Posted on January, 29 2016

World Wetlands Day on 2 February marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands in the Iranian city of Ramsar. Apart from their rich biodiversity, wetlands mitigate the negative effect of climate change and protect millions worldwide from flooding. They also purify our water, give us food, wood and biomass, and provide recreation and employment.
 
Yet, in the Danube-Carpathian Region spanning most of Central and Eastern Europe, over the past 150 years more than 80% of wetlands have been lost, and with them the services they provide. The most important reasons for freshwater habitat loss are interventions for navigation, hydropower development, sediment extraction and the flood protection of arable lands or settlements.
 
Our region is home to globally important wetlands like the Danube Delta or the Mura-Drava-Danube Biosphere Reserve, with its meandering and free-flowing stretches, steep banks, floodplain forests, gravel and sand banks, and the last nesting Little Terns in Europe.
 
We work for wetlands in the region: by promoting wetland restoration and halting or mitigating their future deterioration -- on a local, national, Danube-basin and EU-policy level, by communicating the importance of wetlands to the general public through a wide range of communication channels or events like The Living Danube Tour, as well as by doing actual conservation work on the ground.
 
“Implementing restoration on the field ourselves not only improves the status of the exact wetland, but also gives us the opportunity to better understand the obstacles, challenges and opportunities of restoration so that our policy and advocacy work toward decision makers and practitioners can be more effective and ensure that more, and larger areas, are restored in our region”, said Laurice Ereifej, Regional Head of WWF DCP Freshwater Programme.
 
In the past 10 years, with EU funds and support from the Coca-Cola Foundation, WWF and its partners have directly restored 10,000 hectares of wetlands and have promoted the restoration of more through policy work. Through its partnership with Coca-Cola only, which is a continuation of WWF’s wetland work so far, by 2020 WWF and its partners will increase the Danube basin’s water retention capacity by 12 million m³ and restore over 5,300 hectares of wetlands.
 
Our work with Coca-Cola spans 6 countries: Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria. Restoration activities will include, for example, fish restocking, removing fish migration barriers and building fish migration aid (Bulgaria), reconnecting former floodplains back to the Danube by opening breaches in dykes, or opening channels (Romania), or planting native species, removing abandoned fishing platforms and restoring the natural water regime of the Old-Drava oxbow (Croatia and Hungary).
 
Outside the Coca-Cola partnership, restoration is also ongoing in the village of Tiszatarján, Hungary, where WWF works with disadvantaged local communities to produce biomass for renewable energy and reintroduce local animal species. In December 2015, WWF DCPO and the local community also completed the restoration of almost 1,000 ha of agricultural land in the Mahmudia area of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve, a Natura 2000 site in Romania. This was the first partnership of this sort in the area.