WETLANDS MANAGEMENT

This Note provides technical support to the integration of wetlands management principles into water resources planning and development, as well as strategic instruments such as country environmental analysis. In the next section, we describe the different types of wetlands and their occurrence in various biogeographic regions. We then describe the rapid loss of these wetlands around the world and the causes of this loss. Although some of this loss can be attributed to natural events, most of it arises from human activities such as land use conversion and diversion of river flows for agricultural development. The beneficial functions provided by wetlands are explained in the following section. The final section provides details of environmental protection (to avoid loss), planning, and management of wetlands. These include adherence to World Bank safeguard policies, full stakeholder participation, the importance of assessing the value of services provided by wetlands, the costs of retaining wetlands in developments (including mitigation measures), and the selection of indicators and a monitoring program to implement them.