16 October 2012: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP)-based research consortium, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), has released the final consultation draft of a briefing note, titled “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Water and Wetlands.” The draft was released as a contribution to the 11th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 11) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), convening in Hyderabad, India.

The note aims to address the following questions: what are the values and benefits associated with water and wetlands; what are the roles of wetlands in terms of providing water and wetland related ecosystem services and what are their values; what are the wider set of ecosystem system services that water and wetlands provide and what are their values; what needs to be done to improve the consideration of the values and benefits of water and wetland in policy developments and in practical decision making; what approaches have been successfully used to date to respond to the challenges and take account of the values of water and wetlands; what existing examples demonstrate how policy, investment and water and land use decisions can be based on the values and benefits associated with water and wetlands; and what are the recommendations for transforming the regional, national and international approaches for managing water, wetlands and their ecosystem services.

The 105-page document offers practical recommendations for stakeholders to respond to the value of water and wetlands, with specific recommendations for national and international policy makers, local and regional policy makers, site managers, and the development community.

The Briefing Note’s recommendations for national and international policy makers include: integrating the values of water and wetlands into policies, regulation and land use planning, incentives and investment, and enforcement; regulating to protect wetlands from pressures that do not lead to improvements in public goods and overall societal benefits; regulating to ensure that wetland ecosystem services options and benefits are fully considered as solutions to land and water use management objectives and development; committing to and developing improved measurement using biodiversity and ecosystem services indicators and environmental accounts.

The report was initiated by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, with financial support from the Norwegian, Swiss and Finnish Governments, and was developed by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP), together with the Secretariats of the Ramsar Convention and the Convention on Biological Diversity, Wetlands International, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Comments on the draft are requested by 14 November 2012. [UNEP Press Release] [UN Press Release] [Publication: The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Water and Wetlands: A Contribution to Rio+20]