Water Lands. Fred Pearce
storage or biodiversity improvement. The examples show us the possibility that we might reverse the destruction of wetlands and of ecosystems generally. That destruction is as old as civilization. Might we forge a different kind of civilization embodying reverence for soil and forests, animals and plants, water and land – and the wetlands where they all meet?’
Charles Eisenstein
Author and Speaker
‘Water Lands is a timely intervention and should stir people into action. In particular, to find more equitable ways of sharing water. Each chapter directs attention to the much-needed re-orientation between rapid economic development and long-term prosperity. Wetland communities, among other indigenous people and the ecosystems they depend on, need more support in conserving the environment for their long-term prosperity and peace.’
Ikal Ang’elei
Director, Friends of Lake Turkana
WATER LANDS
Where water meets land, life abounds. From the tundra mires to the temperate swamps, tropical forested rivers, desert oases, and deltas, it’s the dynamic interaction of water and land that matters. Wetlands adorn, connect, and permeate our landscapes, storing and regulating water and providing vital stepping stones for migratory water birds.
From my early days as an ecologist, these magical ecosystems were the obvious choice for my focus and conservation efforts. But traditional conservation approaches have proven inadequate to save them. I have witnessed decades of draining, taming, conversion, and fragmentation and now see wetland natural resources being hotly contested, on the frontline as humans demand more water, food, and energy. In many places, water scarcity as well as rising floods are placing a limit on development and endangering peace. As risks related to devastating floods increase, the benefits of investing in wetlands as climate buffers, and as a basis for food security and equitable development, are increasingly recognized. But in terms of global wetland recovery, we are still settling into the starting blocks. Science is an insufficient basis for driving action. Accelerating the necessary change will depend on people revering and valuing wetlands more.
After meeting Fred Pearce some years ago at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, following his impassioned speech about the tragedy of the Aral Sea and other wetlands of the world, I knew instantly that we should work together. His storytelling reportage has since helped Wetlands International explain to a wider audience how enabling communities to better manage wetlands can improve their well-being and build resilience across whole landscapes. Over recent years, we have discussed the need for a book which would help to lift and refresh the image of wetlands and serve as a call to action.
With Water Lands, we bring you stories, images and examples from wetlands around the world which reveal what is really happening and what is at stake in future choices. We aim to instil a sense of urgency and also hope. Most of all, we aim to inspire you to follow, support, and join efforts that will result in a turnaround for wetlands, their nature, and peoples.
Jane Madgwick
Chief Executive Officer, Wetlands International
The Garden of Eden, a Christian image of paradise, may have been based on the Mesopotamian Marshes in modern-day Iraq.
everlasting swamps
‘Everything here depends on the water, but the government is taking our water. They are giving it to foreign farmers. The lakes don’t fill properly now.’ Daouda Sanankoua, Mayor of Deboye in Mali, was describing the plight of his constituents in the heart of the Inner Niger Delta, on the edge of the Sahara Desert. Their water, collecting in a wetland the size of Belgium, once nurtured a great civilization around the fabled city of Timbuktu. Today, two million people depend on its fish, and its waters washing across croplands and pastures. Millions of European birds migrate to the delta each winter. But dams upstream are diverting water away from the delta. ‘The wind is driving sand into our village,’ said one of Sanankoua’s people. ‘Most of our fields are gone.’1
With another dam awaiting construction, hydrologists say that soon every year on the delta could be a drought year. Yet the people here are fighting the encroaching desert. They are planting trees and grasses, channelling water to fields, creating vegetable gardens, and digging fish ponds. Not a drop of water must go to waste, they say. They want the dams upstream to be managed to allow the delta to continue to flood each wet season. Without the annual flood, the prognosis for the wetland, its people and its birdlife, is bad. As Sanankoua put it, ‘a wetland is nothing without its water.’
From the peat bogs of Ireland to the bayous of Louisiana; from the flooded forests of Cambodia to the permafrost of Siberia; from the mangroves of the Ganges Delta to the ‘everlasting swamps’ of the Nile; and from the marshes of the Brazilian Pantanal to the boggy upland pastures of Tibet, wetlands are in-between and ever-changing worlds. Sometimes wet and sometimes dry, sometimes land and sometimes water, sometimes saline and sometimes fresh; they change character with the seasons, or may lie dormant for decades before bursting into life.
The Bible says that God created the world by dividing the land from the water. If so, He forgot about wetlands. For in wetlands rivers have no fixed banks, water oozes through soil, and silty soil courses through water. Fish live in trees and land mammals swim for their lives. Yet despite their ephemeral and contradictory nature, wetlands are our planet’s richest natural resource. Wetlands have extraordinary natural abundance. And that abundance helps make our world. Fertile with silt and rich in wildlife, wetlands were the first and most important sources of wealth for early human civilizations. From ancient Egypt to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and Mesopotamia to Timbuktu, our earliest urban societies grew on and beside wetlands.2
Wetlands regulate and govern the hydrology of most of the world’s river systems and determine access to water for billions of people. They nurture fisheries and water crops, maintain dry-season pastures, and provide fresh water and flood protection far downstream. They make deserts liveable by cooling summers, warming winters, and wetting dry air. They maintain river flows and top up groundwaters. They protect shorelines from high tides and storms. They simultaneously provide irrigation and drainage. They are the planet’s biggest terrestrial carbon store. They are home to a third of all known vertebrate species.3 They even reduce pollution by soaking up nutrients and toxins.
Finally, many wetlands are among the last great areas of the planet held in common by their communities. Their unfenced wealth is open to nomads in search of pasture for their animals, but also to the poor, the distressed, the marginalized and the banished. In war-torn and drought-stricken lands, they may provide security and the next meal for those in extremis.
WETLANDS CONJURE UP MANY IMAGES: lazy lagoons, gardens of Eden, mysterious mist-shrouded Shangri Las, or shimmering lakes. The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands came up with forty-two types.4 But categorizing them is a thankless task, and this book won’t get ‘bogged down’ in definitions. Instead, as we journey from source to sea in search of their past, present, and future, we will revel in their sheer variety and the range of services they provide for nature and for us.
All are rich in wildlife, of course. Insects, birds, and fish especially. Seemingly isolated wetlands across the world are parts of a network of watery places that sustain migrating water birds. Travelling from North to South America; from Europe to Africa; across Asia; and from the poles to the tropics, birds depend on these vital stepping stones to rest, feed, and breed. Remove one wetland and you may decimate bird populations thousands of kilometres away.
But wetlands provide myriad human services too. We will visit many peat bogs, for instance. These large waterlogged stores of plant carbon occur everywhere from mountain valleys to coastal swamps,