Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar Convention)

The Ramsar Convention was signed at Ramsar, Iran on 2 February 1971 and entered into force on 21 December 1975. It was the first modern global intergovernmental treaty on the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources, and it remains the only one focused on a single ecosystem type. Its Secretariat is administratively supported by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The ecosystem in question is defined broadly: marshes, peatlands, floodplains, rivers, lakes, coastal areas, mangroves and coral reefs. The Convention's founding move was to treat those as ecologically vital rather than as marginal land awaiting a better use, recognising their role in water supply, flood control, biodiversity and climate regulation at a time when drainage was standard practice.

Its central mechanism is a shared list. Each party commits at least one wetland site to the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance and takes on an obligation to maintain that site's ecological character. Alongside the list runs a wider duty: parties commit to the wise, meaning sustainable, use of all wetlands in their territory, and to integrating wetland conservation into national land-use planning. Protection is therefore not confined to the sites that happen to be listed.

Because wetlands, river basins and migratory water-dependent species cross borders, parties also commit to consulting one another over implementation, with particular attention to shared wetlands, water systems and species. A wetland treaty that stopped at national boundaries would not describe the thing it is protecting.

The Convention also builds in an obligation of transparency about failure. Parties are required to inform the Secretariat if the ecological character of a listed wetland has changed, is changing, or is likely to change as a result of human interference. Degradation has to be reported rather than quietly absorbed. One honesty marker belongs on this record: the Convention's own about pages returned no extractable text to the session that built this archive, so this account draws on the treaty's established public framework, its three pillars and the Ramsar List mechanism, rather than on a single fetched official page. The full text and the current Ramsar List are maintained at the official Convention site.