World Wetlands Day: Essential ecosystems to preserve: Traditional knowledge, international commitments, and FFEM actions

In broad terms, wetlands are defined as land areas saturated with water or temporarily flooded. Vital to humans, they play a key role in water purification, flood control, and flood prevention. 

They encompass a wide variety of freshwater, marine, and coastal ecosystems: lakes and rivers, marshes, wet meadows, peat bogs, oases, estuaries, deltas, mangroves and other coastal areas, coral reefs and all artificial sites such as aquaculture ponds, rice fields, reservoirs and salt marshes. Water is the determining factor that governs the plant and animal life that develops there. 

According to the RAMSAR France Association, in 50 years, the extent of wetlands has decreased by 35% worldwide, at a rate three times higher than that of deforestation.

Subject to rapid and continuous degradation linked to climate change, population growth, and human activities, these areas—which are essential to the well-being of populations and nature—are under serious threat. This increased pressure directly affects biodiversity, particularly waterbirds and migratory species.

As part of its commitment to protecting wetlands, FFEM has been supporting projects for several years, particularly in the Sahel-Saharan region, an area rich in biodiversity but particularly vulnerable.

Through the RESSOURCE project, the FFEM was one of the first to take a specific interest in waterfowl resources in the wetlands of the Sahel, which had been little studied until then and where waterfowl populations are in decline.

This innovative project aims to:

-    Protect waterbirds and reconcile conservation with food security for local populations;

-    Develop a better understanding of the spatial and temporal dynamics of waterbirds and their use, in order to ensure that bird populations are harvested sustainably and to better manage the wetlands that constitute their habitat. This will enable better definition of public policies for monitoring and conserving wetland biodiversity.

This project is the first to provide for the use of a standardized counting methodology across all the sites concerned, as well as the scheduling of simultaneous and coordinated surveys across all major wetland areas of the Sahel.

A second phase (RESSOURCE+), launched in 2025, aimed to test and harmonize, at the scale of several countries in the region, a single, multidisciplinary and multi-partnership approach, articulating actions at the local, national, and international levels.

Within this framework, the 60th International Waterbird Census (IWC) was held from 11 to 17 January 2026, contributing to the consolidation and implementation of this second phase of the project, as well as to the monitoring of the activities of technical operators.

The IWC is initiated and coordinated by Wetlands International. It is a global effort aimed at monitoring waterbird populations and better assessing the status of wetlands at a global scale.

In light of the commitments reaffirmed at COP15 of the Ramsar Convention, and at a time when wetlands are disappearing at an alarming rate, their protection appears more than ever as a collective priority, calling for strengthened mobilization of public authorities, scientists, and local communities. Protecting wetlands means preserving a living heritage that is essential to ecosystem balance and to the well-being of present and future generations.