This year’s World Wetlands Day theme “It’s time for wetland restoration” echoes the same spirit of urgency and action which led to the historic adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) by 196 countries in December 2022. The GBF recognizes the importance of protecting and restoring wetlands – amongst other places, in Target 2, which calls on countries to “ensure that by 2030 at least 30 percent of areas of degraded terrestrial, inland water, and coastal marine ecosystems are under effective restoration.”

The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat – is the original name of what we today refer to as the Convention on Wetlands. The four words at the end: “especially as Waterfowl Habitat” are important for us at AEWA. Ornithologists and hunters were the first to support the idea of international wetland conservation, because they understood the importance of international wetland conservation for maintaining migratory waterfowl. 

The 2nd of February is World Wetlands Day, a dedicated day to observe and raise awareness on the importance of wetlands. The day was chosen as it marks the date of the adoption of The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat, also known as the Ramsar Convention, after the Iranian city of Ramsar in which the Convention was signed on 2 February 1971.

It was 25 years ago that I was in the Netherlands, in Den Haag to be more precise, as a French delegate to finalize the second round of negotiation on the AEWA treaty. There were 146 participants in all, representatives from 64 Range States plus many observers.  It was a hard week of work, with discussions in plenaries and in the corridors.  Most of us ended up exhausted despite the coffee breaks. The Netherlands hosted this formal meeting after several informal ones. I would like to pay tribute to Gerard Boere, from the Dutch Ministry (also a keen birder) for all his successful efforts.