Chapter One

GLOBAL WETLANDS - HISTORY CURRENT STATUS AND FUTURE

Edward Maltby

INTRODUCTION
Wetlands occupy an estimated 6 per cent of the world's land surface. Detailed inventories of types and location, however. are
substantially incomplete and information on functions, values and
status is extremely limited at the global scale.
Tropical wetlands, in particular . are on the whole poorly
understood and yet collectively they represent some of the most
important areas of the world's remaining wetlands. Optimum utilization strategies for the wide range of global wetlands - including
such diverse systems as fresh, brackish and saltwater marshes,
inland and coastal swamps, floodplains, mires (all peatland types)
and shallow water bodies - are generally at the earliest stages of
research and development. Yet the coupling of sound management
policy to the scientific understanding of how wetlands work and
what goods they provide and services they perform is essential if
rapidly diminishing ecosystems are to be maintained for the future.
A global view of wetland resources is most timely and particularly appropriate in the context of this conference. There are
stark contrasts between the developed and developing worlds in
terms of the ecology and management priorities of their wetland
resources. It is imperative to recognize this distinction in any
assessment of the current demands on the scientific community.
THE RESOURCE
Wetlands vary according to their origin, geographical location,
water regime, chemistry, dominant plants and soU or sediment
characteristics. Marshes are dominated by herbaceous plants and
sustained by water sources other than direct rainfall. They include
some of the most productive ecosystems in the world. Tidal saltmarshes are typical of temperate shorelines and dominate !arge
areas of the eastern seaboard of North America and coastal
Europe. Freshwater marshes, dominated by grasses and sedges,
account for over 90 per cent of the wetland area in the United
States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) but occur in all latitudes
where ground-water, surface springs or streams cause frequent
flooding. One of the world's !argest marshes is in the Florida
3
D. D. Hook et al., The Ecology and Management of Wetlands
Donal D. Hook 1988

THE RESOURCE
Everglades, once covering over 1,000,000 ha from Lake Okeechobee
to the southwest tip of Florida. The summer flooding pattern of
the undeveloped remnants, now substantially protected within the
500,000 ha of the Everglades National Park, is no Ion ger natural.
Swamps are flooded throughout most or all of the growing
season and develop in still-water areas, around lake margins and
in parts of floodplains. Varied terminology means that they include
both forested systems such as the Cypress swamps of the Southern
United States, the Melaleuca swamp forests of New Guinea or the
mangrove forests of the tropical coasts as weIl as herbaceous
systems such as reedswamps occurring in North America, Europe,
Asia, Australasia and South America and also the papyrus swamps
which are so characteristic of many African wetlands. The form of
many large tropical African lakes - Chad, Bangweulu (Zambia),
George (Uganda), Naivasha (Kenya), Malombe (Malawi) and Chilwa,
(Malawi/Mozambique) - favors marginal swamp and there may be
more swamp than open water in tropical Africa (Beadle, 1974).
More than a quarter of Indonesia is swamp, in Sumatra the proportion is 30 per cent. Kalimantan supports nearly 20 million
hectares of swamp, more than half with peaty soils.
The world's mangrove forests cover at least 14 million hectares and are concentrated in some of the poorest nations. The
greatest concentration is in the Indian Ocean - West Pacific region
with about 20 per cent of the world's total area bordering the
Sunda Shelf region enclosed by Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia,
Sumatra, Java and Borneo. The Niger delta has 700,000 ha and the
Sundarbans forest covers nearly a million hectares of the Ganges
delta - where relative remoteness in addition to any intrinsie or
special ecological factor has conferred on them special habitat value
for the man-eating Royal Bengal Tiger.
Once thought to be restricted almost entirely to high latitudes
of the northern hemisphere, peatlands are now considered to cover
at least 500 million hectares from tundra to tropical environments.
Peat produces distinctive wetland landscapes of bog, moor, fen and
muskeg but also forms in association with marsh and swamp in
tropical and subtropical lakes, floodplains and coastal regions.
More than 75 per cent of all peat soils in the tropics are found in
one large concentrated area bordering the western, southern and
eastern extremities of the South China Sea. These resources
together with those in higher latitudes are attracting increased
attention for fuel and other destructive uses. Their role as geochemie al and particularly carbon sinks is still imperfectly understood and there is growing concern for global implications of
changes in the atmospheric carbon balance associated with their
large scale exploitation (Maltby, 1986; Winkler and De Witt, 1985).
The periodic flooding of land between river channels and
valley sides is a common feature of the lower reaches of rivers
throughout the world and produces a complex variety of wetlands
depending on climate, water regime and form of the floodplain. In
the United States some periodically flooded areas produce the
bottomland hardwood forests. Such forests once covered vast areas
of the South East, East and Central United States. The largest
contiguous areas occurred in the lower Mississippi River Valley.
The bottomland hardwood wetland type still covers more than 23.5
4

B. MALTBY
million hectares in the United States. However the wetland complexes once characterizing the fringing floodplains of Burope and
North America have now largely disappeared through the deepening
of river channels, levee construction and land development. The
world's remaining major seasonal floodplains are now limited to the
tropics and subtropics but they are under increasing pressure
from development projects.
Nearly half the total wetland area of Africa consists of forested or savanna floodplain (Drijver and Marchand, 1985). In
special circumstances deltas form and produce a mosaic of wetland
types on the African continent. These may be inland such as the
Inner Niger and the Okavango or coastal such as the Nile. In some
areas the terrain is so flat that seasonal rainfall can produce
flooding over large areas. Bxtensive sheet flooding occurs in the
basin of the Chari-Lagone River in Southern Chad. The floodplain
grasses can produce 10 t DM ha-1 and the area sustains large
populations of wild ungulates and domestic livestock
Some of the largest sheet flood regions are in South America.
The Gran Pantanal of the Paraguay River comprises shallow interconnecting lakes and wetland complexes, which in some years can
cover 10,000,000 ha and the Apure-Aranca tributaries of the
Orinoco in Venezuela produces a floodplain of 7,000,000 ha.
Man-made wetlands - reservoirs, ponds, lagoons, extraction
pits, waterways and, more recently, mimics established as mitigation for wetland los ses elsewhere - are an increasing feature of
both the developed and developing world. Many are close to concentrations of population which increases their educational, scientific and recreational values. They have become some of the most
important wildlife habitats in Western Burope. Such has been the
loss of wetlands that 'virtually any water body assumes conservation value' (Tydeman, 1984). Man's ability to create artificial
wetlands has led developers to argue against unnecessary proteetion of natural wetlands where they can be replaced or recreated.
The concept of mitigation is an important one in terms of the
wetland resource but its acceptability depends inter alia on the
ability of artificial wetlands to mimic functions as wel1 as appearance.
WETLANDS IN RBTROSPECT
Wetlands have played a key role in sustaining early prehistoric
cultures such as the Mesolithic occupants of postglacial lake margins and coasts in Europe. The floodplain environment of the Nile,
Tigris and Euphrates was an important factor in the development
of major civilizations. There is still a strong dependency on wetland resources by largely subsistence communities in the Third
World but the history of wetlands in the developed world has been
one of progressive detachment from direct human utilization and
conversion to non-wetland uses. There is a certain irony that the
current surge of scientific and social interest in wetland ecosystems coincides with the period when many of the world's developed countries already have destroyed or altered the greater part
5

THE RESOURCE
of their original wetland area to make way for agriculture, industry, urban and other land uses.
Fifty four per cent of the wetland area of the coterminous
United States present in colonial times had been lost by the mid
1970s (Tiner, 1984). Regional losses detailed in the benchmark
survey by Tiner (1984) as part of the US Fish and Wlldlife's
National Wetland Inventory vary from 32 per cent in Wisconsin to
99 per cent in Iowa's natural marshes. The pattern is repeated
throughout the developed world, although there has been no
comprehensive survey of the details. Forty per cent of the coastal
wetlands of Brittany, France, have disappeared in the last 20
years and two-thirds of the remainder are seriously affected by
drainage and other activities (Mermet, cited by Baldock, 1984). In
Ireland, 80,000 ha of bog have been drained since 1946. A 1983
European parliament report warned that 'the unique ecosystems of
the Irish bogs will vanish completely in the next five years unless
effective preventative measures are taken very soon' (Baldock,
1984). But already before the present century much of Europe's
lowland wetlands had been drained in the course of agricultural
development and disease eradication.
Large-scale wetland losses have been a more recent phenomenon in the tropics and Third World countries. However, enormous
losses have occurred in a short space of time and only 25 per cent
of the original mangrove area of 24,000 ha is left in Puerto Rico
and in Southeast Asia conversion of natural mangrove ecosystems
into rice paddy and aquaculture has been occurring at an unp recedented rate in recent years (de la Cruz, 1980) . Between 1967
and 1975 an annual loss of 24,000 ha was reported from the
Philippines. At least 5,000 ha yr- 1 are lost in the production of
wood chips in Malaysia and Thailand has lost up to 20 per cent of
its mangrove cover in the past decade (MacIntosh, 1983).
Why Has Progressive Loss Taken Place?
Many reasons can be cited why, historically, wetland destruction
and alteration has dominated over an alternative view of maintaining them and developing management strategies for their enhanced
utilization. They include:
(a)

Prevalence of the 'wasteland' concept - the view that drainage

and conversion to other uses is a 'public-spirited endeavour'
(Baldock, 1984), resulting in increased productivity, value or
access to land. Agricultural conversion has accounted for 87
I per cent of wetland losses in the United States.
(b) ~ Association of wetlands with disease particularly malaria and
schistosomiasis and physical danger in traversing such areas.
This was one of the motives for draining the 6,000 ha Hula
papyrus swamp in northern Israel in the 1950s.
(c) The obvious flooding hazard associated with occupation or use
of such land - periodic extreme events exert pressures for
protection thereby reducing the natural flooding regions.
Progressive drainage of the English Fens was encouraged by
public and political response to successive major flood events
(Darby, 1983).

E. MALTBY
(d) Lack of government interest. Politicians are rarely gripped by
the subject of wetlands and they rarely admit to responsibility
beyond their own administrative or national boundaries which
wetland issues demand. Control over wetlands also exposes in
democratic communities tantalizing questions of rural land use,
ownership restrictions, state control and inevitable conflicts
of interest on the part of government.
(e) Lack of financial support for wetland protection and management. This is particularly acute in Third World countries.
(f) Lack until recently of any individual scientific identity or a
cohesive form of academic study centered on wetland per se.
This has delayed the dissemination of fundamental and management information.
WETLANDS IN PERSPECTIVE
The results of wetland loss historically on environmental, ecological
and socio-economic values have not gone unnoticed. Problems such
as those resulting from peat shrinkage, oxidation and erosion have
been observed worldwide this century in the English Fens, the
United States Everglades, Rwanda, Israel and Jamaica. But communication of the values and functions of wetlands has attracted
detailed research only within the last decade and despite a growing
literature there is still only a very rudimentary level of understanding, especially in the Third World.
In the Third World whole communities depend on wetland
resources for survival; cultures and life styles revolve around
flooding cycles and the harvesting of wetland products. The swamp
sago (Metroxylon !!i!!), an important component of the floodplain
swamps of Southeast Asia, provides the main food staple for a
quarter of the population of Irian Jaya and over 100,000 Papuans
(Koonlin, 1980). Over 25,000 villagers around Lake Chilwa on the
Malawi-Mozambique border rely on the lake-edge fishery. Here, as
with lake and floodplain rivers throughout the world, the annual
migration and spawning of fish in the marginal wetlands depends
entirely on the flood cycle. Its success is vital to the survival of
the fishing communities. In the Lower Mekong Basin 236,000 tons
out of a total catch of 500,000 tons per year is estimated to be
derived from wetlands. In 1981, the fisheries value of wetlands
contributed $90 million to the economy and supplied 50-70 per cent
of the protein needs of the delta's 20 million people (Pantulu,
1981). Shrimp exports from poor countries to the rich nations are
currently worth $900 million a year. Apart from fishing , wetlands
provide the basis of flood recession agriculture and floating rice
cultivation, transhumance herding of domestic livestock and hunting of wild herbivores migrating in response to flooding patterns.
Over half a million wild herbivores, mainly antelope, live on the
Sudd floodplains along the Nile in Sudan and hunting provides up
to 25 per cent of the annual meat intake of the local people
(Drijver and Marchand , 1985).

THE RESOURCE
Wetland Functions and Values
The rational use and management of wetlands requires a thorough
knowledge of how they function and interact with the environment
and what goods and services they provide for (1) direct and
indirect human use; (2) the welfare of wildlife, and (3) environmental maintenance.
Despite the undoubted progress in understanding how wetlands work and why it might be important to maintain or enhance
them as natural ecological functional units there are a number of
problems.
(a)

Current knowledge on functions, values and the development

of evaluation procedures is heavily biased towards the developed world.
(b) Wetlands are extremely diverse, they do not all perform the
same functions and values. Similar wetlands may vary considerably according to geographical and socio-economic context.
(c) The measurement of values generally lacks a common scale.
Whilst there are real economic values (such as natural grazing
for harvested species or flood protection) which can be
attributed to wetlands the basis for calculation of these is
often disputed especially where efforts have been made to
express them in dollar terms (Larson, 1983) and some qualities have indefinable economic values.
(d) The driving force maintaining the wetland often originates
outside the immediate wetland area and the benefits may be
realized elsewhere at some distance, within a different administrative area or another country. What incentive is there for
a country to maintain its wetlands, sacrificing other development options, if the benefits are feIt outside the country?

WETLANDS IN PROSPECTIVE
Reaction to a range of key issues will determine the future of the
world's wetlands and some of the more salient are highlighted.
Information Gaps
These fall into several different categories.
(a)
(b)
(c)

Fundamental knowledge of location, characteristics, functions,

values, threats and assessment.
Applied data on management strategies for sustained utilization of wetland resources.
Consequence of alternative development.

International Union of Conservation of Nature and Natural

Resources (lUCN) directories of wetlands of international importance have been completed for the Palearctic and Neotropical
Realms. Volumes for the Afrotropical and Australasian regions are
in preparation. Necessarily they can deal only with those wetlands
considered most important and there is still a heavy bias on value
8

E. MALTBY
for waterfowl. The need for much more comprehensive coverage of
wetlands rests with individual nations but in the case of the Third
World this will undoubtedly require assistance from external
sources.
A major aim of the current WWF/IUCN Wetlands Conservation
Program is to establish at the IUCN Conservation Monitoring
Centre (CMC) , Cambridge, England, a Wetlands Data Base. The
data base will include information on the value of wetlands to
society and especially how these values can be maintained while
simultaneously attempting to meet the legitimate development needs
of human communities. The Centre for Environment Studies, University of Leiden, The Netherlands is currently involved in establishing information compatible with the CMC Data Base on the
impacts of various development schemes, the types of wetlands
development which maintain ecological processes and the means by
which to improve existing project design of schemes such as drainage, polders and dams which pose increasing threats to traditional
wetlands throughout the developing world (Project EDWIN).
Project EDWIN focuses on the developing countries of the
tropics. It is here that the greatest pressures exist from development projects, from aid agencies and governments but it is here
that the greatest gaps in empirical scientific data exist and where
the training needs to develop the skills required for sound management policies are at a premium.
Comparisons are required of the productivity of the natural
system with that of modified systems such as irrigation agriculture, the losses which occur due to alteration of wetlands and
the gains which might be realized by enhanced management of the
wetland resources. Detailed balance sheets need to be drawn up
which evaluate not only the net sustainable benefit to local
communities and the national economy of the ecological and
environment al processes performed by wetlands but also the advantages (local, national and international) where they exist over
alternative development strategies.
There is an ever-pressing need to provide information on (1)
the relationship between wetland areal condition and value of ecological services, e.g. fishery production, and (2) the point where
loss or alteration of the wetland regime becomes critical for sustained performance of services or inability for the system to recover after change or impact.
State Support and Subsidies
Governments of the developed world continue to pay for the destruction of wetlands through drainage grants, public funding of
major alteration projects, favorable. tax structures and artificial
price support for crops grown on reclaimed land. European taxpayers pay to have the wetland converted, pay in various ways
for the loss of wetland functions and then pay subsidies and
storage costs of the surplus produce grown on the former wetland.
However, in Britain arecent milestone was achieved in 1985 when
the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food won European
Community approval to aid traditional agricultural practices needed
to maintain the wetland environment of the Norfolk Broads rather
9

THE RESOURCE
than financing intensification and ecologically damaging drainage
(O'Riordan, 1985).
The future of the remaining wetland landscape of the devel-:oped world surviving outside areas protected for nature conservation is subject to economic forces and political pressures which
are balanced against desirable functions of wetlands. The best
hope for maintaining a significant proportion of the existing wetland areas is to inform and continually educate planners, politicians and decision-makers as to their values and functions.
International Dimensions of Wetlands
Wetlands are natural systemsj their
national frontiers :
(a)
(b)
(c)

boundaries

rarely

follow

some wetlands cross national boundariesj

the maintenance of essential wetland systems may depend on
water flows or pulses originating externallYj
the benefits or values of wetlands may be realized externally
and not necessarily 'on site'.

Lake Chad has been receding fast in recent years (40 km in

the Nigerian sector between April 1984 and January 1985) and not
simply due to drought. The lake is fed mainly by the Logone and
Chari Rivers in Cameroon. Major dams are now diverting water
from these rivers to major irrigation projects. Unless the catchment
countries - Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon - can be persuaded of the need to treat the Chad basin as an international
resource any direct attempt to manage the wetland complex of Lake
Chad will be a futile exercise.
The case of migratory waterfowl emphasizes the internationalism of wetlands and underpins the efforts of international protection embodied within the Ramsar agreement. But there are more
clear economic reasons for international cooperation to maintain
wetland resources. It has been estimated that as much as 80 per
cent of the Indian fishery catch from the lower delta region of the
Ganges/Brahmaputra comes from the Sundarbans (Christensen,
1983). Thus recent agreement to increase the dry season flow of
freshwater (these areas are frequently interrupted by barrages,
irrigation and ground-water abstraction , Maltby, 1986) not only
benefits the wet forest and mangrove complex but also helps to
maintain much needed fishery resources. The latter benefits both
India and Bangladesh. Effective wetland management requires
integrated management of the whole catchment on which the wetlands depend.
Role of Foreign Aid and International Development Banks
Most of the engineering and land projects causing removal or
disruption of wetlands in the Third World are backed by foreign
expertise and funding and frequently by aid packages. Dutch
engineering companies have been involved in more than half the
180 large polder projects (areas originally open to 'normal' flooding
now impounded and water levels controlled artificially or more
10

E. MALTBY
commonly drained completely) carried out or planned in the last 20
years (Braakhekke and Drijver, 1984). In only 5 per cent of cases
has any serious study been made of the consequences of reclamation for the nature values and functions of the area affected.
Decisions about exploitation or changes of wetlands are generally
made in the Third World without detailed reference to local usage
or without assessment of the wider benefits of the natural system
with or without alternative management strategies. Donor or exporting nations, especially those that are Ramsar signatories, have
an obligation to take account of the possible impacts in the first
stage of survey and planning; not after actions have been taken.
Special Problems of Poor Countries
The political debate over Thlrd World wetlands is usually expressed as a straight choice of either:
(a)

converting them to specific use, i.e. short-term direct food

productio.n, high density aquaculture or intensive livestock
rearing (or using them for foreign currency savings through
peat mining or other commercial activity) or
(b) conserving them for long-term economic, ecological and environmental reasons.

'We cannot afford not to develop' is the common argument

used not only by politicians but also by environmentalists in poor
countries One of the most recent potential developments in the
tropics is the mining of peat for energy. The chance to reduce
fuel import bills and balance of payments deficits, establish Iocal
industry, reduce fuel wood losses , provide local employment and
raise standards of living is understandably tempting to countries
like Jamaica, Indonesia, Rwanda and Burundi. The development of
new technology for wet extraction of peat, for handling large
residual wood content and mechanically dewatering in humid climates exposes the coastal and inland peats of the tropics to increasing threat. In Southeast Asia and Africa plans for exploitation
are weil ahead of investigations of possible adverse impacts. Only
in Jamaica has there been any serious attempt to examine
environmental consequences of peat mining.
THE ROLE OF WETLAND SCIENTISTS
The challenges to the scientific community of maintaining the
wetlands of the world is quite clear and must be taken up at three
related levels (Table 1.1). Some wetlands are rare or uniquely
important and require complete proteetion for nature conservation
reasons. However, this is not an effective argument to use in
preventing loss or degradation of the remaining wetlands of the
world. The future of these areas lies in their sustainable utilization and on demonstration of their values as wetland ecosystems
versus competitive land uses. There are still basic research needs
in understanding wetland processes and the greatest advances are
likely to be made by ensuring that multidisciplinary and inter11

THE RESOURCE
national teams cooperate. Greater research thrust in Third World
wetlands is badly needed particularly in relation to values such as
food chain support and water quality. A major aim must be to
provide the guidelines necessary which will allow decision makers
to assess wetlands fully and rationally. It is clear that more research must be applied , e. g. determining ways of enhancing the
natural productivity of wetlands or devising optimum management
strategies such as harvesting or utilization of resources. This will
be a much more attractive approach to Third World governments,
aid agencies and development banks than one based on the more
conservation-orientated philosophy on which wetland maintenance in
the developed world is often argued.
It is equally important that research findings are translated
into training programs This must include not only basic and
advanced educational courses but also the development of specific
management programs . Pilot wetland conservation projects have
been proposed already by WWF/IUCN in Brazil, Central America,
the Sahei, coastal West Africa, Southern Africa, China and
Indonesia. These need to be sustained as long-term projects,
expanded and used as aspringboard for a higher level of scientific involvement with management schemes demonstrating particularly in thc Third World the practical utilization of wetland resources.
There is an increasing need for exchange of information and
ideas between the scientific community and Non-government Environmental or Conservation Organizations (NGOs) which will

Table 1.1:

RESEARCH

TRAINING

Role of the scientific community in future wetland

research and management

Multidisciplinary cooperation
Multiagency and international funding
Involvement of governments and development organizations
Problem orientated
Emphasis on sustained utilization
Long term
Education
Management
Task forces
Pilot schemes

INFORMATION TRANSFER
Non-government Organizations (NGOs)
Media
Public
Conferences

12

E. MALTBY
ensure that the lobbying of politicians, aid agencies, financial
institutions and major development organizations is carried out on a
scientifically informed basis. If wetland issues are popu1arized and
the scientific problems exp1ained through the media then the
informed general public can become a potent force in deve10ping
sound wetland policies for the future.
CONCLUSION
Wetland utilization has been regarded tradrdonally in what was
regarded in another context by Sauer (1938) as a 'passing frontier
of nature replaced by a permanently and sufficiently expanding
frontier of techn010gy'. This attitude he goes on to say 'has the
reck1essness of an optimism that has become habitual but which is
residual from the brave days when north European free-booters
overran the world and put it under tribute. We have not yet
1earned the difference between yie1d and 100t. We do not like to be
economic realists.' That reality cou1d now be realized. It will be
achieved when there is more general acceptance of the concept of
the World Conservation Strategy, (IUCN, UNEP, 1980), that wetland ecosystems are not inherited from our ancestors but borrowed
from our descendants. They must be returned in good working
order - if they are returned with interest so much the better.
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Ba1dock, D. (1984) Wet1and drainage in Europe. IIED/IEEP, London
Bead1e, L.C. (1974) The inland waters of tropica1 Africa.
Longmans
Braakhekke, W.G. and Drijver C.A. (1984) Wet1ands: importance,
threats and protection. Dutch Society for the Protection of
Birds, Zeist, Nether1ands
Christensen, B. (1983) Mangroves - what are they worth? in
Unasy1va, 35, No. 139, pp. 2-15 (paper based on FAO study
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Pacific')
Darby, H.C. (1983) The changing fen1and. Cambridge, University
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Drijver, C.A. and Marchand, M. (1985) Taming the f1oods.
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THE RESOURCE
read at SCOPE-UNEP workshop on tEcosystems Dynamies in
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14