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SUCCESSFUL WORLD WETLANDS DAY 2021 WEBINAR at UNICAM

Published on 08/02/2021 (last modified 09/02/2021)

Celebration of World Wetlands Day 2021 - Wetlands and Water

On 2nd February to celebrate the World Wetlands Day that in 2021 was focused on “Wetlands and Water” UNICAM organized a webinar to present the CREW Observatory and web platform. The event was introduced by Prof. Andrea Catorci and the research fellow Stefano Mugnoz of UNICAM that explained that the CREW Observatory is composed by a technological tool, the webplatform that will serve to implement the cross border strategies among PPs, relevant stakeholders and other similar projects in order to find common priorites and ways to reach them in order to promote wetlantds  protection and their social and economic development.

In addition, the LP-IUAV representative  Prof. Maria Chiara Tosi gave an overview of the CREW project that aims to overcome fragmentation in wetlands conservation and management in order to preserve such fragile areas by exploiting the Wetlands Contract and in particular River contracts and so to strenghthen a common strategy to solve risks and problems of the different involved project target areas.

The webinar was an opportunity to launch the CREW Observatory web platform that was  introduced by Massimo Bastiani and Matteo Prati of Ecoazioni, as external provider. This webplatform serves to collect information on wetlands together with wetlands contracts it is part of a dynamic strategy to implement a shared wetlands protection system. The webplatform is composed by an wiki section that collects good practices on wetlands governance that are geocalised in browser map within the webgis system of the platform that thanks to such maps and geologalist  datasets can allow to related consultations from the audience. The webplatform is open and free accessible to anyone who want to share practices and knowledge on wetlands governance.

In relationship to the wetlands protection Marijana Kapa of the Croatian Ministry of the Economy and Sustainable Development and representative of the Croatian Ramsar National Contact Point underlined that in Croatia wetlands are under the protection of national legislation, that has integrated European regulations, and ecological networks such as Natura 2000 initiative. However only the areas that are protected by national legislation have adopted management plans. Therefore it will be necessary to cooperate with different sectors and entities to promote un build more natural sites and in particular special reserves, to implement inventory information systems, to adopt legislation for conservation measures and to work put in synergies national and European projects to face also the effects of climate change.

Indeed werlands are affected by several problems as stated by Thomas Golewski of the MedWet Intitiative that gave an overview of the situation of wetlands in Mediterranean area. He told to the audience that wetlands are under an hige pressure of tourism, increasing human density and so urbanization, climate change, governance weaknesses and water consumptions that are not sustainable. This situation is producing biodiversity loss, coastal erosions, low levels of flow of rivers and so the wetlands ecosystem services have decreased 20% in 30 years.  In addition, 184 wetlands areas are without any kind of protection and only the 44% of Ramsar sites have their own management plans. As results, it is very urgent to create new protected areas with high level of protection, to restore degraded wetlands and to find solution to face climate change effects.

In conclusion, during the round table of the webinar with the intervention of Alessio Satta and Flavio Monti of the MedWet Initiative participants were agree that it is very important to harmonize the collection and the organization of the data on wetlands from different countries, to create more connections within countries and European projects and initiatives and that policy makers insert the wetlands protection at the top of their political agendas. Moreover, Wetlands Contract can be useful tool to involve local communities and so to raise their awareness on such themes but the cooperation with general public and stakeholders are effective only if it is implemented at the beginning of any kind of initiative also to solve conflicts and problems.