<\/a> On\u00a0World Wetlands Day,\u00a0observed this Thursday, the United Nations is calling for urgent action to revive and restore these ecosystems, which are disappearing three times faster than forests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nWetlands cover roughly six per cent of the Earth\u2019s land surface and are vital for human health, food supply, tourism and jobs.<\/p>\n
More than\u00a0a billion people\u00a0worldwide depend on them for their livelihoods, while their shallow waters and abundant plant life support everything from insects to ducks to moose.<\/p>\n
Wetlands also play a crucial role in both achieving sustainable development and in the fight against climate change.<\/p>\n
They provide essential ecosystem services such as water regulation, reducing the impact of flooding, for example.<\/p>\n
Peatlands, a particular type of vegetated wetland, store twice as much carbon as forests.<\/p>\n
However, over the past 200 years, wetlands have been drained to make way for farmland or infrastructure development, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).<\/p>\n
Roughly\u00a035 per cent of all wetlands globally\u00a0disappeared between 1970 and 2015, and the rate of loss has been accelerating since the year 2000.<\/p>\n
Depending on the amount of climate-related sea level rise, some 20 to 90 per cent of current coastal wetlands could be gone by the end of the century, UNEP warned.<\/p>\n
Wetlands have also suffered more biodiversity loss than other land and marine ecosystems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":3,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[177],"tags":[933,453],"region":[26],"source":[1538],"country":[1920],"state":[],"city":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/100448"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/newss"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/100448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100449,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newss\/100448\/revisions\/100449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100448"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=100448"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=100448"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=100448"},{"taxonomy":"state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/state?post=100448"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.icsf.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=100448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}