Polski
Business and economics, Issue 14/2025
Global report on wetlands: how to protect, restore and financially support them
Sep
More than 40 million hectares of wetlands have been lost since the 1970s, and nearly 25 percent of those that remain are severely degraded. These are the conclusions of the latest report on wetlands, prepared by Ramsar Convention experts. Global Wetland Outlook 2025 shows why it pays to invest in valuable wetland ecosystems.
Wetlands destroyed and lost – a sad balance of losses
This year’s Wetlands Report is the third edition of the publication – the previous ones were released in 2018 and 2021. The latest analysis of spatial data and satellite imagery indicates that there are about 1.425 million hectares of wetlands left on Earth, which include mangroves, submerged meadows, coral reefs, lakes, rivers and streams, and floodplains. Unfortunately, all of these ecosystems have suffered an average loss of -0.52 percent per year over the past five decades.
Watershed forests are disappearing at the fastest rate (-1.85 percent), but serious reductions are also taking place in the area of lakes (-0.9 percent) and inland wetlands and marshes (-0.77 percent) – the latter of which some 177 million hectares have been lost since the 1970s. The highest rates of degradation are in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa, but in Europe and North America the level of devastation is also steadily increasing. In 2021, more than 41 percent of countries reported deteriorating national wetlands – up 10 percent from a decade earlier.
Do wetlands pay for themselves?
The authors of Global Wetland Outlook 2025 place great emphasis on the economic importance of wetlands. The benefits of their protection and restoration include food security, regulation of the water cycle and removal of pollutants from water, as well as protection of local communities from natural disasters and carbon storage to counteract climate change, among others. Degradation of these valuable areas comes at a significant economic cost and loss of benefits.
The Wetlands Report estimates the economic value of the world’s remaining wetlands in the range of $7.98 trillion to as much as $39.01 trillion per year. If we could preserve current wetlands and manage them effectively by 2050, they would have a net present value of $205.25 trillion. Inland wetlands and marshes provide the greatest human benefit per hectare, followed by lakes and coral reefs.
The report’s authors emphasize that ecosystem services cannot be viewed solely in terms of monetary benefits. Living in harmony with nature presents a number of intangible gains for humans. The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has coined a new term for this: nature ‘s Contribution to People , calling for the non-financial benefits of the natural environment to be taken into account in decision-making processes. These include recreational, educational, spiritual and aesthetic values, among others.
Protection and restoration of wetlands as a global priority
This year’s wetlands report focuses on the need for more effective protection and restoration of valuable ecosystems in support of climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals. The goals of the Ramsar Convention coincide in this regard with those of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF), which include restoring at least 30 percent of degraded ecosystems and protecting at least 30 percent of terrestrial, aquatic and marine areas.
At least 123 million hectares of wetlands (including 37 million hectares of lakes, 53 million hectares of inland wetlands and marshes, and 24 million hectares of peatlands) need to be rehabilitated and some 428 million hectares protected to meet the above targets on a global scale. The report’s authors point out that protecting healthy and functioning wetlands is much cheaper than restoring degraded ecosystems. The average cost of regenerating 1 ha of wetlands calculated on the basis of international estimates ranges from $1,000 for peatlands to as much as $71,000 for rivers and streams.
How much money is needed?
Climate action and biodiversity conservation have been hampered for years by a lack of funding. The authors of the wetlands report remind us that in 2019, $124 to $143 billion was spent on saving biodiversity in global ecosystems, while the real need was estimated at $722 to $967 billion. The funding gap for peatland and mangrove restoration by 2050 is $316 billion, while coastal wetlands need investments of $27 billion to $37 billion a year.
Meeting KM-GBF goals for wetland protection and restoration will require $275 billion to $550 billion. The report’s authors acknowledge that the cost estimates are probably an underestimate, particularly for lakes, where nitrogen and phosphorus pollution cause a whole cascade of negative effects. On the other hand, the amount needed to save wetlands is only 0.5 percent of global GDP. Both failing to act and postponing action can be very costly.
Four paths to change – wetlands report calls for concrete action
The Global Wetland Outlook 2025 summary sets out four pathways to help achieve its goals, supporting the vision of a sustainable future. These include:
- Improving the process of valuing natural capital and using it in decision-making;
- Recognizing wetlands as an integral part of the global water cycle and a public good on a global scale;
- Extending wetland protection and restoration efforts to innovative financial tools. These include debt conversion, green bonds, ecosystem service fees or loan guarantees;
- Unlocking private and public funds for nature-based solutions.
It is worth mentioning that positive initiatives are not lacking around the world. The Wetlands in Case Studies report mentions, among other things, a partnership between the Zambian government and WWF for the restoration of Kafue Flats, a wetland located in the Zambezi River catchment that generates 50 percent of the country’s hydropower and $30 million in profit annually from traditional fisheries. In New Zealand, the local Maori community is being enlisted to protect the Whangamarino wetlands, and in the Seychelles, the world’s first blue bonds are helping to restore mangroves and underwater meadows there. In Canada, an alliance of entrepreneurs and scientists is actively regenerating peatlands, while the Regional Flyway Initiative, launched in 2021, is managing a network of Asian-Australian wetlands located in waterfowl migration corridors.
What is still lacking, however, are broad, cross-sectoral projects that integrate agriculture, water management and urban development for the protection and regeneration of global wetlands. Policymakers need to start thinking about the problem in long-term terms, putting water and food security and biodiversity above short-term economic benefits.
In the article, I used:
Convention on Wetlands (2025) Global Wetland Outlook 2025: Valuing, conserving, restoring and financing wetlands. Gland, Switzerland: Secretariat of the Convention on Wetlands. DOI: 10.69556/GWO-2025-eng
MAIN PHOTO: Pixabay
