World Wetland Network
WWN committee meeting, UK
The WWN committee met on the 6th and 7th of March, and here is the agenda for the meeting. A major point of discussion was the World Wetlands Award, here is the draft (not fully functional, yet) website which we hope to launch at the end of April 2010. We welcome your comments. It will be in French and Spanish when finished, but apologies that it is just in English currently. Here are the notes from the first day's work - we also discussed the marketing strategy and will work on developing this - comments welcome. Also, find the SWOT analysis that we carried out.
Background
The World Wetland Network (WWN) is a fledgling global network of 200 wetland NGO’s initiated at the World NGO conference on the e
ve of the Ramsar COP10 meeting, November 2008, in Changwon, South Korea. It arose from the need for NGOs to maintain contact with each other at and between Ramsar meetings, but will also help with information exchange, sharing of best practice and lobbying on specific wetland issues. Previous Ramsar COPs also saw wetland NGOs working on this, and WWN is a direct result of their efforts. The WWN will also enable smaller NGOs to arrive at Ramsar COPs (Conferences of the Parties) well prepared for the meeting and more able to fully participate in the Ramsar meeting itself.
The NGO’s present at the Ramsar COP met several times and agreed a Terms of Reference and a work plan for the WWN. A committee of members from each continent was identified in the Terms of Reference. Chris Rostron, Head of WLI (Wetland Link International), was elected as chair along with representatives from each continental region. Since then, a yahoo chat group has been set with regular e-mail traffic, which is open to anyone to join. The committee meets over telephone conference regularly, see the minutes of the meetings below.
This website is hosted by WWT, a UK-based wetland conservation organisation that shares many similar aims of WWN and also hosts Wetland Link International.
Contacts
For more information, please contact Chris Rostron, Chair, WWN at chris.rostron@wwt.org.uk, or one of the regional reps as follows:
Africa - Baboucarr Mbye, Stay Green the Gambia, at staygreenthegambia@yahoo.co.uk
Asia - Kashiwagi, Minoru (Japan Ramsar Network) at minoru_kash@nifty.com
Europe - Peter Lyengel (co-chair), Romania, Unesco Pro-Natura, at lengyelpeter@yahoo.com
North America - Rich Beilfuss, International Crane Foundation, rich@savingcranes.org
Neotropics - Melissa Marin, Costa Rica, FUNGAP, at mmarin@fungap.org
Oceania - Cassie Price, Australia, Wetland Care, at cassieprice@wetlandcare.com.au
Secretary to WWN - Esteban Biamonte, Costa Rica, Union de Ornitologo, at uniondeornitologoscr@gmail.com
Resources and News
To join the WWN please fill in the registration form in English, French or Spanish and e-mail to Esteban Biamonte. We welcome new members - if you are an NGO delivering wetland conservation work, then you should join! Forms will be placed on this website by region. In order to communicate to as wide an audience as possilbe, please can you complete them in English? We are happy to put an additional version in your own language as well.
We have recently created a WWN flyer in two formats. Click on simple flyer (348kb) or detailed flyer (1.2mb) for copies. If you have any resources, comments or news then please send them to Chris Rostron at the e-mail above. Click here for Spanish, French and Japanese versions.
Whilst at Changwon we also produced an NGO statement, which you can read here, supporting the Ramsar convention's approach and urging Ramsar members to do more to protect wetlands, and recognise and support NGO involvement in wetland conservation.
Regular skype conference calls take place between the committee members, for notes from each of the meetings, please click on the relevant date below. The notes are a summary of the meeting to keep them concise, although committee members receive the full version. We now have a WWN annual report 2008-9, showing our progress over the first year.
2008 - November (Changwon, in person)
2009 - March, April, June, July, August, September, October, November, December (all Skype)
2010 - January, February, planned AGM and meet for March