Rights of wetlands review

The ‘Rights of Wetlands Operationalisation for Biodiversity and Community Resilience’ project focuses on how to deliver Rights of Wetlands and Rights of Nature in practice. Despite recognition that wetlands deliver multiple benefits, particularly for the poor and marginalized, widespread wetland loss and deterioration continues, contributing to climate destabilisation and biodiversity declines. New approaches are required for wetland conservation and to sustain wetland benefits. This project will facilitate the operationalisation of the Rights of Wetlands approach in different country contexts, embedding the right for a wetland to function and exist through community management, legal instruments, and governance frameworks, leading to successful biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation.

The Declaration of the Rights of Wetlands declares that wetlands possess rights to: • exist
• their ecologically determined location in the landscape
• natural, connected, and sustainable hydrological regimes
• ecologically sustainable climatic conditions
• naturally occurring biodiversity
• integrity of structure, function, and evolutionary processes
• be free from pollution and degradation
• regeneration and restoration

Recognition and implementation of these rights acknowledge a wetland’s ecological catchment location and interconnectedness and is seen as an essential step in efforts to stop wetland loss and deterioration.

The project is based in Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Sri Lanka, and Kenya, and the Rights of Wetlands Project Partnership includes:
• Wetlands International Kenya
• ATAYAK - Asociación de Yachak del Pueblo de Sarayaku
• Cobra Collective
• Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
• International Water Management Institute
• Sri Lanka Ministry of Environment
• North Rupununi District Development Board
• Practical Action in Bolivia
• Universidad Católica de Bolivia "San Pablo"
• Worcester State University

The project is built on recognition that a Rights of Wetlands cultural and behavioural shift, leading to policy and management implementation, will halt wetland loss and degradation, and that healthy wetlands underpin biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation. This ethical and cultural shift can be disseminated and enacted through capacity and awareness building, policy and legislation changes, establishing governance and communication networks, and local wetland management that fundamentally recognises that wetlands are living entities with rights and that those rights should be maintained.

To deliver change, the project impact plan is:
• Review – contextualisation of Rights of Wetlands in five countries to establish baseline, best practice, and shared understanding
• Capacity building – the review will be built upon through training at community, Civil Society Organisation (CSO), and government levels to open individuals and organisations to a different way of appreciating, interacting with, and managing wetlands
• Dialogue – community to community and community to CSO and government dialogues and networks will be established to embed the approach
• Sharing – dissemination and training in Rights of Wetlands and principles, toolkits, and other products will provide resources to implement the approach within the five countries and beyond

This publication is the major deliverable under the ‘Review’ part of the project impact plan. It is a working document that will be further developed throughout the lifetime of the project (2023 to 2026). It introduces Rights of Wetlands with selected examples of implementation across the world. Reviews of the policy, legislation, governance, communication, and management contexts of the five project countries are also provided to illustrate where each country and their wetland communities are in terms of delivering a Rights of Wetlands or a Rights of Nature approach.

Encuentralo aquí: https://cobracollective.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Rights-of-Wetlands-Review_240326.pdf