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W
ater
C
ooperation
, S
ustainability
and
P
overty
E
radication
the sustainable development objectives of different stakeholders,
to identify the ecological, economic and social factors that affect,
or may affect, a given site, tools to resolve conflicts, and to obtain
resources to find sustainable solutions.
Where wetlands and their water catchment basins are shared between
different countries, or different administrative areas, cooperation for
the long-term use of their resources at a transboundary level, taking
the needs of the entire ecosystem and water catchment into account,
is an urgent need. And such cooperation is a process that develops,
often passing different steps that may individually take much time to
be achieved, in order to move on to the next level of integration and
coordinated action. Local non-governmental stakeholder organizations
are often among the first ones to understand the need for common
approaches and coordinated action, and to make the first moves.
Ideally they will do so with the support of local authorities, enabling
the creation of the first formal contacts across artificial borders. This
should lead to regular consultations, agreements on cooperation, and
joint activities. The next steps of integration proposed in the Ramsar
guidance are joint planning exercises and the elaboration of common
management plans and interventions. Eventually, shared sites and
catchment basins would be administered jointly by the respective
institutions in charge in each country concerned.
Real life experience shows the most challenging initial factors to
be the need to create trust, mutual trust among the neighbours and
the different administrations concerned. Confidence and trust among
the partners, the vision and belief that together, they can identify
shared and common vital interests, and at the same time acknowl-
edging that there can easily be potentially harmful side effects and
consequences, created through activities that support
only unilateral interests. As well as political vision and
will, transboundary cooperation needs dedicated staff,
sufficient time and patience. One of the primary needs
is to find a common language. Speaking literally about
the same idiom, but also in terms of expressions that
need to be understood in the same sense by stakehold-
ers and geographical neighbours who have possibly
very differing backgrounds and individual histories.
Information and data, as well as their analyses, need to
be shared in a transparent way. This is likely to trigger
and to be followed by common monitoring and research
programmes. Hopefully, these are benefiting from a
pragmatic exchange of equipment and services. Such
exchange can lead to the joint development of rules
and responsibilities, including joint management plans.
Undertaking joint training, regular exchange of staff and
disseminating concrete experiences rapidly increases
the know-how and intervention capacities, notably at
transboundary level. In this way, mutual benefits can be
achieved and be recognized more widely. The dissemi-
nation of best case and other success stories benefits the
raising of awareness and implementation capacities.
On the European continent – where many, often
smaller, countries meet in a restricted continental space
– national borders are abundant. This can result in the
splitting of functional water catchment basins and indi-
vidual wetland sites into two artificial entities, which
A view of the Romanian section of the Danube Delta, part of a potential Transboundary Ramsar Site shared between Moldova, Romania and Ukraine
Image: T.Salathé/Ramsar