February 2 is the World Wetlands Day. Globally the Day is celebrated each year to raise awareness about wetlands. The theme of this year is “Wetlands Action for People and Nature.” From mangroves to marshes, wetlands are essential for the well-being of people and our planet in numerous ways.
Wetlands are critically important to human and environmental health; they provide leisure spaces and essential habitats for wildlife, capture carbon and filter water.
Wetlands play important roles like storing clean water for our use, providing a home for nature, keeping us safe from floods and storms. Therefore, we should do our part to conserve and protect our wetlands.
There are, however, efforts to value, manage, restore, and love wetlands. These underscore the significance of our concerted actions in conserving our natural resources like wetlands. There is a need for investing financial, human and political resources to save the world’s wetlands from disappearing and for restoring those we have degraded.
World Wetland Day marks the date of the 1971 adoption of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. This is the first year that WWD will be observed as a United Nations international day.
Did you know?
The world has lost 85 percent of its wetlands since the 1700s, and they are disappearing three times faster than forests.
Wetlands are life providers. They provide food for 3.5 billion people and livelihoods for 1 billion people, act most efficient land-based carbon stores, and host 40 percent of global species.
In Bangladesh, almost 50 percent of our total land area is somehow enclosed within wetlands. Wetlands are an integral part of the environment, biodiversity, agriculture, fisheries, tourism, and suchlike.
The size of wetlands in Bangladesh is decreasing every day. Illegal occupancy, unplanned industrialisation, urbanisation, and pollution have drastically reduced most of the country’s wetlands.
According to a survey by the Institute of Water Modelling, more than 10,000 hectares of wetlands, canals, and lowlands in Dhaka have been lost since 1985. If this trend of reservoir filling continues, it is feared that the amount of water in Dhaka will fall below 10 percent of the total area by 2031.
Records suggest that the size of wetlands in Dhaka and its contiguous areas was 2,952 hectares and the land area was 13,528 hectares in 1978. At the same time, canals and rivers constituted 2,900 hectares. Dhaka city’s rainwater flows into rivers through these canals. By 2014, wetlands in and around Dhaka city decreased by 1,935 hectares, low lands by 8,198 hectares, and rivers and canals by 1,002 hectares. In other words, water resources have decreased by 34.45 percent in 35 years.
Within this period, the land area has decreased by 54.18 percent and rivers and canals by 65.45 percent.
There are several laws, including the Bangladesh Water Act (2013), Environmental Protection Act (2010), Reservoir Conservation, Restoration and Fill Control Act (2003), Natural Reservoir Conservation Act (2000), and Detailed Area Plan (DAP), to protect natural reservoirs. However, they are not being enforced properly.
What can we do?
So it is our prime responsibility to care for wetlands properly. Minor adjustments can have a big impact. Here are some things we should do to conserve wetlands.
• Restore wetlands and control water pollution;
• Avoid damming on rivers or over-extraction from aquifers;
• Use wetlands with wisdom;
• Do not waste food;
• Establish coordination between authorities concerned;
• Increase investment in wetlands as nature-based solutions;
• Preserve wetlands and support their sensible use;
• Use perishable products to scrub your house;
• Use organic products; and
• Formulate plans and enforce reservoir protection laws.
- The writer is a communication specialist at an international NGO. He can be reached at [email protected]
