Earth’s Wetlands Are Disappearing and Global Efforts to Save Them Are Unraveling

More than 170 countries have gathered to save critical ecosystems. But the U.S. was a no-show for most of the summit and Russia said it will withdraw from the wetlands treaty.

VICTORIA FALLS, Zimbabwe—Scientists and civil society are urging delegates from more than 170 countries represented at a summit here to step up ambitions to combat the continued destruction of Earth’s fastest-disappearing ecosystem. 

Wetlands underpin all life on Earth, supplying fresh water, oxygen, habitat and food. Yet since 1970 more than 35 percent of wetlands have been lost or degraded at a pace three times faster than losses experienced within forests. 

The U.N. gathering known as the 15th meeting of the conference of the Contracting Parties of the Convention on Wetlands (COP15), one of the oldest global environmental protection treaties, comes just weeks after scientists released a dire warning about the destruction and declining health of global wetlands, describing the decline as an overlooked crisis that threatens food and water security, and worsens climate change. 

“We need to do things faster and more effectively,” Hector Aponte, president of the Society of Wetland Scientists Professional Certification Program, said this week. 

But despite warnings and calls to scale up finance for wetlands protection, delegates to the wetlands’ COP15 have so far refused to increase the budget to assist countries’ conservation and restoration efforts, and have deadlocked on the details of the next five-year strategic plan, which will guide wetlands protection. 

It also didn’t take long for geopolitics to roil the weeklong meeting. 

On the second day, the delegates from Russia announced the country’s intention to withdraw from the treaty—the first nation to do so. The delegates claimed the conference had become politicized, and they left. 

At the prior wetlands conference in 2022, countries passed a resolution to set up monitoring of Ukrainian wetlands harmed during Russia’s ongoing war. This year, Ukrainian representatives moved to extend the monitoring and called for Russia to release a Ukrainian wetlands scientist held as a political prisoner. 

European and other Western countries expressed support for the new resolution amid procedural debates. Brazil, Cuba, Indonesia, Iran, China and Venezuela opposed it.

“We want to reiterate that the core mission of the convention is wetland conservation and protection,” the Chinese delegation said at the summit. “Political issues will distract us.”

Canada, speaking in support of the resolution, said there was nothing political about seeking to continue technical monitoring of damage to Ukraine’s wetlands.

Line Rochefort, professor at Université Laval and director of the Peatland Ecology Research Group, said Russia’s withdrawal could have major implications for climate change mitigation. Russia is home to one of the world’s largest shares of peatlands, a type of wetland that sequesters more carbon than any other type of ecosystem. 

“It is sad for the future of the planet and the next generation,” Rochefort said. 

Russia’s move follows U.S. President Donald Trump’s second withdrawal from the Paris climate accord. At the wetlands conference, two chairs marked “United States” sat empty in the plenary hall for days because the country for the first time had not sent a delegation.

On July 30, the second-to-last day of the summit, one U.S. representative finally arrived and delivered a striking message: In conference documents, the U.S. government wanted no mention of climate change; diversity, equity and inclusion; gender; the United Nations’ sustainable development goals; or “zero growth.”

Because the United States did not participate in the normal convention process, its suggestions could not be integrated into official documents.

The U.S. Department of State did not respond to questions from Inside Climate News earlier this month about the government’s plans for attendance or whether the United States remained committed to the goals of the nonbinding treaty: the conservation and “wise use” of wetlands. Since January, through a combination of Trump’s executive orders, legislative rollbacks and court rulings, the United States has gutted federal wetlands protections.

While the United States and Russia were largely absent from the talks, China’s presence in Victoria Falls is outsized. The country sent about 90 delegates.

Some environmentalists have criticized the wetlands treaty as lacking enforcement power, but conference attendees stressed the convention’s achievements, including the creation of more than 2,500 protected Ramsar wetlands sites. The treaty is also known as the Ramsar convention since it was signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971. 

Attendees also argue that it’s never been more important for countries to have a space to cooperate and share knowledge on wetlands conservation. 

Disengagement by the United States from the world’s worsening, and shared, environmental problems comes as many developing countries at the meeting described grave impacts on their people caused by wetland loss, and related problems like climate change. 

Last year, much of southern Africa experienced a punishing drought, amplified by climate change, that caused widespread famine and stressed ailing wetlands in the region. 

Zimbabwean delegate Felix Chidavaenzi told Inside Climate News this week that such disasters show that the African continent is facing the worst impacts of global environmental crises, despite contributing very little to those problems. Africa, he noted, has contributed about 3 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. 

He said wealthy countries ought to consult low-income nations about their needs in tackling these crises, instead of imposing ideas on them.

“To come out of these catastrophes, the voices of Africa need to be amplified,” Chidavaenzi said. “We all know the Global North is responsible for what is happening now.”

The most recent deterioration of wetlands is occurring in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. That’s because Europe and North American countries destroyed much of their wetlands during industrialization.

Other long-standing differences between wealthy and low-income countries, apparent in prior conference processes, reemerged this week, with developing countries calling for Western nations to pay for wetland conservation projects. 

“The contracting parties of the Ramsar Convention need to have an honest conversation about resource mobilization,” Brazilian delegate Patrick Luna told Inside Climate News.

Sierra Leone delegate Samuel Ibrahim Kobba said that his country, one of the world’s poorest, has lacked the resources to complete an accounting of the nation’s wetland resources.

“If you do a comparative analysis of wetlands in countries around the world, others do better than African countries because they have resources,” Kobba said. “The gap is big.” 

That’s why global coordination is key to protecting wetlands and solving worsening environmental problems, several delegates said. 

“Above all, we must rekindle the spirit of cooperation and solidarity that brought us together in the first place—and show that multilateralism can still deliver real, concrete results,” said Luna, who heads the biodiversity division at Brazil’s foreign ministry.

China attempted to emphasize its climate profile this week by setting up the conference’s largest exhibit, showcasing Beijing’s mangrove restoration efforts and its 22 accredited “wetlands cities.” 

China, however, is one of the countries opposed to increasing the wetlands convention’s budget, which has remained unchanged for 15 years as rising inflation reduced its buying power. 

The United States is the treaty’s largest donor, contributing 22 percent of its budget. 

Limited funding for the wetlands meeting has impacted grassroots communities and civil society groups. Compared to climate and biodiversity conferences that advocates say attract more funds for nongovernmental attendees, few such nonprofit organizations are in Victoria Falls this week. 

“My heart is breaking. The true voices should be here,” said Kim Diana Connolly, professor and vice dean at the University at Buffalo School of Law and co-chair of World Wetland Network, a global alliance of more than 150 grassroots civil society groups. The organization also puts out a widely cited survey on the insights of communities living near and within wetlands.

Connolly said she’s received messages from members saying they wanted to be at the conference but lack the funds to travel.

That includes youth activists, who have been pressing for greater inclusion in the convention. Thandeka Ndlela, network co-lead of Youth Engaged in Wetlands, said the convention should include more diverse youth participation, including young Indigenous people. She’d also like to see governments step up commitments to wetland restoration, recognize traditional knowledge and include youth in the convention’s monitoring processes—issues, she said, that “deeply affect our future.” 

“For us, success looks like structures that allow young people to contribute meaningfully beyond the conference halls,” Ndlela said. 

Uganda has taken a lead in elevating the role local communities play in wetlands protection, introducing a widely-supported resolution on the importance of cultural values. 

“In Uganda, we protect wetlands because of our cultural values,” said Asadhu Ssebyoto, a senior wetlands officer in Uganda’s Ministry of Water and Environment. “We want to ensure that the world recognizes the significance of culture in relation to wetlands.”

This involves documenting communities’ stories, traditional ways of life and their ecological knowledge, Ssebyoto said. Many customs and belief systems, such as restricting access to sacred water bodies at specific times of the year, often align with insights about the ecosystem, like the breeding patterns of certain species. 

Despite the critical knowledge encoded in these practices, communities face increasing threats from dominant religions, urbanization and other societal pressures, Ssebyoto said.

Other high-profile topics at the COP15 highlight cities’ potential to protect urban wetlands, aligning wetland conservation with global climate and biodiversity goals, and encouraging governments to include wetlands in national conservation policies. 

The biggest driver of wetland loss is land conversion for industrial agriculture and urban development. Pollution and climate change also play a growing role in water bodies’ decline. 

Delegates will meet until Thursday and are still pressing to create a new five-year plan, increase governments’ financial commitments, and pass a resolution about wetlands restoration as a solution to climate change. 

Cover photo:  Chinese delegates listen to a COP15 session on July 23. Credit: Convention on Wetlands