WWN and youth at Ramsar Standing Committee 57

News, Ramsar, Ramsar CoP14, Youth Engaged in Wetlands

Following their closing statement to Ramsar’s 13th Conference of the Contracting Parties (COP13) in October 2018, the Youth Engaged in Wetlandsare continuing to engage with the Ramsar convention. Joining in the 57th meeting of the Ramsar Standing Committee thanks to the generous support of Youth Ramsar Japan, they have been getting good support from national delegates.

Elise Allély, Takuma Satoh, and Atsushi Tanabe have been warmly welcomed to the meeting, at Ramsar headquarters in Gland, Switzerland. One of the highlights from meeting this meeting is that Ramsar’s COP14 will be hosted in Wuhan, China, in 2021. Some countries have indicated interest in proposing a focus on youth at the next COP.

  • Youth visit to Ramsar, 4 men and 2 women pose
    Meeting the Japanese delegation
  • Meeting Secretary General Urrego
  • Meeting the Swiss and Australian delegations

Elise Allély, the WWN Youth Facilitator, reports back as the meeting comes to a close: 

“From the discussions throughout the week and interventions in plenary, we are pleased to see the enthusiasm and support among delegates around engaging youth in particular in the context of the 50th anniversary of the Convention. Some initial keywords mentioned for the COP14 were Youth, Water, Future and Responsibility! A promising direction for the big birthday of Ramsar!

The Youth Engaged in Wetlands team remains as committed as ever, inspired and full of new ideas! We are keen to keep the contacts we made in the meeting and to lend our voices and ideas as we go towards an exceptional 50th anniversary for wetlands and post COP14”.

There are more details about the topics discussed at the Standing Committee on the Ramsar website. You can also read about how Youth Engaged in Wetlands influenced the previous COP.