From unwanted to protected, wetlands have recently entered the spotlight. This focus stems from the urgent, almost desperate race to employ every possible strategy to mitigate the effects of climate crisis and global change. That is why salt marshes, lagoons, deltas, artificial lakes, ponds, swamps, mangrove forests, oases, rice paddies, and water basins appear now more critical than ever.

The term "wetland" refers to a variety of environments. These are not easily defined, even from a scientific ecological standpoint, leading to multiple classification systems. A qualitative and more evocative description is that of a space between land and water, where water is abundant, either permanently or periodically, enveloping scattered emergent areas that allow terrestrial animals, including humans, to thrive. These unique environments are distinguished by their colours, sounds, light, and life.

Wetlands occupy less than 10% of the earth's land area. Despite this, they play a crucial ecological and ecosystemic role. They are effective carbon sinks, significantly contributing to the absorption of climate-altering gases, mainly CO2, relative to their small surface area. Not all wetlands perform this role equally; peat bogs, for instance, are much more effective than swamps. Yet, all wetlands, in one way or another, provide what are termed ecosystem services—a perhaps overly utilitarian and productivity-oriented term.

Wetlands boast exceptional biodiversity, serving as nesting and refuge sites for many migratory species. They buffer against rising saltwater levels, protect freshwater basins, and act as barriers against coastal erosion. They help renew soil fertility and vitality and are a fantastic tool against floods and extreme weather events. In short, wetlands have recently regained a positive reputation, starkly different from their early 20th-century portrayal when the focus was on draining them to eliminate mosquito habitats and stagnant water, reclaiming large tracts of land for cultivation or human settlements, tourist ports, embankments, roads, and more.

 

The history of wetland is very largely the history of its destruction.

The history of the countryside, Oliver Rackham

 

In Italy, land reclamation between the late 1800s and the mid-1900s covered, destroyed, and eliminated a significant percentage of wetlands. Intensive agriculture, coastal construction, mass tourism, and industrial fishing did the rest. Reconsideration began only after much of these precious environments had already been destroyed.

In the early 1970s, the Club of Rome worked on a report titled The Limits of Growth which saw the light in 1972 and became a cornerstone of rethinking economic development with an environmental perspective. In Ramsar, Turkey, the first instrument for wetland protection, the Ramsar Convention, was approved. Signed by 172 countries to date, the Convention is neither stringent nor widely respected, but it remains a crucial reference point in the journey to protect wetlands.

In its 2021 Global Wetland Outlook special edition, the Convention acknowledges that wetland destruction continues today at varying rates depending on the region, adding risk to climate crisis mitigation strategies. The connection between biodiversity loss and the worsening climate crisis is increasingly evident, though the two crises are not the sole cause of each other.

There is no doubt that more extraordinary efforts must be made to protect these strategic environments to mitigate emissions, further biodiversity loss, and simultaneously increase sustainable development opportunities.

Since the 1970s, when scientific monitoring, study, and data collection programs started following the Convention's ratification, 35% of wetlands have been lost. Considering the reclamation and urbanisation that characterized the 1900s in many areas, such as Southern Europe, it is likely that since the mid-1800s, we have destroyed well over half of the planet's wetlands.

According to the Global Outlook, others have been artificially created, such as artificial lakes or intensive rice cultivation, expanding rice paddies by over 230% compared to 50 years ago. However, artificial wetlands do not always offer the same diversity and range of ecosystem services as natural ones.

 

Looking ahead: The Convention on Biodiversity and Wetlands

Recent years, particularly from 2020 onwards, have seen increased awareness, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, of the importance of the link between environment and health and the need to restore and maintain the natural environment in the best possible shape — not only for its intrinsic value but also for its significance to human health and our potential future. Consequently, greater commitment should be placed on wetland protection and management actions.

 

One of the salt-harvesting machines collapsed during a cyclone in 2020 at the Molentargius salt pans. Ph: Giulia Bonelli

 

In many parts of the world, wetlands are still threatened by various human activities, perhaps less immediately destructive than in the past. However, the fact that water reaching coasts from cities and human settlements is often untreated and polluted with organic and chemical agricultural, industrial, pharmaceutical, and plastic waste compromises these environments' overall health and the species inhabiting and traversing them.

Five of the 20 Aichi targets, included in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, specifically addressed wetlands. None were achieved.

According to the Global Outlook, Mediterranean wetlands fare worse. The region, at the intersection of Southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, has lost between 30% and 50% of its marine biodiversity in the last 30 years, depending on the estimate, and one in three wetland species is currently threatened with extinction. The Mediterranean region is experiencing temperature increases much faster than the global average, with projections indicating that by 2040, over 250 million people could face freshwater scarcity and significant sea-level rise. Intensifying political, economic, and practical efforts to protect wetlands is no longer just an environmental issue. It is a matter of survival.

In December 2022, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the final agreement from the 15th Biodiversity Conference (COP15), set the goal of restoring global biodiversity by 2050 with four key objectives and 23 targets to be achieved by 2030. The most crucial target for biodiversity conservation is expanding protected areas to 30% of terrestrial and marine environments.

 

And now it's up to us

Restoring biodiversity and expanding environmental protection must combine development and sound environmental management. This effort involves all stakeholders, from local populations, especially indigenous communities living in some of the planet's most biodiverse areas, to economic actors. The Kunming-Montreal framework explicitly references how these diverse actors should be involved in a participatory process to express their needs and propose solutions and pathways. Wetlands, mainly coastal and marine systems, are a priority for protection and management.

As often with international conventions and environmental matters, the critical issue is financial investment. The gap between current nature preservation funding and what is needed remains vast. In 2019, according to the Paulson Institute's Financing Nature: Closing the Global Biodiversity Financing Gap report, global biodiversity investments were around $130-140 billion annually. Adequate nature protection requires much more, estimated at $700-900 billion annually. The Kunming-Montreal framework proposes a way to bridge part of this gap: target 18 calls for eliminating subsidies to environmentally harmful activities, estimated at $500 million by 2030, to reinvest those funds in positive-impact initiatives. Though still insufficient, this figure brings us closer to the ultimate goal.

Thus, there are conventions and frameworks. There are economic commitments. Global, national, and regional plans have been outlined. It is now necessary to translate these commitments into concrete, precise projects monitored and verified by involved institutions, local communities, and those of us who believe information is crucial in equipping people to choose their roles as active citizens.

We are launching a series, "Wasted Wetlands," which we hope to one day rename "Restored Wetland."

This series will explore some of the most important wetlands in our country—those playing a crucial role for local communities, those most at risk, and some already undergoing recovery and improvement. The series will combine historical information, investigative journalism, on-the-ground reporting, scientific data, and experimental use of remote sensing and AI-based satellite image analysis to visualize the health and changes of the environments at the centre of our stories.

 


Credits

We undertake this with support from various funders, including:

- The Climate Arena Fellowships 2023 supported by Arena for Journalism in Europe

- The "Environmental Journalism" program of the Journalism Fund, which we obtained with other European colleagues for an investigation in several countries during the first part of 2024

- The Data Journalism grant from SISSA in Trieste, that enabled us to work on data collection and experiment collaboratively with the Data Science research group, developing and applying remote sensing technologies and AI tools for satellite image analysis, in the last part of 2023 and the first half of 2024

Most of the articles in this series are published in Italian on Il Bo Live, the digital magazine edited by the University of Padova. We also collaborate with colleagues from independent publications such as Indip, an independent magazine based in Sardinia.

"Wasted Wetlands" will continue in the coming months and years. We start in Sardinia, home to the most Italian Ramsar sites. We go to Cervia, where the salt flat, one of the Mediterranean's oldest, was devastated by the May 2023 flood that hit all of Romagna. 

And we will keep going as long as there are data to collect and stories to tell.

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