Abstract
Wetlands are often vital physical and social components of a country’s natural capital, as well as providers of ecosystem services to local and national communities. We performed a network analysis to prioritize Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for sustainable development in iconic wetlands and wetlandscapes around the world. The analysis was based on the information and perceptions on 45 wetlandscapes worldwide by 49 wetland researchers of the Global Wetland Ecohydrological Network (GWEN). We identified three 2030 Agenda targets of high priority across the wetlandscapes needed to achieve sustainable development: Target 6.3—“Improve water quality”; 2.4—“Sustainable food production”; and 12.2—“Sustainable management of resources”. Moreover, we found specific feedback mechanisms and synergies between SDG targets in the context of wetlands. The most consistent reinforcing interactions were the influence of Target 12.2 on 8.4—“Efficient resource consumption”; and that of Target 6.3 on 12.2. The wetlandscapes could be differentiated in four bundles of distinctive priority SDG-targets: “Basic human needs”, “Sustainable tourism”, “Environmental impact in urban wetlands”, and “Improving and conserving environment”. In general, we find that the SDG groups, targets, and interactions stress that maintaining good water quality and a “wise use” of wetlandscapes are vital to attaining sustainable development within these sensitive ecosystems.
Highlights
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations is a 15-year global framework centered on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 169 targets, and 232 indicators, designed to secure a world free of poverty and hunger, with full and productive employment, access to high quality education and health coverage, gender equality, empowerment of all women and girls, and an end to environmental degradation [1]
Our analysis involved 45 wetlandscapes distributed across the five continents and 21 countries, of which the slight majority were categorized as inland wetlands or as wetlandscapes that included inland wetlands (69%), and the largest specific category was lacustrine
A large number of the wetlandscapes (22%) are found in Colombia, as several Colombian researchers were present in the Global Wetland Ecohydrological Network (GWEN) meeting, but other countries such as the United States, China, and Sweden had several wetlandscapes in the study
Summary
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations is a 15-year global framework centered on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 169 targets, and 232 indicators, designed to secure a world free of poverty and hunger, with full and productive employment, access to high quality education and health coverage, gender equality, empowerment of all women and girls, and an end to environmental degradation [1]. The implementation of the SDGs is to be done at the national level, allowing every nation to set specific targets based on priorities regarding economic, social, and environmental dimensions that may be unique to the country. Within this framework, SDGs are relevant for the sustainable use of wetlands or “wetlandscapes” (a network of hydrologically connected wetlands; [3]), which are often vital physical and social components of a country’s natural capital, as well as providers of ecosystem services to local and national communities [4,5,6,7].
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