World Wetlands Day 2021: 50 Years Later
By Margaret Stewart
February celebrates Black History Month, Galentine’s Day for female friendship AND World Wetlands Day which recognizes one of our most vital ecosystems.
Environmentalists and the eco-conscious have celebrated World Wetlands Day for 50 years. Wetlands enhance water quality, control erosion, maintain stream flows, sequester carbon, and provide a home to at least one third of all threatened and endangered species around the world.
However, Earth loses wetlands at three times the rate of forests, with 71% of the world’s wetlands gone. That’s a rate of 60 acres an hour! The EPA notes the worsening of flooding due to wetland loss.
Wetland Protection to date
Wetlands enjoy some Federal protection under the Clean Water Act of 1972, while 23 states require permits for dredge and fill activities in wetlands. Of those, 15 provide comprehensive coverage to all coastal/tidal and freshwater wetlands and eight states provide protection to only coastal/tidal wetlands. The IUCN dedicated a report to wetland protection globally.
Although the Everglades has lost half its surface area - 1.5 million acres remain. After the signing of the Federal level Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan in 2000, many groups including the State of Florida and The Nature Conservancy have stepped up protection efforts.
Credit: LivingLandscapeArchitect via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Earth Law for Wetlands
Increasing awareness of the critical role wetlands play in Earth’s environment has led to expanding approaches to protect wetlands. One of these is Earth Law, an ecocentric approach to building a body of law and lawyers to allow Nature a chance to regenerate and thrive.
For how this might apply in Florida check out lawyer Liz Drayer’s blog for Earth Law Center. Applying an ecocentric approach to enhance existing protections for the Everglade could take inspiration from the Universal Declaration of Rights of Rivers which offers guidelines for recognizing the right to flow and the right to be free from pollution among others. If applied to the wetlands, this could help not only reverse it’s continued loss but allow this unique ecosystem to regenerate and flourish.
If you’d like to learn more about Earth Law and how it can protect our wetlands, or support the Earth Law movement, you can:
Sign up for Earth Law Center’s newsletter
Donate to Earth Law Center
Read my chapter in our newly published legal textbook Earth Law: Emerging Ecocentric Law - A Practitioner’s Guide. It covers the successes and failures of the environmental policies to date. You can also find interesting (and free!) reports regarding wetlands on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service website.
Sign up for your community, city or county government newsletters so you can stay up-to-date on any local environmental policies coming up for discussion. If something makes your ears perk up, we encourage you to reach out to the Earth Law Center for advice.