Abstract
Wetlands have declined in area and quality at an accelerating pace in the last 50 years. Yet, the last 50 years is when international attention has been focussed on wetlands through the Ramsar Convention. An analysis of how the convention has evolved over the past 50 years suggests it has been drifting away from its original mandate in a maladaptive manner, and this drift is a problem for achieving its original objectives. A review of the strategic plans of the convention revealed two key conditions for institutional drifting and the associated lack of success. The first condition lies in its unique situation as a non-UN convention, which reduces the convention’s visibility and interactivity with other biodiversity-related conventions, agencies, or programmes. The second condition is an increasing number of conventions dealing with biodiversity issues, all forcing the Ramsar Convention to seek different roles in an increasingly competitive institutional landscape. A more effective future for the convention arguably lies in reasserting its original mandate, but with cognisance of the changed environmental pressures of the twenty-first century. While this would narrow its increasingly broad focus, such a reorientation will allow wetlands and waterfowl to start a track to recovery, backed by active and focused Contracting Parties in a renewed international convention on wetland conservation, management, and sustainable use.
Highlights
On 2 February 1971 in Ramsar, Iran, an international meeting agreed text for a convention entitled “Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat”. This half-a-century-old Ramsar Convention has often been praised for its near-universal membership (171 Parties), growing list of Wetlands of International Importance, and a successful outreach programme linked to the private sector
Through this analysis of the successive strategic plans developed by the convention, we identify two key conditions for institutional drifting and the associated lack of success: (1) the Ramsar Convention’s unique situation as a non-UN convention, which reduces the convention’s visibility and interactivity with other biodiversity-related conventions, agencies, or programmes; and (2) an increasing number of conventions, agreements and organisations dealing with issues such as migratory species and biodiversity in general, alongside the emergence of the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (UNECE Water Convention) as a global player, all forcing the Ramsar Convention to seek continually changing roles
Our historical account of the evolution of the Ramsar Convention offers a basis on which a new theoretical framework for treaty evolution could be developed
Summary
On 2 February 1971 in Ramsar, Iran, an international meeting agreed text for a convention entitled “Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat” (hereafter Ramsar Convention or the convention). Project MAR developed from concern at the rapidly degrading areas of marshland and other wetlands in Europe resulting in a concomitant decline in numbers of migratory waterfowl (Hoffmann 1964) These concerns are crystallised in the convention’s purpose as follows: “to stem the progressive encroachment on and loss of wetlands and in the future”, “considering the fundamental ecological functions of wetlands as regulators of water regimes and as habitats supporting a characteristic flora and fauna, especially waterfowl” (Italic emphasis ours).
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