Witness History
Witness History
Saving the world's wetlands
Up next
May 20, 2021
9 minutes
Available for over a year
Iran hosted a meeting to save the world's wetlands in 1971. The Ramsar Convention - named after the village on the Caspian Sea where it was originally signed - is seen as the first of the modem global intergovernmental treaties on the sustainable use of natural resources. Claire Bowes has been speaking to the Belgian representative, Eckhart Kuijken, about the battle by conservationists to interest people and governments in the value of wetlands. He describes how his home country had no planning laws protecting natural landscapes until 1962 - so that many were lost to industry and agriculture.
Photo: Hawizeh Marsh in Iran. Credit: courtesy of the Convention on Wetlands