Monrovia – Liberia on Thursday, February 2, 2017 joined the world to observe World Wetland Day.
Report by Henry Karmo – [email protected]
The day celebrated in observance of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands on February 2, 1971.
Since 1998 the Ramsar Secretariat, with generous financial support from the Danone Group Evian Fund for Water, produces a variety of outreach materials which include logos, posters, factsheets, handouts and guide documents to support country activities organized to celebrate WWD.
In Liberia the program organized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was celebrated with an awareness program in one of Liberia’s swamp communities, Peace Island community, with a cleaning up exercise and awareness campaign.
Mr. Urius Goll, Deputy Executive Director of the EPA, in a statement told the community members that they will do more harm to themselves if they backfill wetland for building purposes.
“Let all of us be ambassadors of wetland, we need to organize once a quarter awareness program in our communities.”
“We at the EPA can give you the support for awareness.”
“The importance of wetland to our livelihood cannot be underestimated, stop building on wetland,” he warned.
Peace Island community is one of the many communities Conservation International has planned to work with for the next three years.
Peter Mulbah, Policy Director for Conversation International, in remarks at the awareness program called for Liberians to rethink settlement policies through adequate zoning regulation and city planning and sustainable development goals.
He stressed that disaster risk reduction should be a national priority and stressed the need for local priorities with a strong institutional basis for implementation for gender based participation.
The Ramsar Convention is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands.”
“It is also known as the Convention on Wetlands. It is named after the city of Ramsar in Iran, where the Convention was signed in 1971.
Every three years, representatives of the Contracting Parties meet as the Conference of the Contracting Parties (COP), the policy-making organ of the convention which adopts decisions (Resolutions and Recommendations) to administer the work of the Convention and improve the way in which the Parties are able to implement its objectives.
The swamps or wetlands along Liberia’s coast is said to play a crucial role in the country’s ecosystem.
They are nesting grounds for sea creatures, which lay and hatch their eggs before returning to the rough sea. Without them Liberia’s fishing industry could be endangered.
The wetlands also play a crucial role in flushing inland waterways of pollutants and reducing flooding during the rainy season. All this could be in danger according to environmentalists.
Established to raise awareness about the value of wetlands for humanity and the planet, WWD was celebrated for the first time in 1997 and has grown remarkably since then.
Each year, government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and groups of citizens at all levels of the community have taken advantage of the opportunity to undertake actions aimed at raising public awareness of wetland values and benefits in general and the Ramsar Convention in particular.