Safeguarding wetlands for our collective future
By Shina Ansari
Head of Iran’s Department of Environment
In the past week, on World Wetlands Day (February 2), we held a meeting of the national coordination and management headquarters for wetlands, chaired by First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref, along with the relevant member organizations. We reviewed and examined the resolutions from the six sessions held since 2018 regarding wetlands. In this meeting, specific operational decisions were approved concerning the Miyankaleh Wetland [Golestan Province]. The first vice president emphasized that the issue of wetlands should be prioritized by all member organizations of the headquarters.
Additionally, this week, the Gandoman Wetland [Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari Province] was registered as the 27th wetland in the country on the Ramsar Convention’s list of international wetlands. This news, along with the earlier announcement regarding the introduction of three wetland cities —Kiyashahr, Babol, and Gandoman — by the Ramsar Convention Secretariat [located in Gland, Switzerland, within the headquarters of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)], as well as the selection of Iman Ebrahimi as the Young Champion of Wetlands worldwide, brought great joy to environmentalists; however, this joy is tinged with concern over the current condition of many wetlands in
the country.
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