This post is dedicated to a presentation Jeni (my roommate) and I recently gave on Wetlands Degradation. Maybe Planet Earth worthy material??? (wink wink)
The purpose of this post is three fold...
ONE: To share all that this semester's tuition is buying... beautiful, delicious pearls of wisdom about Natural Resources and Sustainable Development... with you!
TWO: So that crafting a PowerPoint for 3 hours was for something more than just a 20 minute talk to my fellow classmates who were more likely than not browsing Pinterest or chatting on Facebook.
THREE: To have solid and irrefutable evidence that I am INDEED doing something more than eating chocolate cake, laying on the beach, and playing with the pets.
WETLANDS BASICS:
Wetlands are important for many reasons, some of the biggest of which are...
Because they can absorb so much water they are a form of flood prevention.
They act as a filtration system for silt, pollutants, and run-off especially from industry/agriculture to lake, river, and ocean systems. This is important for the environment and ecology as well as water for human consumption.
They provide a habitat for many plants and animals (some of which are significant to the economy in the form of raw materials/eco-tourism, others significant to ecosystem services.)
Once destroyed, it is very costly (temporally and monetarily speaking) to create or restore wetlands. In addition, they often never recover to their original state and functional capacity.
MY CASE STUDY: UGANDA
Jeni presented on the Florida Everglades (which I'm ashamed at how little I knew about them considering they are in my country and I've visited them before... Captain Bob would be so disappointed). An interesting, albeit sad, tidbit is that due to wetland degradation and habitat fragmentation, there Florida Panther is almost certainly going to be extinct in coming years. With only 30 left in the wild, scientists are beginning to bread the Florida and Texas Panthers to try and salvage some of the genetic DNA of this nearly extinct animal.
 |
| The Living Legend: Captain Bob of Sawgrass Recreation Park
|
Moving on...
Uganda is 13% wetlands. That's twice as much land cover as forests in Uganda, making it the most widespread ecosystem in the nation. It is an important habitat for threatened species like the Shoebill which live in extensive papyrus swamps of central Uganda.
Speaking of papyrus, it is an important raw material the wetlands provide. Locals use the papyrus to weave baskets, mats, thatch, etc. for use and sale.
Degradation was driven by attitudes of Ugandan people that wetlands were wastelands: harbouring disease and bad spirits, taking up potential agricultural lands, and hindering communication...
These attitudes were coupled with government policy and subsidization to encourage drainage and filling in of wetlands in order to develop for agriculture, residential spaces, and industry.
Consequences included micro-climate changes, flooding, rural water shortages, development of slums which harboured cholera, dysentery, and typhoid.
In the late 1980's a new government was installed and a ban on further wetland drainage was established until a policy for sustainable management of the wetlands could be established.
Since then, a Ministry of Environment Protection and a National Wetlands Program were established, Uganda joined the RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands, and began physical restoration of wetlands. Today Uganda is known for its conservation and management of wetlands but there are many challenges and barriers to ever fully recovering its original state.
No comments:
Post a Comment