Paul Ouédraogo, Senior Regional Advisor for

Africa Ramsar Convention Secretariat 4th International Disaster and Risk Conference (IDRC) Davos

2012 (26-30 August 2012)

Human Health and Wetlands Health are linked

Plenary Session: Linking One Health and Hyogo Framework for Action

Provide us with services– entirely free of charge – making a vital contribution to human health and well-being.

Wetland are part of our natural wealth

Increasing pressure on water resources and the threats posed by climate change, the need to maximise these benefits has never been greater or more urgent.

Technology, engineering and medicine Successfully water and wetlands foster human health. Increasing rates of consumption , alterations to land use and land cover and irrigation, all associated with agriculture, urban expansion, and global environmental change, modified wetland systems, in terms of both water quality and water quantity.

Statement: unsustainable use modified Water Quality and Quantity

Framework of coherence Central for wetland management: developing strategies that support the maintenance of both wetland ecological character and human health. Through the implementation of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971), One Health concept and Hyogo Framework for Action and other processes.

Ecosystem services and benefits for human health

Better land and water management is required, including a richer sense of the roles of biodiversity in parasite regulation, to emphasize the benefits that humans derive from wetlands. Understanding these and other benefits provide the basis for fostering human health and well-being while managing wetlands.

Often seen only as the source of vector or waterborne diseases, and a widespread misinterpretation of wetlands as ‘the problem’ for human health requires careful treatment and attention.

Some people are often highly dependent on wetland ecosystem services and are directly harmed by their degradation; in other instances wetlands are the basis of economic structures and are embedded in cultural expressions. These benefits can also determine human health, directly and indirectly. More effective treatment of the tradeoffs between different forms of benefits will be required.

Health Issues Examples of

relevant wetland

ecosystem

services

Examples of

disruptions to

wetland

ecosystems

Health effects, health

outcomes resulting

from diminished

service

Examples or

case studies

1. Sufficient Water

2. Nutrition

3. Exposure to

pollution

4. Infection

5. Exposure to

physical hazards

6. Mental health/

psychological

well-being

7. Livelihood

8. Lifestyle

9.Medication

Healthy wetlands, healthy people, and other relationships

A claim to ‘healthy ecosystems’ comes from judgments about the desirability of a certain ecological character

Humans: agents for the maintenance or restoration of ecosystems. And the health of humans a measure of the health of the ecosystem.

Ways of perceiving the relationship ‘healthy wetlands, healthy people’. Human health outcomes can be either adverse or improved, depending upon whether or not ecosystem services are either degraded or maintained/enhanced

Two paradoxes exist First, degraded ecosystem services can provide benefits to people in such a way that there are positive health outcomes.

Secondly, maintained or enhanced ecosystem services can have problematic consequences for human well-being.

Human interactions in wetland ecosystems are complex and involve choices: tradeoffs between benefits that will occur when wetlands are developed or in which some services are promoted or favoured over others.

Need to assess the direct benefits and potential losses when managing wetlands to reach compromises and agreed tradeoffs between services and beneficiaries.

Others wetlands related issues

Wetland management for water and sanitation

Wetland management for food security

Wetland management for livelihoods and lifestyles

Wetland management: changes in perspectives required

Wetland management: higher levels of policy development

Wetland management for reducing the risks of exposures to disease Wetlands management for psycho-social health, and the effects of disasters

Wetland management for reducing the risks of exposures to disease

Humans can be exposed to health risks in wetland ecosystems: toxic materials, water-borne or vector borne diseases.

While steps can be taken to ameliorate these risks, the risks can increase (sometimes dramatically) if disruption occurs to ecosystems and the services they provide.

Human health can be affected by acute or chronic exposure to toxicants, through the media of water, wetland sediments, or even air when sediments become desiccated and airborne or burnt.

Role of human behaviours and activities

The nature of these exposures is exacerbated by human behaviours and activities and they can result whenever ecosystem services have been eroded – especially when the hydrological services that maintain biological, geological and chemical processes have been distorted by human activities of over extraction

of water.

Drainage and diversions of water are the two activities responsible for the majority of such changes.

Wetlands management for psycho-social health, and the effects of disasters

Physical hazards, externalities like floods, earthquakes, cyclones, and drought, can magnify any of these exposures.

Wetlands become embedded in the human psyche in formulations of “sense of place”. Changes to wetlands can influence a person’s mental health by becoming a source of psychological stress.

The pathways to such disease events may affect a spectrum of community members.

Call for Partnership

• Put a strong emphasis on Adaptive Management coupled with a decision analytical model.

Universities, research centres, social scientists, risk management:

• Communities are complex and often not united. There will be differences in wealth, social status and labour activity between people living in the same area and there may be more serious divisions within the community

• On modelling the social complexity and the decision analytical model.

Resilience strategies

To be in line with the theme of the conference it makes sense to strategy on integrative risk management perspective where risks are interrelated and require multidisciplinary approaches and initiatives.

This PPT shows evidence of the connection between human health and ecosystem health. This is part of the One Health concept. Ramsar is participating in the Scientific Task Force on Avian Influenza.

Resilience strategies: One Health

Develop strategies that support the maintenance of both wetland ecological character and human health.

Wetland managers must have information that will allow them to articulate, and respond professionally.

Need more effective treatment of the tradeoffs between different forms of benefits will be required.

Need to assess carefully the direct benefits and potential direct and indirect losses when managing wetlands and, in some instances, to reach compromises and agreed tradeoffs between services and beneficiaries.

Resilience strategies: Capacity building

Another strategy is putting greater emphasis on what communities can do for themselves and how to strengthen their capacities. Only an integrative risk management approach will ensure sustainable health management in a changing climate, resource depletion, wetlands and biodiversity loss, land degradation, water and food insecurity, over population and development challenges globally. The characteristics of resilient community include the wise use of wetlands ecosystem through the implementation of integrated environmental and natural resource management approaches that incorporate disaster risk reduction, including flood and drought management. This is one of the Hyogo Framework priorities for action: Reduce the underlying risk factors.

Thank you ouedraogo@ramsar.org