Combat Against Climate Change

Mulyeongari Oreum on Jeju Island is a small crater lake located on top of an “oreum,” or secondary volcano, on Mt. Halla formed from volcanic eruptions between 2,500 and 100,000 years ago. The site, with seasonally varying water levels, provides a habitat for two endangered species, the giant water bug (Lethocerus deyrollei) and Narrow-mouth frog (Kaloula borealis). It is also known as “Su-ryeong-ak” which means a hill with holy water. In 2000, it was designated as the country’s first wetland conservation area and was listed on the Ramsar Convention preservation list in 2006. / Yonhap

By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter

The countries that have ratified the Ramsar Convention will gather to assess the progress of the convention, the sustainable use of wetlands, and share knowledge and experience on technical issues.

Under the theme ``Healthy Wetlands, Healthy People,'' contracting parties will set new comprehensive strategies for better protection of wetlands over the next six years. The strategy dubbed ``The Ramsar Strategic Plan 2009-2014'' aims to place more than 2,500 wetlands around the world on the Ramsar wetlands list by 2014 and increase the number of member contracting parties to 170 by 2011.

The convention now has 158 parties and a total of 1,814 wetlands around the world have been designated ``Ramsar sites,'' covering nearly 167 million hectares (1.67 million square kilometers), larger than the territory of France, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland combined.

The convention will produce practical measures to reduce risks of highly pathogenic avian influenza by using wetland areas. It was made in response to a request by contracting parties at the previous meeting in 2005.

All stakeholders, including non-contracting parties, will be encouraged to cooperate in research programs, surveillance in response to outbreak, risk assessments, training in the epidemiology of wildlife diseases, and the exchange and sharing of relevant data and information.

Participants will also share ideas on steps against exacerbating climate change. Previous sessions found wetlands play an important role in carbon storage and cycling as well as supplying freshwater, however they are vulnerable to climate change because of their limited adaptive capacity.

To counter these, contracting parties will urge governments around the world to conserve, maintain and restore wetland ecosystems so as to form a viable element to an overall climate change mitigation strategy and to note that wetlands can also mitigate adverse effects such as food shortage by providing vital biodiversity resources.

With growing demand on biofuel, participants will express grave concern that increasing global attention to the use of alternative and renewable sources of energies can have detrimental effects upon wetlands and their ecosystem services to us. They will encourage contracting parties to prefer biofuel crops that do not risk damage to wetlands either directly through drainage and conversion to agricultural land or indirectly through increased water abstraction demands or pollution.

Lastly, participants will announce the ``Changwon Declaration,'' through which they can develop the Ramsar Convention. The declaration, to be announced at the end of the meeting, is expected to carry the contracting parties' pledges for the conservation of wetlands, such as accumulating a computerized database on them. The conference preparation committee and the city government hopes the participants will decide on establishing an East Asia regional Ramsar wetland center in Changwon, so that the city can play a bigger role in international exchange on wetlands.

pss@koreatimes.co.kr

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