Key ideas: Wetlands International’s strategy
Wetlands are biodiversity powerhouses , covering about 10% of the world’s land yet supporting up to 40% of global species. However, they are being lost three times faster than forests.Strategies to reduce agricultural expansion are not enough to protect wetlands , since major drivers of wetland loss include pollution and urban/industrial development and not just agriculture.Wetland protection offers a targeted, near-term biodiversity safeguard , steering habitat loss away from high-value ecosystems while longer-term strategies (e.g., alternative proteins, yield improvements) mature. Wetlands International advances conservation via on-the-ground restoration; multi-stakeholder coalitions with communities, government, and companies; knowledge generation; policy advocacy; and innovative finance tools. Its global initiatives help enable scalable, locally-grounded impact across key wetland systems.Conserving and Restoring Wetlands Wetlands—such as rivers, peatlands, and mangroves—punch above their weight in terms of biodiversity, but their continued existence is under threat. While wetlands account for approximately 10% of the total global land surface, up to 40% of the world’s species live and breed in wetlands.8 The rate of wetland cover loss is three times faster than that of forests and freshwater wildlife populations, which are sustained by wetlands, have shrunk the most out of all three realms of biodiversity.9
For terrestrial biodiversity, our strategy report on reducing biodiversity loss largely focuses on reducing agricultural expansion. We think it is important to complement philanthropic efforts to reduce agricultural expansion with protecting wetlands. Importantly, philanthropic strategies to reduce agricultural expansion (such as plant-rich diets, increasing yields, and reducing food waste) are not a full solution for the wetland biome since these strategies mainly target forests. We think that conserving and restoring wetlands is a promising strategy for protecting biodiversity for three main reasons:
Agricultural expansion is not the only threat to the wetland biome. Globally, the top three negative drivers of wetland loss and degradation are urban and industrial pollution, industrial development and infrastructure, and urban development and infrastructure.10 This means that reducing agricultural expansion is only expected to have a limited positive impact on wetland conservation.Reducing agricultural expansion is not selective as to which ecosystems are saved. Even if we eat fewer land-intensive products like beef or make farming more productive, we still cannot be sure that the land saved would come from areas with high biodiversity, such as wetlands.In the short term, we need to steer habitat loss away from the most important ecosystems. We expect that strategies to reduce agricultural expansion, such as alternative proteins and agricultural productivity, are longer-term strategic bets that will take multiple decades to fully materialize. In the meantime, we can protect areas with high biodiversity values that are threatened yet neglected in the conservation sector. We see this as a strategic ‘hedge’ against other biodiversity strategies failing to deliver substantial results quickly, while also tailoring to the preferences of donors who are risk-averse, have shorter timelines for results, and prefer tangible local impacts.Our strategy report on reducing biodiversity loss explains our argument in favor of conserving and restoring wetlands in more detail.
Wetlands International’s Strategy Wetlands International uses the following strategies to work on wetland restoration and protection:11
Implementing site-level conservation and restoration projects: Wetlands International implements site-level wetland conservation and restoration interventions and pilots. The organization involves stakeholders who depend on the ecosystem services provided by wetlands and those who can positively or negatively affect wetland ecosystems, such as Indigenous Peoples, local communities, companies, and governments. Wetlands International works on twelve “flagship landscapes”, which they prioritized as the most important for people, climate change mitigation, adaptation, and biodiversity, such as whether they are on migratory paths for fish and birds (i.e., swimways and flyways).Building coalitions for wetlands : Wetlands International creates coalitions of stakeholders that are affected by wetlands, or have an impact on wetlands, to co-create, scale up, and replicate solutions. Wetlands International’s Global Office co-runs three initiatives that aim to unlock finance for wetlands or improve wetland governance as part of national commitments: the Freshwater Challenge , the Mangrove Breakthrough , and the Peatland Breakthrough . Creating and valorizing knowledge and tools : Wetlands International creates, collates, and disseminates knowledge about wetland presence, status, values, policies, and plans to enable other actors to work on wetland conservation and restoration more effectively. Wetlands International runs the International Waterbird Census to monitor waterbird abundance in wetlands and their flyways, and co-runs Global Mangrove Watch to provide remote-sensing data to keep track of mangrove cover and quality.Engaging in advocacy and technical assistance : Wetlands International advocates for better policies to safeguard and restore wetlands and for removing harmful subsidies in the international, national, and sub-national arenas.Piloting financing mechanisms: Wetlands International develops and pilots financing tools, such as biodiversity and carbon credits, nature-related bonds, and payments for ecosystem services, to leverage more sources of funding for wetland conservation.Our Theory of Change for Wetlands International We constructed a theory of change that reflects our impression of how Wetlands International’s work can reduce biodiversity loss or restore previous biodiversity, as shown in Figure 1 . This theory of change focuses on increasing the quantity of conserved or restored wetlands and improving the efficacy of wetland conservation and restoration work.
Figure 1: Theory of Change for Wetlands InternationalExamining the Assumptions Behind the Theory of Change Below, we discuss and evaluate assumptions related to Wetlands International’s theory of change. For each of the assumptions, we rank whether we have low , medium , or high certainty about the assumption.12 For each assumption, we assess whether the best available evidence, primary or secondary, suggests whether the assumption will plausibly hold.
Wetland International’s direct site-specific interventions have leverage and trigger a larger impact beyond the project’s borders. (medium certainty) We are medium certain (70-90%) that Wetlands International’s site-specific interventions will lead to an impact beyond the project’s borders. We think that the strongest argument for positive spillover effects is Wetlands International’s prioritization of major swimways and flyways. By conserving and restoring habitats for migratory birds and fish, local populations of these species can recover or grow, which then affects species’ abundance in other sites along these swimways and flyways.
We also see positive examples of spillover from Wetlands International’s conservation practices to other initiatives, such as Indonesia basing its mangrove restoration policy on the ecological restoration practices piloted by Wetlands International.13
We also note that Wetlands International has indicated that it would use unrestricted funding mainly for initiatives to scale up conservation and restoration, rather than site-specific work. Wetlands International’s site-specific projects are mainly funded via restricted grants from philanthropies and governments, although the organization does plan to use additional unrestricted funding to develop landscape conservation prepositions to unlock more location-specific conservation funding.14 We think that the assumption that Wetlands International’s projects have a geographical spillover is not very relevant for donors considering unrestricted funding. We discuss this consideration in more detail in our section on funding need .
Governments and non-state actors use Wetlands International’s tools and technical assistance to improve wetland outcomes. (medium certainty) We are medium certain (70-90%) that governments and non-state actors use Wetlands International’s technical assistance and tools to improve wetland outcomes. The usefulness of its technical assistance is illustrated by achievements such as countries including its targets for freshwater and mangrove conservation in their NDCs and Kenya and Tanzania using Global Mangrove Watch alerts.15 Wetlands International has also been involved in research and policy advocacy in the EU and provided extensive technical assistance in Argentina.16
We do not attach a high certainty level (90%-100%) to this assumption because:
We can only anecdotally assess the use of Wetlands International’s tools and technical assistance. Because many of Wetlands International’s tools are freely accessible to the public, we cannot have a full understanding of their uptake as their use does not require registration with Wetlands International or other developers. As technical assistance takes place behind the scenes, we also do not know which engagements for technical assistance have failed or which tools were not found useful by key decision-makers. However, we do not see similar tools offered by other organizations, nor many other nonprofits providing technical assistance for wetland conservation and restoration. This gap leads us to believe that a large part of the demand for knowledge and tools will be met by Wetlands International.We can only monitor the use of technical assistance and tools at the input and output levels of the theory of change. We cannot ascertain whether Wetlands International counterfactually improved wetland outcomes in the longer term. (See also our comments on permanence below.)We would revise our assessment if we had quantitative evidence (e.g. a survey) showing that relevant decision-makers know about and want to use Wetlands International’s tools and technical assistance, along with long-term evidence that jurisdictions working with Wetlands International achieve better conservation outcomes.
The protection and restoration of wetlands is mostly permanent. (low certainty) We have low certainty (<70%) that Wetlands International’s work to conserve and restore wetlands leads to long-term conservation outcomes. By ‘permanence’, we mean the likelihood that realized biodiversity gains (or averted losses) are maintained reasonably far into the future.17 We emphasize that our ‘low’ rating comes from methodological limitations and not from concerns unique to Wetlands International.
Impermanence risks for wetland conservation and restoration include:
Changing political landscapes: Decision-makers may put less value on wetlands, their associated ecosystem services, and the communities that depend on them.Global economic trends: Emerging sectors can present new or larger competing land uses in wetland ecosystems, such as aquaculture growth affecting coastal wetlands.Climate change: Altered rainfall patterns in or near wetlands and can degrade coastal wetlands through sea level rise.Conflict: War or other conflicts in countries with wetland ecosystems would negatively affect operations in these countries.We have a positive impression of Wetlands International’s work to address impermanence risks, insofar as addressing permanence is possible. Wetlands International describes risks to its operations in its annual review and strategies to mitigate these risks.18 We also think Wetlands International's efforts to raise diverse sources of funding for wetlands mitigate risks from reduced funding streams, while its engagements with communities help guard against competing land uses in wetlands.
Wetland protection and conservation does not cause equivalent biodiversity loss elsewhere (leakage). (medium certainty) We have medium certainty (70-90%) that conservation and restoration activities do not lead to an equivalent loss of biodiversity elsewhere. Unlike land use change in forests, which is typically caused by agricultural expansion for commodities, the threats to wetlands are more site-specific.19 The Global Wetland Outlook reports that the key negative drivers of wetland loss and degradation are pollution, urban expansion, industrial development, agricultural intensification, drainage, and invasive species.20 We think that addressing these drivers locally often does not provide a strong incentive to shift environmentally damaging activities to another location in the wetland, since many of the activities underlying these threats can also take place outside of wetlands. Since wetlands have above-average species richness and ecosystem services, we think that diverting land use change or other economic drivers of biodiversity loss to other areas will result in less biodiversity loss overall.
We also think that Wetlands International’s approach to conservation and restoration reduces leakage risks. Since Wetlands International’s projects focus on twelve flagship landscapes of particular importance for migratory species, we think that any leakage to wetlands outside these conservation areas will lead to less biodiversity loss because they are less important to flyways and swimways.21 We also think that Wetlands International’s engagement with relevant stakeholders in the wider landscape, such as communities, companies, and government agencies, reduces the economic drivers of wetland deterioration within the landscape and therefore reduces local leakage risks.22
Our impression is that the conservation community is less concerned with leakage in wetland conservation than in forests. Guidance for leakage risks in wetland conservation does not appear to be commonplace. A background note prepared by the government of Iceland in 2008 for the UNFCCC put that impermanence risks “would be low or negligible” if wetland restoration focuses on unproductive agricultural land, as this does not increase demand for agricultural products from wetlands elsewhere.23
Wetland conservation and restoration improve biodiversity outcomes. (high certainty) Conservation Evidence, which compiles evidence from scientific literature about the effects of conservation efforts on biodiversity, ranks many relevant wetland conservation and restoration actions as “beneficial” or “likely to be beneficial”. We searched for high-level actions to conserve or restore wetlands on Conservation Evidence and compiled the most relevant actions in Table 1 .24
Table 1: Effectiveness of wetland conservation and restoration actions on the Conservation Evidence website. Note: “No evidence found” means that there are no papers that assess the effectiveness of an action. This status does not imply that the action is ineffective. The table is sorted by the number of studies assessed. Wetlands International’s Workstreams and Achievements Key ideas: Wetlands International’s achievements
Wetlands International has set up innovative conservation projects in priority areas. Its strategy emphasizes working along migratory paths of birds and fish (flyways and swimways) and using conservation knowledge to enable impact beyond the project borders.Wetlands International has helped build coalitions to protect specific wetland types. The most prominent coalitions it has helped build are the Freshwater Challenge, Global Mangrove Alliance, the Mangrove Breakthrough, and, more recently, the Peatland Breakthrough. These initiatives have led to increased conservation, restoration, and financing commitments.Wetlands International has created knowledge and tools to improve conservation and restoration practices. Some of its most prominent tools are Global Mangrove Watch, the International Waterbird Census, and best practice documents to improve conservation activities.Wetlands International contributed to improved wetland policies and management , both itself and through the coalitions it helped launch. The organization works in the international and national policy arenas. Wetlands International has piloted financing mechanisms to increase funding for wetland conservation and restoration. The organization is, among other initiatives, experimenting with investable solutions that are attractive for the aquaculture and agriculture sectors, water users, and funders of carbon projects to leverage private funding for conservation and restoration.Implementing Site-Level Wetland Conservation and Restoration Projects Wetlands International implements site-level wetland conservation and restoration interventions with Indigenous Peoples and local communities through designating Ramsar sites, establishing protected areas, and implementing other area-based conservation measures, along with its integrated management.25 The organization also introduces best practices and pilots replicable solutions for conservation, restoration, and wise use of landscapes.. Examples of Wetlands International’s site-level work on best practices include enhancing sustainable aquaculture productivity, better grazing management in and near wetlands, piloting paludiculture (wet agriculture) to avoid wetland drainage, and integrating nature into water engineering to avoid the need to replace ecosystems with gray infrastructure. Wetlands International is involved in 26 site-level conservation projects on all continents except Oceania and Antarctica.26 We highlight some examples of projects below.
Examples of Wetlands International’s site-specific work Mangrove Restoration: To Plant or not to Plant Scaling science-based mangrove restoration in the Philippines Climate-Resilient East Atlantic Flyway (CREAF) programme Blue Lifelines for a Secure Sahel (BLiSS) While wetlands only cover a relatively small share of Earth’s land, we think that directly conserving and restoring all wetlands using philanthropic donations for nonprofits alone will not lead to the largest biodiversity impact. Rather, as we describe in our strategy report on reducing biodiversity loss , we think that the role of philanthropy is to change systems by leveraging policy, creating new markets, accelerating research, or steering larger sources of funding. Wetlands International recognizes that the direct impact of its site-level work will often be limited and accounts for this limitation by aiming to achieve positive impacts beyond project borders. Wetlands International does that by:
Exploring and scaling new methods: Gaining experience with best practices to scale up proven methods globally.Addressing competing claims to land use: Wetlands International aims to address the competing claims on wetlands by agriculture, aquaculture, industry, and cities by working with landscape-relevant stakeholders like governments, companies, financial institutions, knowledge institutes, and communities. Prioritizing specific areas: Wetlands International focuses its work on twelve “flagship landscapes” that are most important for people, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and biodiversity, and reach biodiversity benefits beyond the project borders because of its positive effect on swimways and flyways for migratory fish and birds. The flagship landscapes and major flyways are shown in Figure 2 .Figure 2: The five major flyways for migratory birds (colored lines), Wetlands International’s 12 “Flagship Landscapes” (blue rectangles), and Wetlands International’s offices (green circles). Figure supplied by Wetlands International. Building Coalitions for WetlandsWetlands International creates coalitions of stakeholders that are affected by wetlands, or have an impact on wetlands, to co-create, scale up, and replicate solutions for wetlands. We summarize these initiatives in Table 2 . A detailed description of these coalitions with references is available in Appendix A .
Table 2: Coalitions for wetlands co-built by Wetlands International. Notes: IUCN: International Union for the Conservation of Nature, TNC: The Nature Conservancy, UNCCD: United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, UNEP: United Nations Environment Programme, WWF: World Wildlife Fund, GEF: Global Environment Facility, NDC: Nationally Determined Contribution. A detailed description of these coalitions with references is available in Appendix A . Creating and Valorizing Knowledge and Tools Wetlands International creates, collates, and disseminates knowledge about wetland presence, status, values, policies, and plans to enable other actors to work on wetland conservation and restoration more effectively.
One of Wetlands International’s largest tools is the Global Mangrove Watch (GMW) , which it launched in 2020 with other nonprofits in the Global Mangrove Alliance. GMW is an online monitoring tool providing real-time synthesized remote sensing data on changes to mangrove cover (Figure 3 ).27 GMW includes information on cover change, soil carbon, living biomass, and canopy height, among other things, to governments and conservation actors to respond to illegal logging, track conservation progress, and identify causes of mangrove loss.28 GMA issues disturbance alerts when mangrove cover is affected by human or natural factors.29
While it is hard to track the impacts of knowledge-based work, GMW has demonstrated anecdotal successes. For example, GMW has helped conservation staff in Kenya and Tanzania detect mangrove losses earlier through its deforestation alerts, and helped enable targeted restoration activities.30 Its data has also informed the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) report on mangrove forest change.31
Figure 3: Screenshot of the Global Mangrove Watch user interfaceWetlands International is currently working on a Wetland Atlas initiative inspired by GMW to provide similar data on other wetland types, including freshwater wetlands and peatlands.32 It is also a member of the EU-funded WET HORIZONS project, which launched the European Wetland Map showing the locations of major peatland locations and drainage data.33 Given Wetlands International’s expertise in peatlands and its experience with launching GMW, we think that the organization is well-positioned to build knowledge and tools for more evidence-based peatland conservation.
Other data and knowledge work by Wetlands International includes:
The International Waterbird Census (IWC), a monitoring program in 143 countries to collect information on waterbird abundance in major wetland sites and flyways.Best practice guidelines for restoring, creating, and managing salt marshes and tidal flats , in collaboration with the Conservation Evidence initiative.34 These guidelines are confirmed to be used in two sites on the Yellow Sea coast in China.35 Best practice guidelines for mangrove restoration to align restoration actors based on scientific and local knowledge about what works well in restoration. An inventory of the “Swimways of European Importance” , mapping the migration routes of freshwater fish species, which informed the EU Nature Restoration Law.36 Engaging in Advocacy and Technical Assistance Wetlands International advocates for policies protecting wetlands at the global, national, and sub-national level. Because wetland policies are not extensively tracked by the media, we mainly rely on Wetlands International’s own reporting to assess the organization’s track record for influencing policy.
International Arena Wetlands International works to include wetlands in global frameworks for biodiversity (CBD), climate change (UNFCCC), and desertification (United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, UNCCD) through its coalitions like the Mangrove Breakthrough and the Freshwater Challenge. Wetlands International is a voting member of the IUCN World Conservation Congress, where it advocates for the inclusion of wetlands in the agenda of the conservation community. In 2025, it co-sponsored five motions at the congress, which passed.37 The organization is one of six partners of the Ramsar Convention, an international treaty for the conservation and "wise use" of wetlands.38
European Union In recent years, Wetlands International helped secure the inclusion of wetlands in several relevant policy initiatives of the European Union:
Nature Restoration Regulation: Wetlands International’s mapping of Swimways of European Importance helped ensure this regulation included river restoration targets.39 The organization also helped ensure that this law included a mandatory target for peatland restoration.40 EU guidance on carbon certification: Wetlands International helped enable payments for ecosystem services for peatland management.41 In addition, Wetlands International promotes “Wetlands Partnerships” between the EU and other countries, based on the existence of Forest Partnerships. There are currently conversations for wetland partnerships between the EU, Brazil, and Colombia.42
National and sub-national arenas Wetlands International claims several major recent policy wins with national governments:
Influencing the Indonesian government’s commitment to restore 600,000 hectares of degraded mangroves based on Wetlands International’s pilots for ecological mangrove restoration with a high survival rate.43 Strengthening the protection of mangrove sites in Tanzania (~600,000 hectares), Liberia and Sierra Leone, Kenya, and Panama. Wetlands International also assisted national-level conservation efforts in Indonesia, the Philippines, Guinea-Bissau, and Senegal. In the latter country, its parliament endorsed a new mangrove conservation and restoration strategy.44 Providing technical assistance to protect and manage peatlands in Argentina, Panama, and Uganda. According to Wetlands International, its site-specific technical assistance in these countries improved the management plans of over 1 million hectares of wetlands.45 Piloting Financing Mechanisms Wetlands International develops and pilots financing mechanisms to leverage more sources of funding for wetland conservation. Since these are pilot programs, we did not evaluate whether these initiatives are scaling up, but rather think they are illustrative of Wetlands International exploring ways to increase funding for wetland conservation from the private sector. We give several examples of the organization’s pilot programs below.
Examples of Wetlands International’s pilots of financing mechanisms Mixed mangrove aquaculture solutions: Wetlands International developed solutions for mixing mangroves with aquaculture, where the ecosystem services from mangroves (such as water filtration) help improve mangroves. This pilot is intended to receive financial support from the aquaculture sector.46 Paludiculture: Wetlands International runs several paludiculture (wet agriculture) pilots that would enable productive land use without draining peatlands, which is intended to be a profitable form of agriculture.47 Carbon finance: Wetlands International works to make wetland projects (e.g. peatland restoration) an investable solution using carbon credits. The organization works on carbon accounting guidance for wetlands and claims to have contributed to best practice guidelines and supportive IPCC frameworks.48 Corporate restoration programs: Wetlands International helps companies set up conservation programs to improve their brand image and to unlock private sector finance for conservation. For example, Wetlands International has worked with the drink manufacturer Diageo to protect the wetlands the company depends on for its water supply.49 -----
8 Wetland cover percentage: We took the area estimates of (semi-)terrestrial and (semi-)freshwater wetland categories from the Global Wetland Outlook (2025, Table 1) : estuarine waters, salt marshes, mangroves, tidal flats, lakes, rivers and streams, inland marshes and swamps, and peatlands. This amounts to 14 million km2 of wetlands. We divided this by the total surface of Earth’s land (141 million km2 ). 14 Mkm2 / 141 Mkm2 ≈ 10%.Species percentage: “Up to 40% of the world’s species live and breed in wetlands” UN Climate Change News, 2018
9 Rate of loss: “Wetlands, amongst the world’s most economically valuable ecosystems and essential regulators of the global climate, are disappearing three times faster than forests.” UN Climate Change News, 2018 . Population decline since 1970: “Freshwater populations have suffered the heaviest declines, falling by 85%, followed by terrestrial (69%) and marine populations (56%)” WWF Living Planet Report , 2024
10 The source of the survey methodology and respondent selection is not made publicly available by the Ramsar convention secretariat. Based on their reporting, we think that threats to wetland loss (v.a.v. degradation) might be understated in this survey because of selection bias: places where wetlands are lost will have fewer respondents to report on the state of now non-existent wetlands. Table 3 in Global Wetland Outlook, 2025
11 We created this list of activities based on Wetlands International’s draft strategy which was shared with Giving Green. Wetlands International aims to release this strategy in early 2026.
12 We describe our certainty as low/medium/high to increase readability and avoid false precision. Since these terms can be interpreted differently, we use rough heuristics to define them as percentage likelihoods the assumption is, on average, correct. Low = 0-70%, medium = 70-90%, high = 90-100%.
13 See the sections on national-level policy advocacy and site-specific projects .
14 Correspondence with Wetlands International.
15 NDCs: See our sections on the Mangrove Breakthrough and the Freshwater Challenge . GMW alerts in East Africa: See our section on Global Mangrove Watch .
16 EU policy advocacy: See our section on European Union advocacy .Technical assistance in Argentina: See our section on national-level policy advocacy .
17 “The permanence of a unit of carbon removal or biodiversity gain refers to the likelihood of the CO2 sequestered, or biodiversity gained being maintained into the future” rePlanet, 2023 , based on the definition by the Climate Change Committee.
18 See page 35 of Wetlands International’s 2024 annual review .
19 See our strategy report on reducing biodiversity loss for a discussion of the drivers of habitat loss.
20 “As reported in previous Global Wetland Outlooks, the key negative drivers causing wetland loss and degradation, identified by participants of previous WWSs, and confirmed in the 2024 “citizen science” WWS (Table 3), remain as: urban, agricultural and industrial pollution, urban expansion, industrial development, agricultural intensification, drainage, and non-native alien species introductions and invasions.” Global Wetland Outlook , 2025
21 See our section on site-level work .
22 ibid.
23 “The chance of leakage on a wider scale could occur, for example, if agricultural lands decommissioned from production due to restoration would increase demand for agricultural products that might cause pressure for drainage or disturbance of wetlands elsewhere into agricultural land. It is difficult to assess the risk of leakage of this kind, but if wetland restoration is concentrated on lands of marginal agricultural use, this risk would be low or negligible.” Government of Iceland, 2008
24 Search terms: “wetland”; “restore wetland”, “conserve wetland”. Conservation Evidence, n.d. (Retrieved November 2025)
25 A Ramsar site is a wetland ecosystem designated as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention ("The Convention on Wetlands").
26 The full list is on the website of Wetlands International .
27 “This World Mangrove Day, the Global Mangrove Alliance and partners are launching the Global Mangrove Watch. The Global Mangrove Watch is the world’s most comprehensive mangrove monitoring tool: an online platform that provides synthesized remote sensing data and tools, built to catalyse the action needed to protect and restore mangroves worldwide. It gives universal access to real-time data on where and what changes there are to mangroves around the world, and highlights why they are valuable in multiple contexts.” United Nations, 2020
28 “Global Mangrove Watch (GMW) is an online platform that provides the remote sensing data and tools for monitoring mangroves necessary for this. It gives universal access to near real-time information on where and what changes there are to mangroves across the world and highlights why they are valuable. With hi-res information on cover change, soil carbon, living biomass, canopy height and other parameters, Global Mangrove Watch gives coastal and park managers, conservationists, policymakers and practitioners the evidence needed to respond to illegal logging, pinpoint the causes of local mangrove loss and track conservation progress.” GMA, n.d.
29 “Using satellite data and machine learning, GMW spots disturbances, whether from illegal logging, storm damage, erosion, or agricultural conversion, within days.” GMA, 2025
30 Video on the YouTube channel of Wetlands International
31 “The Global Mangrove Watch was the key source of data used by the UNEP-WCMC for their special report, Decades of Mangrove Forest Change: What does it mean for nature, people and the climate?, exploring changes in mangrove cover to highlight the urgent need to better understand our “blue ecosystems”.” GMA, 2023
32 “These efforts are important building blocks towards an envisioned Global Peatland Watch, a digital platform to monitor changes and threats to the world’s peatlands.” Wetlands International, 2025
33 Intro and section 1: Wetlands International, 2025 : “In Europe, we played a key role in a collaborative effort to develop a European Wetland Map, to be launched on World Wetlands Day.” Wetlands International, 2025
34 “The Guidelines for restoration, creation and management of salt marshes and tidal flats are a collaborative effort between Wetlands International and the Conservation Evidence Group at Cambridge University, incorporating insights from an international panel of experts.” Wetlands International, 2024
35 “They are already being used in two sites on the Yellow Sea coast in China, which are on a crucial waterbird flyway.” Wetlands International, 2025
36 “The proposed EU Nature Restoration Law presents a unique opportunity to address this issue, but other EU legislation, such as the Renewable Energy Directive, could exacerbate the problem. This inventory is a crucial tool in identifying priority areas for river restoration and designating no-go areas for hydropower development. Based on the biological criteria we developed in 2023, we identified 392 Swimways of European Importance (SEI).” Wetlands International, 2024
37 For the full list: Wetlands International, 2025
38 Memorandum of Cooperation between The Secretariat of the Convention on Wetlands and The International Organisation Partners of the Convention of Wetlands , 2024
39 “Europe we helped ensure the inclusion of the river restoration targets in the Nature RestorationRegulation and developed the first ever mapping of Swimways of European Importance.” Wetlands International, 2025
40 “We helped ensure that the new EU Nature Restoration Law, coming into force in 2025, includes a mandatory target on peatland restoration. When enforced this will make a massive difference for peatland restoration.” Wetlands International, 2025
41 “We also influenced EU guidance on carbon certification, meaning that farmers and landowners will be able to receive financial incentives for restoring and sustainably managing peatlands.” Wetlands International, 2025
42 “We also promote Wetlands Partnerships between the EU and other countries, modelled after the successful Forest Partnerships, to channel EU funds towards wetlands. Discussions to establish the first partnerships are underway between Brazil, Colombia, and the EU.” Wetlands International, 2025
43 “This has had a major influence on the Indonesian government’s ambitious commitment to restore 600,000 hectares of degraded mangroves. Ecological mangrove restoration is now recognised in government policy and in the plans and training modules of the Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency.” Wetlands International, 2025
44 “We have helped strengthen protection for important mangrove areas. In Tanzania, the 596,900-hectare Rufiji Mafia Kilwa seascape was designated as a Man and Biosphere reserve by UNESCO, increasing protection from habitat degradation and resource overexploitation. We helped develop integrated management plans for protected areas and their buffer zones in the Gran Mano landscape (Liberia, Sierra Leone) and Lamu (Kenya), and have supported efforts to win protection for over 75,000 hectares of mangroves in Panama. [...] We have coordinated national efforts in Indonesia, Philippines, Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, where a strategy for mangrove conservation and restoration was recently endorsed by parliament.” Wetlands International, 2025
45 “In Argentina, we supported the government to add Península Mitre to the list of wetlands of international importance under the Ramsar convention and we helped develop peatland management plans for the Provincial Reserve. In Panama we shared knowledge and raised awareness about peatlands. In Uganda, we developed a peatland programme for the Nile Equatorial Lakes Region and completed an assessment of transboundary wetlands in the upper Nile catchment, securing funding to begin preliminary work in Sango Bay. [...] In Argentina, we enhanced the management plans for two Ramsar sites, the Iberá Wetlands (24,550 ha) and the mountainous Villavicencio Reserve (62,444 ha), as well as two sites in the Paraná Delta, the Victoria Multiple Use Reserve (432,500 ha) and the San Fernando Biosphere Reserve (88,624 ha). Additionally, in Peru and Argentina, we have improved the management of 430,841 hectares of Protected Areas. In Brazil we have contributed to updating the management plans of 5 reserves of the Amolar/Pantanal Protected Areas network, for a total of 66,398 hectares.” Wetlands International, 2025
46 See, for example: Wetlands International, 2025 ; 2020
47 See, for example: Wetlands International, 2025 ; 2023
48 See, for example: Wetlands International, 2024
49 “Through this major commitment to scaled funding and collective action, projects will be delivered that improve resilience in the landscapes, increasing biodiversity, water management and supporting local communities while safeguarding the natural resources on which the industry depends.” Wetlands International, 2025
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