The Ramsar Convention is our most important global political mechanism to conserve mires and peatlands. Therefore we try to keep you informed on all developments connected to mire conservation in the Ramsar process. The following news comes from IMCG EC member Tatiana Minayeva, who is nominated as Ramsar STRP member on behalf of Russian Federation, but also supports and represents the peatland interests there with help of other IMCG members who join the meetings. In the last Newsletter we have reported on the STRP meeting held in Gland in the beginning of February this year. Since then a number of important events have been taking place in Ramsar. These include:
- The meeting of the Coordinating Committee on Global Action on Peatlands (CC GAP) in Wageningen, 22-23 April;
- The Regional Meeting of the African Contracting Parties, 4-8 April;
- The Ramsar COP9 Preparatory Regional Meeting for Asia 13-16 May; and
- The 31st meeting of the Ramsar Standing Committee, 6-10 June.
The following contributions report on some of these important meetings. Unfortunately the only information on the meeting of the Ramsar Standing Committee is that is found on the web-page of the Ramsar Convention. Hopefully our longstanding IMCG member in the Standing Committee, Karen Jenderedjan, will enlighten in the next Newsletter what the key decisions for peatlands were and what he would recommend to integrate the CC GAP outcomes into the COP decisions.