To mark World Wetlands Day, I have asked my colleague Nicola Crockford (who leads our policy work on migratory species) to share this great news for Spoon-billed Sandpipers and wetlands in East Asia...
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Extraordinarily good progress has been made in ensuring the conservation of the Yellow Sea, and therefore the future of the Spoon-billed Sandpipers and the many other species of threatened waterbirds that share the coasts of the East Asian Australasian Flyway. All of a sudden there is real hope that their extinction can be prevented.
In January the Chinese State Oceanic Administration (SOA) introduced radically strong regulations to minimise and reverse damage to the Chinese coast from land claim and pollution. Among other things, it prevents further damaging coastal land claim, stops developments that have been permitted but not started, restores habitat that has been illegally claimed and wrests power from the Provinces for permitting land claim developments.
This followed a historic meeting last December, hosted by Yancheng National Nature Reserve on the Yellow Sea coast of Jiangsu Province, China. The RSPB worked with the IUCN and the East Asian Australasian Flyway Partnership to bring together the governments of China, North and South Korea to discuss the conservation of the Yellow Sea Coast.
Participants from the three countries agreed to collaborate for the conservation and management of the coastal wetlands of the Yellow Sea. What's more, it was announced that the boundary of the Yancheng proposed World Heritage Site would be extended south to include Tiaozini, the most important site in the World for Spoon-billed Sandpipers (as a staging and moulting site) which was hitherto slated for destruction by the world’s biggest coastal land claim project. The news from the SOA explains why that has been possible.
This is the result of a huge international effort which included the adoption of a resolution on Promoting Conservation of Critical Intertidal and other coastal Habitats for Migratory Speciesin October by the 126 Parties of the UN Convention on Migratory Species. Momentum should be maintained to establish a Global Coastal Forum jointly with the Ramsar and Biodiversity Conventions, and we look forward to reporting more progress after their meetings later this year. This is good news globally for coastal wetlands and the future of the waterbirds that depend on them.
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You can read more about this story here.
It is heartening to see China provide such impressive conservation leadership.
We need more governments around the world to take similar steps to tackle the crisis facing our wild places and species.
Yet, the action in the Yellow Sea also bodes well for the crucial meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity which China will host in 2020. This is the meeting that will set new conservation ambition and, we shall urge, tangible measures to boost efforts to restore biodiversity around the world.
I shall return to the 2020 challenge soon. Today, though, spare a thought for the world's wetlands and pledge not just to enjoy them but also to protect them.
Teriffic news, great stuff from the RSPB and the ICUN and the East Asian Flyway partnership. This is truly conservation on an international scale working on the front line.
Also Interesting to note that both North and South Korea were presumably sitting around the same table. This is also brilliant in a small way for wider peace implications.
I sometimes think that some of the eastern countries are able to take a much wider, sensible and longer term view of the conservation of biodiversity, nature and the environment than the current very myopic and antideluvian view of certain western countries to their shame.
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