Photo: Wetlands of Central Asia, Eldar Rustamov
The Ramsar Convention was signed by 18 countries 50 years ago and since then has been ratified by 171 countries. The Convention is considered the first dealing with nature conservation and is an international treaty entirely devoted to one type of ecosystem. The Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance currently includes about 2,414 areas covering 254 million hectares.
The whole world celebrates Wetlands Day on February 2, which presents wetlands as a source of fresh water in 2021 and encourages actions for their restoration.
Irrational use of water resources has been one of the greatest challenges facing the Central Asian region over the past several decades. We are using more fresh water than nature can replenish and irrevocably destroying wetland ecosystems in our countries.
There are 21 wetlands in Central Asia, which are considered as Ramsar sites: 10 in Kazakhstan, 2 in Uzbekistan, 3 in Kyrgyzstan, 5 in Tajikistan, and 1 in Turkmenistan. The Ramsar Regional Initiative for Central Asia (RRI-CA) was established in 2016.
Over the past five years, the countries of the region have conducted plenty of events to support the Day of Wetlands. In this manner, the 55th International Waterbird Census (IWC) took place on Karakol Lake, one of the key bird areas in Kazakhstan.
Photo: IWC on Karakol Lake, Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan
Turkmenistan is also conducting a record of birds in different parts of the country today. The results of the environmental actions of the representatives of the Kopetdag Reserve and the Nature Conservation Society will be available on the e-newspaper website "Golden Age. Turkmenistan".
Photo: Wetlands of Turkmenistan, Shirin Karryeva
In order to support the work through national experts in the Central Asian region, the Ramsar Secretariat has allocated a small grant for the implementation of the project called “Ramsar Regional Initiatives in Central Asia”, Technical Secretariat of which is CAREC. You can learn more about the Initiative here.
World Wetlands Day is widely celebrated around the world. Everyone can post information about their event dedicated to this day on the website www.worldwetlandsday.org/map
Prepared by: RRI-CA Technical Secretariat and RRI-CA Steering Committee