Wetlands, among the world’s most valuable and biodiverse ecosystems, are disappearing at alarming speed amid urbanization and agriculture shifts, conservationists said yesterday, calling for urgent action to halt the erosion.
“We are in a crisis,” Ramsar Convention on Wetlands Secretary General Martha Rojas Urrego told reporters in Geneva, warning that wetland loss could have devastating effects, including on climate change.
The secretariat of the convention, adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar nearly a half-century ago, yesterday published its first-ever global report on the state of the world’s wetlands.
The 88-page report said that about 35 percent of wetlands — which include lakes, rivers, marshes and peatlands, as well as coastal and marine areas like lagoons, mangroves and coral reefs — were lost between 1970 and 2015.
Today, wetlands cover more than 12 million square kilometrers, the report said, warning that the annual rates of loss has accelerated since 2000.
“We are losing wetlands three times faster than forests,” Rojas Urrego said, describing the Global Wetland Outlook report as a “red flag.”
While the world has been increasingly focused on global warming and its effects on oceans and forests, the convention secretariat said that wetlands remain “dangerously undervalued.”
The outlook, released in advance of a meeting of parties to the convention in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, next month, stressed the importance of wetlands to all life on Earth.
Directly or indirectly, they provide almost all of the world’s consumption of freshwater, and more than 40 percent of all species live and breed in wetlands, it said.
Animals and plants who call wetlands home are particularly vulnerable, with a quarter at risk of extinction, the report said.
Wetlands also provide a livelihood for more than 1 billion people, while mitigating floods and protecting coastlines, it said, adding that they are also a vital source of food, raw materials and genetic resources for medicines.
Wetlands are essential to reining in climate change, with peatlands storing twice as much carbon as the world’s forests, even though they cover only 3 percent of all land surface, the secretariat said, adding that salt marshes, seagrass beds and mangroves also store large quantities of carbon.
When wetlands disappear, carbon that has been safely locked in the soil is released into the atmosphere, the report said.
Climate scientists have long warned of the threat of so-called positive feedbacks — a vicious cycle of global warming — but their fears have focused primarily on the potent greenhouse gas methane seeping from thawing Arctic permafrost.
However, the dark swampy peatlands of the tropics are also a major concern, the report said, warning that draining soil for farming and development poses a climate threat.
Considering wetlands as wastelands is therefore problematic, Rojas Urrego said, lamenting “the perception of swamps as something we need to drain.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in