Journal article
Forty-three years of ramsar and urban wetlands
M Hettiarachchi, TH Morrison, C McAlpine
Global Environmental Change | Published : 2015
Open access
Abstract
The Ramsar Convention is unquestionably the backbone of modern wetland management theory and practice. In the last four decades, it has mainstreamed wetlands in the environmental discourse and fostered the development of a comprehensive institutional framework for wetland governance. However, many of the wetlands that occur in human-dominated landscapes remain acutely threatened. The problem is most alarming in urban areas, especially in the fast expanding cities of the developing world, where unprecedented wetland destruction is leading to recurring environmental disasters. This triggers the question: are these failures in wetland governance purely induced by factors exogenous to Ramsar-bas..
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Funding Acknowledgements
This research was funded by a CSIRO Integrated Natural Resources Management Research Grant (2011-2014). The University of Queensland, School of Geography Planning and Environmental Management also provided valuable financial and logistical support. We specially mention the guidance and support provided by Dr. Drubhajyoti Ghosh (Kolkata), Prof. Ajith de Alwis (University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka), Mrs. Kusum Athukorala (Sri Lanka Water Partnership), and the Sri Lanka Land Reclamation and Development Corporation while organizing the field work. We also thank the Editor in Chief of Global Environmental Change and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and guidance.