Wetlands and the Ramsar Convention

The first principle

A wetland is land where water stays at or near the surface long enough to change the soil and decide which plants and animals can live there. Waterlogged soil runs short of oxygen, so only specially adapted plants grow, dead matter decays slowly, and microbes carry out chemistry that dry land cannot. That one fact explains why wetlands clean water, store floodwater and carbon, and teem with birds and fish, and also why they look like "wasteland" to anyone who wants to drain, fill or build on them.

The core

What wetlands do

• They slow and store water. A marsh or floodplain spreads and holds floodwater, cuts the peak downstream and releases water slowly, which also recharges groundwater in many settings.
• They clean water. Slow flow lets silt settle, plants and microbes take up nutrients, and in oxygen poor sediments bacteria convert nitrate into nitrogen gas (denitrification), so water leaves cleaner than it entered; the East Kolkata Wetlands treat much of the city's sewage this way while producing fish and vegetables.
• They store carbon. Because decay is slow in waterlogged soil, peatlands and mangrove soils lock up carbon for thousands of years, and draining them releases it.
• They are rich edge habitats. Being an ecotone between land and water, a wetland holds species of both, and it is a breeding, wintering and staging ground for migratory waterbirds.
• How much India has. The National Wetland Atlas of the Space Applications Centre (2011) mapped wetlands over about 4.6 per cent of India's area.

The Ramsar Convention

• The treaty. The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance was signed at Ramsar in Iran on 2 February 1971 (now World Wetlands Day) and came into force in 1975. It stands outside the United Nations system, with its secretariat at Gland, Switzerland, alongside the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
• Three pillars. Parties promise the wise use of all their wetlands, designate suitable wetlands for the List of Wetlands of International Importance, and cooperate on shared wetlands and species. Wise use means keeping a wetland's ecological character while people use it sustainably.
• Nine criteria. A site qualifies if it meets any one criterion: a representative, rare or unique wetland type (criterion 1); threatened species or ecological communities (2); species important for regional biodiversity (3); species at a critical stage of their life cycle (4); 20,000 or more waterbirds regularly (5); 1 per cent of a waterbird population (6); a significant share of native fish (7); fish food, spawning or nursery grounds (8); or 1 per cent of a population of a non bird wetland animal (9).
• The Montreux Record. Created in 1990, it lists Ramsar sites whose ecological character has changed or is likely to change through human activity, so that they get priority attention. Keoladeo National Park (added 1990) and Loktak Lake (added 1993) are India's two sites on it; Chilika Lake, added in 1993, was removed in 2002 after restoration.
• Ramsar Wetland City. A voluntary accreditation for cities that protect their wetlands; Indore and Udaipur became India's first in January 2025.

Dimensions

• Ecological. Wetlands support a large share of freshwater species and are stepping stones on the flyways of migratory birds, so the loss of one site affects birds that breed thousands of kilometres away.
• Economic. Fisheries, rice, lotus, makhana and reeds come from wetlands, and treating water or controlling floods by machines instead would cost far more.
• Hydrological and disaster. Filled lakes and floodplains in cities are a direct cause of urban flooding, as Chennai, Mumbai and Srinagar have shown.
• Climate. Wetlands store carbon and buffer floods and droughts, but drained or burned peat and mangrove soils become sources of greenhouse gases.
• Social and cultural. Fishers, boatmen and pastoralists depend on wetlands, and many lakes and tanks are sacred, which gives communities a stake in their care.
• Global trend. The Ramsar Convention's Global Wetland Outlook (2018) estimated that about 35 per cent of the world's natural wetlands were lost between 1970 and 2015, faster than forests.

In practice

• The Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017. Framed by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, they replaced the Rules of 2010. Each State or Union Territory has a State Wetlands Authority, chaired by its environment minister, which must list its wetlands, prepare a brief document for each and recommend it for notification with a zone of influence. A National Wetlands Committee, chaired by the Secretary of MoEFCC, monitors and advises.
• What the Rules prohibit. Inside a notified wetland the Rules ban conversion to non wetland use including encroachment, setting up or expanding industries, dumping of solid waste, discharge of untreated waste and effluents, handling of hazardous substances, poaching, and any permanent construction except boat jetties within 50 metres of the mean high flood level of the past ten years.
• What they exclude. River channels, paddy fields, and man made water bodies built for drinking water, aquaculture, salt production, recreation or irrigation are outside the definition, as are wetlands already covered by the Wildlife (Protection) Act, the Indian Forest Act or the Coastal Regulation Zone rules.
• India's Ramsar list. India joined in 1982 with Chilika and Keoladeo as its first sites. It had 26 sites by 2014, 80 in February 2024 and 96 by the end of 2025, covering about 1.36 million hectares. Two more, Patna Bird Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh and Chhari Dhand in Gujarat, raised the count to 98 in January 2026. The Sundarban Wetland of West Bengal, listed in 2019, is the largest.
• Programmes. The National Plan for Conservation of Aquatic Ecosystems (NPCA), formed in 2013 by merging the lake and wetland programmes, funds conservation plans on a Centre–State shared basis, and Amrit Dharohar, announced in the Budget of 2023-24, promotes community led conservation and nature tourism at Ramsar sites.
• Two Montreux cases. At Keoladeo in Rajasthan, the shrinking supply of water from upstream and the spread of invasive grass reduced the wetland that birds depend on. At Loktak in Manipur, the Ithai barrage of the Loktak hydroelectric project kept water levels high all year, thinning the floating mats of vegetation (phumdis) of Keibul Lamjao National Park, the only wild home of the sangai, a subspecies of Eld's deer (Rucervus eldii; Endangered, Schedule I, CITES Appendix I).
• A recovery. Chilika in Odisha, Asia's largest brackish water lagoon, was choked by silt until the Chilika Development Authority cut a new mouth to the sea in 2000; salinity, fish catch and Irrawaddy dolphins recovered, and the lake left the Montreux Record in 2002.

Issues and way forward

• Listing without notifying. A Ramsar tag brings attention but no law, while legal protection depends on States notifying wetlands under the 2017 Rules, which many have done for only a small share; time bound notification with public brief documents is the remedy.
• Narrow definition. Excluding paddy fields, river channels and man made tanks leaves out much of India's wetland area, including village tanks that recharge groundwater, so States should use their power to notify such wetlands where they matter.
• Urban encroachment. Cities fill lakes for housing and roads, so wetlands need to be shown in master plans with their catchments and inflow channels protected.
• Pollution and weeds. Sewage and farm runoff cause eutrophication and the spread of water hyacinth, which call for sewage treatment before inflow and regular weed removal.
• Upstream water. Dams and diversions starve wetlands such as Keoladeo, so river basin plans must set aside water for wetlands as a legitimate use.

Common confusions

• Ramsar site and protected area. A Ramsar site is an international listing with no legal force by itself, while a protected area is notified under the Wildlife (Protection) Act; some Ramsar sites are also sanctuaries, many are not.
• Montreux Record and the Ramsar list. The Ramsar list is of important wetlands, while the Montreux Record is a smaller list of listed sites in trouble.
• Wetlands Rules of 2010 and 2017. The 2010 Rules had a central authority, while the 2017 Rules shifted the work to State Wetlands Authorities.
• Wetland and water body. A reservoir built for irrigation is a water body but is excluded from the Rules' definition of a wetland unless it is notified.
• Ramsar Convention and the Convention on Migratory Species. Ramsar protects habitats, while the Convention on Migratory Species protects migratory animals across their range; the two often work on the same birds.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: ecotone, hydric soil, denitrification, flood buffering, groundwater recharge, blue carbon, wise use, Ramsar criteria, Montreux Record, State Wetlands Authority, zone of influence, brief document, Amrit Dharohar, Ramsar Wetland City, eutrophication.
• Previous year questions: Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Use in an answer:
  • Introduction with data: India had 98 Ramsar sites by January 2026, against 26 in 2014, making its list one of the fastest growing in the world.
  • Introduction with a report or rule: The Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017 put every State in charge of listing and notifying its wetlands, with a ban on encroachment, industry and waste dumping inside them.
  • Conclusion: India lists wetlands faster than it protects them, so the next step is to notify each site with its catchment and to give it the water it needs.
  • Conclusion: Chilika's recovery shows that a wetland can come back when its hydrology is restored, and that local fishers gain the most when it does.