Benchmarking Governments' Progress in Conserving Africa's Wetlands

Eighty-six percent of Africa's most important and outstanding wetlands for birds, worthy of designation under the Ramsar Convention, currently lack the international recognition that they deserve. This is one of the conclusions of a BirdLife report released in 2002 at the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention in Valencia, Spain.

BirdLife African RAMSAR qualifying IBAs Zoom In

The Ramsar Convention is the global inter-governmental agreement for the conservation and wise use of the world's wetlands. Among the 58 countries or territories of Africa, the majority (38) are contracting parties to the Convention, and are obliged to declare wetlands of international importance as Ramsar Sites.

BirdLife is recognized by the Ramsar Convention as one of only four International Partner Organizations, in part because BirdLife information is widely valued as relevant, trustworthy, clear and up-to-date, and contributes notably to discussions and actions regarding the selection, management and defence of Ramsar Sites.

A number of the criteria for the selection of IBAs are related directly to the criteria for the selection of Ramsar Sites. Hence, potential Ramsar Sites – of international importance for wetland-dependent birds – can be identified with relative ease from IBA inventories.

A product of the BirdLife Africa Partnership's IBA Programme, the report is the first to identify the 503 Important Bird Areas (IBAs) in Africa which contain wetland areas that would qualify as Ramsar Sites, but currently are not recognized as such. Along with other BirdLife data that identifies the main threats affecting these areas, as well as the birds that depend on them, the report constitutes a powerful conservation tool to improve the protection of Africa's wetlands, birds and the key human resources they contain.

African RAMSAR IBA publication Zoom In

Conserving these sites is important because of their crucial role in protecting the quantity and quality of water available for human survival and development in Africa, as well as their global significance for the waterbirds and other wetland biodiversity that they support. Of the 87 wetland-dependent bird species in the African region that are of global conservation concern, all but ten occur in important numbers at one or more of the qualifying IBAs. The declines in these species are in part because human uses of wetlands in Africa continue to intensify, driven by many socio-economic forces, not least as a consequence of unsustainable development, often appalling poverty, civil conflict and international debt. Comprehensive sustainable solutions which take account of these root causes are urgently required.

BirdLife's strongest recommendation in the report is that all the qualifying IBA wetlands should be designated as Ramsar Sites as soon as possible, so that all the benefits of protection and wise use of these areas can be realised as quickly as possible.