Coastal wetlands as nature-based solutions. The COP26 climate summit in Glasgow ended with the agreement to “phase out” the use of coal. This quite vague commitment was highly criticised as not strong enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees – the crucial number required to protect our planet.
And yet a key way of addressing the problem was largely overlooked: so-called “nature-based solutions”. “About 30% of the total emissions reductions required to meet the 1.5 degrees target could come from nature,” said Sandeep Sengupta, global coordinator for climate change at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), during a COP26 event on “Disclosing Nature’s Potential: Corporate Responses and the Need for Greater Ambition”.
Nature-based Solutions are defined by IUCN as “actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural or modified ecosystems, that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits”.
In practice, Nature-based Solutions promote the use of natural ecosystems through conservation or restoration interventions to address global societal challenges such as climate change, natural disaster risk reduction (floods, fires, avalanches etc), food and water security, energy supply, and even urban expansion. They are real-world applications that channel the benefits of nature and healthy ecosystems, providing a tangible return on investment and making a substantial contribution to human wellbeing.
The protection, conservation and restoration of coastal wetlands can provide the most effective nature-based solutions within this context. In particular:
- Coastal wetlands are the “kidneys of Nature”, playing a critical part in water provision and purification: these ecosystems naturally store and clean our drinking water, either directly or by recharging groundwater aquifers.
- Coastal wetlands protect us from the sea: they buffer the land from waves and wind, and as sea levels rise they are the first line of defence against encroaching salt waters – these would otherwise threaten settlements, farmland, drinking water supplies and freshwater ecosystems.
- Coastal wetlands provide vital defences against floods and droughts: they absorb and store excess water from extreme weather events, preventing soil erosion and flood damage, and they maintain water supplies in times of drought.
- Coastal wetlands are carbon sinks: the climate crisis is hitting the Mediterranean 20% harder than the global average, but its coastal wetlands are playing a vital role in mitigating future temperature rises. Wetlands store up to 40% of the world’s carbon, and do it at a rate 10-20 times greater than temperate or boreal forests.
And wetlands offer much more. Besides providing natural solutions to many environmental problems, wetland ecosystems are among the most productive habitats in the world. They can be considered as “biological supermarkets”, providing great volumes of food for many species, including our own.
In the Mediterranean region, wetlands provide critical services for half a billion people. Coastal fisheries and sustainable agriculture rely on healthy coastal wetland ecosystems, providing important low-carbon sources of nutrition for our growing population.
Given their importance, conserving our coastal wetlands and using them to implement Nature-based Solutions is a cost-effective and sustainable way of providing benefits to people and preserving biodiversity.
The science says…
Global warming refers to the long-term heating of Earth’s climate system since the pre-industrial period. This is a result of human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.
Coastal wetlands have a key role to play as we adapt to global warming. The figure below shows the vulnerability of Mediterranean coastal areas to extreme climate impacts and their capacity to recover, survive and adapt depending on their geomorphological, ecological and socioeconomic characteristics. In light of this widespread coastal vulnerability, wetland management in the coming decades will be critically important.
Regional examples of wetland-related Nature-based Solutions
In the Mediterranean, the need for Nature-based Solutions is critical, and our coastal wetlands offer huge potential in this respect. When healthy, they offer society many vital services. Here are some examples:
- Oristano, Italy: the project area covers 77km2 of Ramsar sites and 267km2 of Marine Protected Areas in Sardinia. Oristano has been central to Sardinia’s economy and culture for hundreds of years. Today, natural wetland processes still provide clean water for locals and protect them from floods and storm surges, while creating ideal conditions for biodiversity to flourish. Hundreds of bird species – some of them endangered – still nest, feed and winter here. In Oristano, the Maristanis project is working to define an integrated management system for these wetlands that can serve as a model for other coastal regions of the Mediterranean. Over the years, the project has ensured the restoration of the optimal hydraulic conditions of the Oristano Ramsar Sites, reducing water consumption. It has implemented actions to protect endangered species such as sea turtles and migratory birds. It has established effective governance for coastal wetland management, while supporting new economic and cultural activities linked to a more sustainable value chain. Maristanis has also improved the conservation of coastal habitats, including dunes and Posidonia seagrass meadows, reinforcing the resilience of the coast to climate change.
- Camargue, France: located along the Mediterranean coast of southern France, west of Marseille, this area covers 140,000 hectares, comprising agricultural lands and an outstanding diversity of wetlands and coastal ecosystems. It is part of the Natura 2000 network and includes 17 habitats targeted by the European Habitats Directive. The former saltworks are located in the southeast of the Rhône delta, in the Camargue Regional Natural Park and UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Reserve. Here, the Conservatoire du Littoral (owner) in collaboration with the Camargue Natural Regional Park (coordinating manager), Tour du Valat and the Société Nationale de Protection de la Nature (co-managers) initiated the saltworks restoration project in 2011, adopting an adaptive restoration approach. The creation of a buffer area contributes to a broader strategy (including dike adaptation and consolidation further inland) to mitigate flood risks. This buffer area, together with the inland dike, helps protect the Camargue from marine submersion, and is a more sustainable and less costly form of coastal defence than maintaining or rebuilding a seawall and other grey infrastructure along the coastline. In addition, the reconnection of water bodies leads to the eventual natural reshaping of flows. Newly emerged soils and restored waterways produce “new” homes for vegetation, fish, birds and other wildlife populations. Overall, this coastal ecosystem is becoming more resilient in the face of the impacts of climate change.
- Ghar el Melh, Tunisia: this unique lagoon of approximately 35 km2 is a precious part of Tunisia’s coastal heritage. Designated a Wetland of International Importance, it was the first North African and Middle Eastern city to receive Ramsar’s Wetland City Accreditation Award, in recognition of its formal engagement in efforts towards wetland protection and sustainability. As part of its strategy for Mediterranean coastal wetlands, the MAVA Foundation is supporting the project “Conservation and sustainable development of coastal wetland with high ecological value: the case of Ghar El Melh, Tunisia”. The project is led by WWF-North Africa in partnership with international and local organizations. Since 2018, the project has been working to develop a model of governance for Ghar el Melh to reconcile development challenges while safeguarding natural capital and preserving its sustainable use. The long-term goal is to provide equitably distributed socio-economic benefits to all stakeholders, including stable income opportunities and social services to the communities of Ghar el Melh.
- Ulcinj Salina, Montenegro: this 15 km2 saltpan is located on the Adriatic, one of the most important areas in Europe for birds to breed, overwinter or rest on migration. More than 250 species of bird have already been recorded here. After salt production was halted in 2013, the unique character of the habitat became threatened by fresh water infiltrating the saltpans, which led to a drying out of the salt basins and made the saltpan less attractive to birds. In response, EuroNatur Foundation and its partners BirdLife Europe and Central Asia, Center for Protection and Research of Birds (CZIP), Dr. Martin Schneider-Jacoby Association (MSJA) and Tour du Valat started fighting for the protection of this valuable site. They launched the international #SaveSalina campaign, which includes legal, political, and communication actions at local, regional and international levels. Ulcinj Salina has now joined the list of Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance: this will help restore the site to its former state, restarting salt production and developing ecotourism.
Background information: the importance of wetlands in the Mediterranean
Despite the pressures they continue to experience, Mediterranean wetlands remain hugely important, and their benefits (known as ‘ecosystem services’) are of great importance to people and national economies across the region. Natural and human-made wetlands in the Mediterranean basin countries are estimated to cover about 0.15-0.22 million km2, about 1.1-1.5% of wetland area globally. Almost one-quarter (around 23%) of Mediterranean wetlands are now human-made (such as rice fields, reservoirs, saltpans and oases) – a much higher percentage than the global average of around 12%.
The largest areas of wetlands are in Egypt, France, Turkey and Algeria, together making up about two-thirds of the Mediterranean Wetlands area. Given the arid or semi-arid nature of much of the Mediterranean Basin, percentages of national surface areas covered by wetlands are generally small, ranging from over 8% in Tunisia to less than 1% in eight countries, mostly in the Middle East and North Africa.
But all these wetlands are of great importance to people’s livelihoods and for maintaining biological diversity. Wetlands in the Mediterranean Basin provide many and varied benefits to the Basin’s human population of great significance to their well-being, as the second edition of the Mediterranean Wetlands Outlook amply demonstrate. People directly harvest wetland-dependent plants and animals through fishing and hunting for food, and they use wetlands for grazing animals. Wetlands in increasingly dry regions such as the Mediterranean are particularly crucial for the sustainable management of water resources, in terms of both quality and quantity. They help to provide and purify the water upon which Mediterranean people depend on, for drinking, for industry and energy production, as well as for irrigated agriculture.
Mediterranean wetlands, particularly coastal wetlands, are important for helping to mitigate climate change as they help to manage extreme weather events through buffering floods and coastal storm-surges and providing water in droughts. Conversely, draining of wetlands or reducing their water resources can result in the release of large amounts of stored carbon.
The diverse benefits delivered by wetlands are of huge economic value. Each year, losing coastal wetland costs $ 7200 billion globally.
Much of the value of wetlands lies in their delivery of multiple water-related benefits – managing water quantity and quality and buffering extreme weather events such as floods, droughts and coastal storm surges. But conversion of natural ecosystems, including wetlands, to other land-uses is progressively reducing the value of the benefits they provide, at a global rate of US$4.3–20.2 trillion per year.
The Wetland-Based Solutions project is working for a more effective conservation of these crucial habitats. Through the protection and restoration of key wetlands, the project proposes coastal wetlands as key assets for nature-based solutions’ implementation to counteract anthropogenic impacts, and in particular, climate change.
- The Wetland-Based Solutions is a collaboration between 30 wetland expert partners from 10 countries, with the funding and support of the MAVA Foundation. They have come together and built a ground-breaking initiative to save, restore and manage outstanding nature-based Solutions in the Mediterranean coast, for the benefits of people, their wellbeing, and wildlife, where 1/3 of the Mediterranean populations live.