Managing Aquatic Ecosystems

The importance of aquatic ecosystems for people has been highlighted in recent years by a number of global assessments. However, despite many aquatic ecosystems being highly important for people and biodiversity, they have been degraded over many decades and many lost. The Ramsar Convention estimated the extent of all wetlands from national inventories as approximately 1280 million hectares, which was considerably higher than previous estimates. It has been speculated that about 50% of wetlands globally had been lost, but conclusive supporting evidence is not available for all wetland types.