2 February is designated World Wetlands Day to mark the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea.
Each year Botswana and the world commemorate the Wetlands Day focuses on a different theme. The theme for 2015 is ‘Wetlands for our future’. Here is a list of how useful wetlands are in our lives however overlooked.
- In Botswana, wetlands have become a source of foreign exchange through their purpose as tourist attraction areas. Tourism plays a modest role in the country’s economy providing almost US$200 million (2.16 percent), a large share of which comes from the Okavango.
- They purify and replenish our water, water conservations, storage and discharge
- Wetlands provide the fish and rice that feed billions.
- They burst with biodiversity, and are a vital means of storing carbon
- Wetlands also clean the water by filtering out sedimentation, decomposing vegetative matter and converting chemicals into useable form.
- The ability of wetlands to recycle nutrients makes them critical in the overall functioning of earth
