Spreading awareness: World Wetlands Day 2019
Healthy wetlands play a crucial role for life on Earth.
Besides providing a variety of ecological services including trapping floodwaters, recharging groundwater supplies, and removing pollution, wetlands contain a disproportionately high number of plant and animal species, including endangered species. Wetlands are also powerful carbon sequestering ecosystems, offering a natural solution to climate change, one of the most pressing problems facing humanity and the planet.
Yet wetlands are disappearing three times faster than forests, and more than a third of the world’s wetlands have been lost in just 45 years.
World Wetlands Day on February 2 is the ideal time to raise global awareness around the value of wetlands. To draw attention to how wetlands can help fight climate change, the theme of World Wetlands Day 2019 is “Wetlands and Climate Change”, a theme that will carry through to the World Congress on Wetlands and Lake Restoration taking place May 7-9 in Spain, when a global discussion on Business and NGO Partnerships for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation will occur.
“The Living Lakes Canada team will be going to Valencia, Spain to celebrate Living Lakes International’s 20th anniversary as well as take part in the World Congress on Wetland and Lake Restoration,” said Living Lakes Canada Executive Director Kat Hartwig, “and we are being supported by Kicking Horse Coffee to attend. Kicking Horse Coffee also wants to help support stewardship for the RAMSAR-designated internationally significant Columbia Wetlands, located in the East Kootenay’s Columbia Valley, which is home to the company’s headquarters.”
Living Lakes International is a global network of over 120 non-government organizations that share the mission to enhance the protection, restoration and rehabilitation of lakes, rivers, wetlands and watersheds throughout the world.
The program for the World Congress for Wetland and Lake Restoration can be viewed here.
World Wetlands Day marks the anniversary of the signing of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar Convention) in Ramsar, Iran, on February 2, 1971. To learn more, visit www.worldwetlandsday.org.
