| Background information: the importance of wetlands in the Mediterranean Despite the pressures they continue to experience, Mediterranean wetlands remain hugely important, and they provide vital benefits (known as ‘ecosystem services’) to people and economies across the region. Natural and human-made wetlands in the Mediterranean basin are estimated to cover about 0.15-0.22 million km2, which is about 1.1-1.5% of the world’s total wetland area. Almost one-quarter (around 23%) of Mediterranean wetlands are now human-made (such as rice fields, reservoirs, saltpans and oases) – a much higher percentage than the global average of around 12%. The largest areas of wetlands are in Egypt, France, Turkey and Algeria, which together hold about two-thirds of the total Mediterranean wetlands area. Given the arid or semi-arid nature of much of the region, percentages of national surface areas covered by wetlands are generally small, ranging from a little over 8% in Tunisia to less than 1% in eight countries, mostly in the Middle East and North Africa. All these wetlands are of great importance to people’s livelihoods and wellbeing, and for maintaining biological diversity. Wetlands in the Mediterranean Basin provide many and varied benefits to the human population, as the second edition of the Mediterranean Wetlands Outlook report clearly demonstrates. People harvest wetland-dependent plants, hunt and fish in wetlands for food, and use wetlands for grazing animals. Wetlands in increasingly dry regions such as the Mediterranean are particularly important for the sustainable management of water resources, in terms of both quality and quantity. They help to provide and purify the water which Mediterranean people depend on for drinking, for industry and for energy production, as well as for irrigated agriculture. Mediterranean wetlands, particularly coastal wetlands, have a key role to play in mitigating and adapting to climate change. They are highly effective carbon sinks; and they protect against extreme weather events, absorbing floods and buffering against coastal erosion and storm surges, while providing water in droughts. Conversely, draining wetlands or reducing their water resources can result in the release into the atmosphere of large amounts of stored carbon. The diverse benefits delivered by wetlands are of huge economic value. Each year, losing coastal wetland costs $ 7200 billion globally. Much of the value of wetlands lies in their delivery of multiple water-related benefits – managing water quantity and quality and buffering extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and coastal storm surges. But conversion of natural ecosystems, including wetlands, to other land-uses is progressively reducing the value of the benefits they provide, at a global rate of US$4.3–20.2 trillion per year. The Wetland-Based Solutions project is working for a more effective conservation of these crucial habitats. Through the protection and restoration of key wetlands, the project aims to use coastal wetlands as key assets for nature-based solutions to counteract anthropogenic impacts, in particular climate change. Wetland-Based Solutions is a collaboration between 30 expert wetland partners from 10 countries, with the funding and support of the MAVA Foundation. They have come together and built a ground-breaking initiative to save, restore and sustainably manage Mediterranean coastal wetlands, for people and planet alike. |
