementary global assessments and initiatives, including: the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP, or UN Environment); the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB); the Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO) by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); the Global Land Outlook (GLO) by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD); the Thematic Assessment of Land Degradation and Restoration by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES); and input from other biodiversity- and water-related multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs).
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MOCCAE) has taken significant measures towards wetland preservation and management, from launching the National Ecotourism Project to hosting an anticipated 1,000 delegates at the 13th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, COP13, this October.
Spanning a global area of 12.1 million square kilometres, an area nearly as large as Greenland, natural wetlands are disappearing at three times the rate of forests lost. Only 13-18 percent of them are on the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance, also known as Ramsar sites. The UAE is home to seven Ramsar sites, with many more set to gain this status.
Fully 48% of wetlands in the Mediterranean basin have disappeared since 1970, according to a recent analysis, while the average global loss is around 35%. The most productive ecosystem on the planet is also the most endangered. There is great urgency to act, and solutions exist!
In view of this, nearly 1,000 delegates from 170 countries are gathering in Dubai from 21 to 29 October to attend the 13th Conference of the Contracting Parties of the Ramsar Convention on wetlands, and to decide on the best ways to protect wetlands, the most lavish ecosystem on the planet and yet the most threatened. Fittingly, on this occasion will be made public the second report of the Mediterranean Wetlands Observatory on the state, challenges, perspectives and solutions for sustainable Mediterranean wetlands.
Increasingly we are experiencing extreme weather events, with a failure to adapt and mitigate climate change, loss of biodiversity and collapse of ecosystems, natural disasters, human-caused environmental damage . . . and if wetlands were part of the solution?
The MWO-2 updates the situation of Mediterranean wetlands since 2012, the year of publication of the first Outlook report (MWO-1), which was the first regional assessment based on indicators of the state of wetlands and the problems they face.
Coordinated by the Tour du Valat, the Mediterranean Wetlands Observatory was created in 2008 in the framework of the MedWet Initiative to monitor and evaluate the status and trends of Mediterranean wetlands, and to further improve the knowledge of their multiple benefits. Its ultimate goal is to improve wetland conservation and management by providing information to as many people as possible, in particular political decision makers and the general public, in line with the MedWet strategic vision. The MWO catalyzes the efforts of a number of partners committed to this vision, including the Plan Bleu, UNEP-WCMC, Wetlands International, EKBY and many others.
Established in 1991, the Mediterranean Wetlands Initiative (MedWet) brings together 27 Mediterranean and peri-Mediterranean countries that are Parties to the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971), Palestine and a number of organizations and wetland centres. The MedWet Mission is to ensure and support the effective conservation of the functions and values of Mediterranean wetlands and the sustainable use of their resources and services.
Tour du Valat is a research institute for the conservation of Mediterranean wetlands created more than 60 years ago by Luc Hoffmann. It has since then developed its research activities for the conservation of Mediterranean wetlands with the constant desire to achieve a better understanding for better management. Convinced that it will only be possible to preserve wetlands if human activities and the protection of the natural heritage can be reconciled, Tour du Valat has for many years been developing programmes of research and integrated management that favour interchanges between wetland users and scientists, and promote wetland benefits to decision makers.
c80f0f1006