In Focus ： Protect wetlands and build a community of life on Earth

If we compare the earth to a person, then the wetland is the human kidney, whose importance is self-evident.

Strengthening the protection of wetlands is related to the overall ecological health of the earth.

After COP15 of Convention on Biological Diversity which was held in Kunming, China in October 2021, the 14th Conference of the Parties to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat (RAMSAR COP14) will be held in Wuhan, China by online to offline. In the conference, wetlands protection and the future goals of RAMSAR as well as important implementation issues will be discussed.

Wetland is an important component of the biological system. Wetlands’ high-quality protection helps to alleviate the woe that the global loss of biodiversity cannot be slowed down, and will also play an important role in copying with climate change and strengthen carbon sequestration capacity.

The results of the third Chinese land and resource survey and the land change survey in 2020, China's wetlands area is about 56.35 million hectares, including mangrove forest land, forest swamp, thickets swamp, marsh grass inland, coastal tidal flats, tidal flats, swamp, river water, lake water and reservoir water, pits surface (excluding aquaculture water), ditches, and shallow sea waters. In order to strengthen wetland protection, the National Forestry and Grassland Administration and the Ministry of Natural Resources jointly issued the National Wetland Protection Plan

(2022-2030) in October 2022, which clearly states that the total number of wetlands in China shall be stable and the wetland protection rate will reach 55% by 2025.

This issue will focus on wetlands, closely follow the Convention on Wetlands, and call on all sectors of society to further strengthen research and practice on wetland protection, so as to build a community of life on Earth.