Wetlands governance in the Mekong Region: country reports on the legal-institutional framework and economic valuation of aquatic resources

Wetlands are central to the livelihoods of rural communities through out the Mekong Region, providing vital functions and services that support the rural economy, ensure food security for the most vulnerable membrs of society, and underpin the prospects for national development. Proper appreciation of the importance of wetlands has been hampered by inadequate information and awareness of their uses, particularly among development planners, as well as legal and institutional frameworks that are often fragmented and poorly enforced. Wetlands are consistently undervalued and overlooked as a result, and ultimately, it is the rural poor who lose out.Wetlands-Economic aspects, Wetlands-Law and legislation, Socioeconomic aspects, Aquatic resources, WorldFish Center Contrib. No. 1754, Mekong Delta, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Lao PDR,

Management of wetland resources in the lower Mekong Basin: issues and future directions

The Lower Mekong Basin has extensive wetlands and these are being threatened by numerous problems. Most of these problems are interdependent and interact with one another. The lack of an appropriate definition of wetlands applicable to the region, pervasive inefficiencies and chronic lack of funds among riparian governments, and the poor appreciation of the true economic importance of wetlands and its resources are among the most prominent. The current definition, based on the Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971), is too broad when compared to the understanding of wetlands as being swamps, marshes and the like, and was developed specifically for wetlands with international importance as waterfowl habitats. Furthermore, wetlands are composed of different types of resources, which require different modes of management. Often, institutional competition, overlapping mandates and sometimes jealousies occur between government departments when they try to assert their authority on a particular wetland resource and use, and put forward their development plans without considering how these may conflict with other wetlands uses. Finally, effective wetland management requires reliable statistics or information on rate of harvest of natural resources such as fish and others, fishing/harvesting methods over time in order to determine the level of exploitation, and the status of the natural resources. This information is needed to identify opportunities for expansion, to establish historical trends, and to determine when management interventions are necessary to protect the resources from being overused by other developments. In order to address these issues, ICLARM - The World Fish Center has launched a project, the aim of objectives of which are described in this paper

Town of Strafford NROC Projects

The three Strafford committees formed through the work with the Natural Resources Outreach Coalition in 2004 and supported by the grant award from the New Hampshire Estuaries Project have succeeded in furthering land protection, water quality protection, and managing growth here in Strafford. The original NROC meetings brought many new volunteer citizens into the process, but even their enthusiasm and willingness to work could not have earned these results without the financial support of the NHEP grant award. Hours of letter writing and personal contact with landowners by the volunteers of the Land Protection Group have raised awareness of the need for land protection and the ways it can be accomplished. The previous experience of the Strafford Conservation Commission in working with a landowner who was donating an easement showed us that the legal and logistical work involved is daunting. The NHEP grant allowed the land Protection Group to contract the professional services of Dan Kern of Bear-Paw Regional Greenways. His work streamlined the process for the landowners, and the Land Protection Group was able to celebrate the closing of two donated easements in 2006. Several other landowners have begun the process to protect their lands, and the Land Protection Group will continue its volunteer work. The Water Quality Group was pleased to have more than a dozen volunteers willing to focus on the need for tributary monitoring as a way to gauge and protect Bow Lake’s water quality. Testing supplies from the grant funds were essential. The sample gathering carried out at two-week intervals took place at a critical time for Bow Lake studies. Both Strafford and Northwood were in a period of legal moratorium on new development, and tributary monitoring at this time provides unique baseline data. It was not only useful in the establishment of Strafford’s Wetlands Overlay District ordinance, but will be used in future Bow Lake studies. After the Managed Growth Committee spent its time discovering gaps between the goals of the 2002 Strafford Master Plan and the present Strafford ordinances, Strafford Regional Planning Commission members helped with research for ordinances that had worked in other towns. The grant funds allowed the Committee to keep the public involved in the process and aware of the slate of proposed new ordinances that were coming up on the 2006 ballot. The blanket mailing to every Strafford address and the public meeting that followed are largely responsible for the successful passage of three new growth control ordinances. The Committee continued its work and has new measures to present to the town in 2007. The impetus and organization from NROC, and the financial support from NHEP have been a great gift to the Town of Strafford. Our thanks will be evident in the continued work and progress we make in protecting our land and water and the very nature of our town

Conservación de servicios ecosistémicos en humedales altoandinos: la participación social en la creación de un área natural protegida

The goal of the present work is synthesizing the process of collective construction developed to protect the high-altitude wetlands of the Blanco River basin, located in the Andes Mountains, Mendoza province. The participatory process arose out of an initiative of basin residents and users, and was conducted by the Integrative Committee for Creation of Potrerillos Municipal Environmental Protected Area (MEPA), composed of civil society organizations, government agencies and scientific institutions. The major pressures affecting the wetlands, identified through participatory assessment of the socio-ecosystem are: water pollution, reduction and total loss of habitat, stoppage of of groundwater flows, artificial drainage, poldering of the meadow, and fragmentation of the wetland system, among other pressures.In order to identify priority sites for conservation of the ecosystem services (ES) wetlands provide, local people identified and prioritized the six most important of them according to their perception: water for human consumption, agriculture and industry; aesthetic, spiritual and non-use representations; recreation and ecotourism; erosion control; water regulation and regulation of the biotic environment. The areas supplying ES were identified on the map of land use and land cover of the basin, with the wetland area, with tourist use and water catchment, and the watershed?s headwaters standing out as areas with higher ES provision. This process culminated in the creation of a protected area to halt the intense degradation affecting the wetland system, promoting maintenance of the natural area and improving its provision of ES. This collective process allowed integrating local and scientific knowledge, becoming an experience to be replicated in other areas in terms of conservation and land management. Among its major strengths is a strong coordination between the different social actors involved, which allowed success in reaching the implementation stage of a public policy for conservation.El objetivo del presente trabajo consiste en sintetizar el proceso de construcción colectiva desarrollado con el fin de proteger los humedales de altura pertenecientes a la cuenca del Río Blanco de Potrerillos, localizados en la Cordillera de Los Andes, Provincia de Mendoza. El proceso participativo surgió ante una iniciativa de los pobladores locales y usuarios de la cuenca, y fue conducido por la Comisión Integradora para la Creación del Área Ambiental Protegida Municipal (AAMP) Potrerillos, integrada por organizaciones de la sociedad civil, instituciones gubernamentales y organismos científicos. Las principales presiones que afectan al humedal, identificadas a través del diagnóstico participativo del socioecosistema son: contaminación del agua, reducción y pérdida total de hábitat, corte del flujo de alimentación, drenaje artificial, polderización definitiva de vegas, fragmentación del sistema hidrológico, entre otras. A fin de determinar los sitios prioritarios para la conservación de servicios ecosistémicos (SE) que brinda el Sistema de humedales, la población local identificó y priorizó los seis más importantes de acuerdo a su percepción: agua para consumo humano, agricultura e industria; representaciones estéticas, espirituales y de no uso; recreación y ecoturismo; regulación de la erosión; regulación del ciclo hídrico y del ambiente biótico. Sobre el mapa de uso y cobertura de la tierra de la cuenca, fueron identificadas sus zonas proveedoras, destacándose el área de humedales con uso turístico y captación de agua, y las cabeceras de cuencas hídricas como las zonas con mayor provisión de SE. Este proceso culminó con la creación de un área natural protegida para detener el proceso de degradación intensiva que afecta al humedal, lo cual promueve el mantenimiento y la mejora de sus SE. Este proceso colectivo permitió integrar saberes locales con conocimiento científico, y se constituyó como una experiencia a replicar en otros territorios en el plano de la conservación y del ordenamiento territorial. Entre sus principales fortalezas se destaca la articulación sólida entre los diferentes actores sociales involucrados, que permitió alcanzar con éxito la etapa de implementación de una política pública de conservación.Fil: Rubio, María Clara. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas; ArgentinaFil: Rubio, María Cecilia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas; ArgentinaFil: Salomon, Mario. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ingeniería; ArgentinaFil: Abraham, Elena Maria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas; Argentin

Wetlands Classification: A Tool for Protection or Abandonment?

The notion of the networked society is more than ever true nowadays. The Internet has a big impact on our daily lives. Network operators provide the underlying infrastructure and continuously deploy services in order to meet customer demands. The amount of data transported through operator networks is also increasing with the introduction of new high band width services and over the network content. That being said, operators, most often deploy or operate networks to meet these demands without any regard to energy-efficiency. As the price of electricity continues to grow,  tends to become a problem with serious implications. To solve this problem a trend towards more energy efficient networks has emerged. In this thesis, we investigate a way to facilitate the introduction of new energy efficiency paradigms for fixed networks. Towards this end, we investigate the energy efficiency schemes proposed up to now and select one that we believe is more realistic to deploy. Furthermore, we specify the inputs required for the selected “green” routing approach. Moreover, we study existing and new protocols that can provide basic network monitoring functionality that enables the acquirement of these inputs. In the end, a Software Defined Networking (SDN) approach is proposed to facilitate the development of energy-efficient aware networks. The details of a basic SDN monitoring application are presented from an abstract architectural point of view and three designs stemming from this basic architecture are discussed. The three designs are namely All_Flow, First_Switch and Port_FlowRemoved. The first two were implemented as steps towards understanding the full capabilities of performing monitoring in SDN enabled networks and provided useful input towards realizing the third one as a proof of concept. Their usage and faults are discussed as they can provide useful insight for possible future implementations. The Port_FlowRemoved is the design and implementation that is suggested as providing the most fitting results for the monitoring purpose at hand. This purpose is to retrieve the identified inputs for the selected “green” networking approach. The differentiation factor among the three designs is how they collect the required inputs from the network. A fast-prototype is created as a proof of concept in order to validate the proposed architecture and thus empower the validity of the idea.

‘No Net Loss’ - Instrument Choice in Wetlands Protection

While not a high priority issue for most people, the public has long recognized the general importance of wetlands. Since President George H.W. Bush\u27s campaign in 1988, successive administration have pledged to ensure there would be no net loss of wetlands. Despite these continuous presidential pledges to protect wetlands, in recent decades, as more and more people have moved to coastal and waterside properties, the economic benefits from developing wetlands (and political pressures on obstacles to development) have significantly increased. Seeking to mediate the conflict between no net loss of wetlands and development pressures, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) have employed a range of policy instruments to slow and reverse wetlands conversion. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the EPA and the Corps relied on prescriptive regulation that discouraged development of wetlands and, even if a permit for wetland filling were granted, required on-site mitigation of destroyed wetlands to ensure no net loss. To defuse the growing political pressure for substantial change to this 404 Permit process for developing wetlands, however, since the 1990s the agencies and state governments have promoted a market mechanism that seeks to ensure wetlands conservation at minimum economic and political cost. This instrument is known as wetlands mitigation banking (WMB). In WMB, a bank of wetlands habitat is created, restored, or preserved and then made available to developers of wetlands habitat who must buy habitat mitigation as a condition of government approval for development. This mechanism has also provided a model for endangered species protection and is in the process of being extended to other settings including watershed protection. Given the shift in emphasis from prescriptive regulation to trading, the government\u27s longstanding pursuit of no net loss of wetlands provides a particularly useful case study for comparing the use of regulatory and market instruments for environmental protection. Indeed, WMB provides a rare example of robust trading outside the air pollution context and the trading habitat-based goods raises very different concerns than seen in trading mobile pollutants. Examining the evolution of WMB also forces us to think carefully over how to assess the success of a trading program. The traditional measure would likely be efficiency. But one must also consider effectiveness. In this regards, WMB poses two different types of failures - failure of instrument design (a front-end problem) and failure of implementation through monitoring and enforcement (a back-end problem). As many of the case studies in this book illustrate, performance of WMB depends critically both on institutional design and implementation. Another important measure of success concerns distributional equity. Who wins and who loses from banking? Such concerns are far more difficult to assess as good or bad policy in habitat trading than the traditional hot spots of pollutant trading programs. The chapter ends by drawing out key lessons for market-based approaches to watershed protection

Wetlands management in Cambodia: socioeconomic, ecological, and policy perspectives

The papers in this volume were initially prepared for a workshop organized in April 2001 in Siem Reap, Cambodia, under the auspices of the project, " Legal and institutional framework and economic valuation of resources and environment in the Mekong River Region- a wetlands approach." The first three papers provide an essential survey of the importance of wetlands, trends affecting their health and propductivity, and priority actions in response. The next three papers focus on the social, institutional, and legal challenges of wetlands management in the country. The final three papers address the problems of assessing and enhancing the value of wetlands.Wetlands, Resource management, Socioeconomic aspects, Policies, Environment management, Cambodia,