Why wetlands must be central to building hydrological resilience – beyond protection

At this year’s Ramsar Convention, IWMI and the Global Commission on the Economics of Water will champion wetlands as essential infrastructure for hydrological resilience.

Matthew McCartney, John H. Matthews, Chaturangi Wickramaratne

The Ramsar Convention convenes its Conference of the Parties from July 23-31, 2025 at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe — one of the world’s most iconic wetland landscapes. On Day 2, the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW) – whose Secretariat is hosted by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) – will lead a high-level roundtable aimed at repositioning Ramsar as a pivotal force in elevating water to the top of the global policy agenda. The moment is urgent and the opportunity, historic.

For decades, wetlands have been recognized as biodiversity hotspots but their broader ecological and economic contributions, especially as providers of critical ecosystem services, are routinely overlooked in economic planning and policy. Despite their enormous value — globally estimated in the recently published Global Wetland Outlook  to be at least USD 7.98  trillion annually — wetlands continue to be sidelined in economic and development agendas.

Ignoring water’s true value is driving the global loss of wetlands

The GCEW report highlighted a fundamental issue: water is effectively treated as a “silent currency”— essential to all life and prosperity, yet largely invisible in the governance of infrastructure, economies and ecosystems. This invisibility has contributed to alarming rates of wetland degradation with 22% of wetlands lost since the 1970s — three times faster than forest loss. There has been a 40% decline in wetland water storage capacity – weakening natural flood and drought buffers – and an 85% reduction in freshwater vertebrate populations – signaling widespread ecological collapse.

Yet, in a world facing intensifying climate disruption and growing water insecurity, wetlands are far more than simply nature reserves. Water is a global common good and wetlands are critical components of the hydrological cycle that sustain life, livelihoods and landscapes. The evidence is clear: wetlands should be central to national strategies for climate resilience, disaster risk reduction and sustainable development. Ramsar now stands at a critical juncture — with a unique opportunity to evolve from a conservation-focused treaty to a global platform for resilience.

To secure and enable that future, we must move beyond conventional notions of protection. Wetlands must be recognized and managed as critical hydrological infrastructure — dynamic, adaptive systems that modify water flows, quality and availability, including through interactions with the atmosphere. Water, and its connection to wetlands, is at the foundation of climate resilience for all sectors: energy, agriculture, health, forests, cities, transport and many others. Conservation and restoration are essential ways of managing wetlands, but they may be insufficient and even counterproductive in a dynamic climate. Wetlands management must be embedded within broader strategies that integrate these ecosystems into planning, climate adaptation and water governance.

From protection to systemic resilience

Conservation and restoration efforts have historically focused on protecting individual wetland sites.  These typically seek to rehabilitate degraded wetlands through actions such as rewetting drained areas, reintroducing native vegetation and species and restoring natural hydrological processes.

While these interventions are essential, they are often static, site-specific and disconnected from the broader hydrological systems that wetlands both rely on and help sustain. By contrast, building hydrological resilience requires a systems-based approach  — one that recognizes the interconnectedness of ecosystems across landscapes and focuses on the capacity of entire water systems, including wetlands, to absorb shocks, adapt to change and maintain functionality over time. Hydrological resilience is a cornerstone of broader water system resilience. Without it, even the most advanced infrastructure and well-designed institutions will be increasingly vulnerable to the growing pressures of climate change, land degradation and unsustainable water use.

Why placing wetlands at the core of hydrological resilience matters for policy

The GCEW has called for a fundamental revaluation of water — not simply as a sectoral issue, but as the organizing principle for development, stability and resilience. Within this new framework, wetlands must be recognized not as marginal ecosystems but as strategic infrastructure that sustains the integrity and functioning of water systems.

Depending on the context, wetlands perform a wide array of hydrological functions — buffering floods, recharging aquifers, purifying water, storing soil moisture and recycling atmospheric moisture through evapotranspiration. Critically, they link blue water — rivers, lakes and aquifers — with green water — soil moisture and atmospheric flow — creating feedback loops that regulate water availability, quality and climate at multiple scales. Yet, this dynamic role remains underappreciated in most water governance and planning systems.

To achieve meaningful and durable change, efforts must move beyond site-level conservation and restoration. Hydrological resilience demands interventions at the landscape and basin scale, where water flows connect diverse ecosystems, land uses and social actors. But landscape-scale regeneration is complex. It often spans multiple ownership patterns, governance levels and management priorities. Such contexts require reconciling competing objectives, such as biodiversity conservation, food production and poverty reduction, while typically coordinating across multiple institutions and stakeholders with varying capacities and degrees of influence.

What needs to change

To unlock the full potential of wetlands for hydrological resilience, an integrated policy approach is essential — one that connects ecosystems, water governance and climate action. Efforts need to scale up from sites to systems by moving from isolated protection to landscape, basin and regional-scale strategies that safeguard flow regimes, seasonal variability and ecological connectivity. Wetlands also need to align with water governance integrating their functions into water allocation frameworks, drought and flood planning, infrastructure design and water security policies.

Restoration goals have to be redefined to emphasize hydrological functions, such as soil moisture retention, aquifer recharge and evapotranspiration fluxes, rather than ecological recovery alone. Wetlands should be used as cross-cutting entry points to deliver on national commitments across the Multilateral Environmental Agreements, for example Nationally Determined Contributions, National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans and Land Degradation Neutrality targets.

Ramsar’s opportunity and responsibility

Ramsar’s core principle of “wise use”—managing wetlands within their ecological limits—closely aligns with the GCEW’s vision for resilience-based governance of the water cycle. With its global reach, scientific credibility and policy mechanisms, Ramsar is uniquely positioned to catalyze this shift. 

COP 15 is crucial for setting the scene for the next phase of Ramsar which must champion wetlands as essential infrastructure for hydrological resilience in a rapidly changing world. Resilient wetlands can help us all — our communities, economies and ecological landscapes — transition from simply reducing climate risks to building wealth and prosperity in a dynamic world.