The 11th meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention on wetlands (COP11) is in progress at the Palace of the Parliament, in Bucharest, Romania. This year the standing committee decided to focus the COP on wetlands, tourism, and recreation.
The Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention are gathering from 6 to 13 July to assess how much progress has been made up until now, in terms of the Convention itself and also those linked to the sustainable use of wetlands. They will have the chance to share knowledge and experience in terms of technical questions, and to plan both their work and that of the Secretariat for the next triennium.
The Tour du Valat is participating in COP11, through three parallel activities, which promote in particular the work of the Mediterranean Wetlands Observatory (MWO): (1) “the MedWet initiative: 20 years of regional cooperation,” organised by MedWet, which aims to promote internationally the work accomplished by the MedWet Initiative over the past twenty years on the knowledge and increased awareness of Mediterranean wetlands, (2) “wetlands as links between countries in the Maghreb” co-organised with the WWF and North African countries, (3) the workshop organised by the European Space Agency,² at which the MWO, MedWet initiative, Wetlands International, and Mediterranean countries will present the results of the GlobWetland II project.