In a video message on the 50th anniversary of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, Zarif highlighted the formation of a global consensus in the 1970s to create the convention with the purpose of protecting wetlands.
In addition to the beauty the wetlands offer in nature, Zarif said, they have a unique role in protecting climate balance, biodiversity, and local economy, and controlling floods and dust storms.
Iran’s top diplomat also emphasized that the international community, although too late, recognized the damages imposed on nature through the industrial development process as a great threat to human life.
Developing countries adopted quick processes to overcome the challenges leading to underdevelopment, Zarif added, “However, developed countries failed to compensate the damage they had imposed on nature for their development.”
He underlined that policymaker in the political and environmental sphere in any nation must take into consideration the fact that one billion people around the world make their living through wetlands.
“Let’s keep in mind that drying up of 64 percent of world wetlands in the past 100 years is an indication of the necessity that all countries around the world shoulder the collective responsibility to protect these valuable ecosystems as a goal of sustainable development”, Zarif stated.
He mentioned climate change challenges, uneven development and neglecting requirements of sustainable development at the regional level as the factors that disrupt the protection of wetlands in Iran.
1424
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