Till recently, the water and sanitation sector and the conservation sector hardly ever interacted. Wetlands International explores initiatives to link water supply, sanitation provision and sustainable wetland management. We work on partnerships with the Water and Sanitation and the Conservation sector.

Understanding the issue 

Wetland health is usally not included in water supply and sanitation provision strategies. Vice versa livelihood values are being overlooked by conservationists when addressing conservation problems. Joint activity is necessary by these sectors to drive progress towards better management of wetland areas; both for discharge water use as for nature conservation. The motivation is to address the need to develop sustainable and dignified livelihoods, recognising the strong dependence of many of the worlds’ poor on wetlands, their water resources and other ecosystem services. 

Working together with WASTE

A major cause of wetland degradation, loss of biodiversity and associated health problems is lack of sanitation and the disposal of waste. Wetlands International  announced recently that it will increasingly be working together with WASTE, advisors on urban environment and development. Both organisations have recently signed an MoU which will facilitate achieving a better understanding of the relationships between wetlands, sanitation and waste management through initiated and arising activities / opportunities. Our main contact person at WASTE is Gert de Bruijne who can be contacted at gdebruijne@waste.nl.

Objective

The long-term objective of our Wetlands, Water & Sanitation programme is to achieve standard engagement between the environment and the sanitation sector for integrating wetland ecosystem health into planning and implementation of saniation and water supply provision. The programme targets locations where abstraction of water supply and / or disposal of waste from human activities relies on wetland ecosystem services or impacts upon wetlands. Vice-versa, the programme aims to integrate and link activities that aim to enhance human livelihoods  to sustainable wetland management and use.

What we do

Understanding of the extent and character of the issues needs to be further developed. This can be done through collaboration between a wider group of people and organisations active in water supply, sanitation and wetland conservation.  Wetlands International is working on a partnership of local and international conservation and WatSan organisations to achieve this. The short-term plans by Wetlands International are:

• To establish a baseline of awareness and understanding of implementation issues through examining current initiatives (good and bad examples of practice on the ground) to determine the best approach to tackle the key issues.
   
• To develop a learning framework focusing on action research in one or more specific wetland region(s). This would act as a live case study.  Findings & results could be communicated widely within both the conservation and water & sanitation sectors, such as through the Stockholm Water Week.
   
• The use of the learning outcomes by institutions in all sectors to influence policy, guidelines and implementation at the local level related to WatSan initiatives in wetland areas.