IMCG Newsletter2005-4
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INTERNATIONAL MIRE NEWSLETTER CONSERVATION GROUP issue 2005/4, December 2005 The International Mire Conservation Group (IMCG) is an international network of specialists having a particular interest in mire and peatland conservation. The network encompasses a wide spectrum of expertise and interests, from research scientists to consultants, government agency specialists to peatland site managers. It operates largely through e-mail and newsletters, and holds regular workshops and symposia. For more information: consult the IMCG Website: http://www.imcg.net IMCG has a Main Board of 15 people from various parts of the world that has to take decisions between congresses. Of these 15 an elected 5 constitute the IMCG Executive Committee that handles day-to-day affairs. The Executive Committee consists of a Chairman (Jennie Whinam), a Secretary General (Hans Joosten), a Treasurer (Philippe Julve), and 2 additional members (Tatiana Minaeva, Piet-Louis Grundling). Viktor Masing (†), Hugo Sjörs, and Richard Lindsay have been awarded honorary membership of IMCG. Editorial Maybe it is better to enumerate what this Newsletter does NOT contain: you will NOT find information on how exactly peatlands were brought into the Ramsar CoP9 resolutions, NOT on the growing perspectives of peatland conservation and wise use in Africa, NOT on the recent meetings of the Biodiversity Convention and the Kyoto Protocol in Montreal this month, NOT on the peatland orientated interventions there, NOT on the discussions that the UNFCCC AFOLU (Agriculture, Forest & other Land uses) expert group had this month in Sydney on how to include wetland and peatland as a land use category with respect to greenhouse gas emissions, and NOT on a whole lot of other peatland developments, projects, and literature. All these issues have to wait until the next Newsletter. What this Newsletter holds, you can see in the table of contents below. And what this Newsletter also contains are our best wishes to you all: for a happy 2006, in which we hope to meet you all again, in the field, in the world wide web, in our joint efforts to contribute to the conservation and wise use of peatlands worldwide. Please send all your proposals, discussion contributions, news, publications, etc. to us, and with your help we will again prepare an interesting Newsletter. Deadline for the next Newsletter is 29 March 2006. For information or other things, contact us at the IMCG Secretariat. Address updates should be sent to Jan Sliva: [email protected]. In the meantime, keep an eye on the continuously refreshed and refreshing IMCG web-site: http://www.imcg.net John Couwenberg & Hans Joosten, The IMCG Secretariat Botanical Institute, Grimmerstr. 88, D-17487 Greifswald (Germany) fax: +49 3834 864114; e-mail: [email protected] Contents: Editorial............................................................................................................................................................................ 1 Peatlands at Ramsar CoP9................................................................................................................................................ 2 The Ushuaia Statement..................................................................................................................................................... 7 Decisions made by IMCG Main Board during the TdF Field Symposium ...................................................................... 9 IMCG Tierra del Fuego Symposium in the press........................................................................................................... 11 Comments on the regional variation and mires in Tierra del Fuego – a comparison with Fennoscandia....................... 11 Los Turbales de la Patagonia.......................................................................................................................................... 13 Mires and Peat IMCG/IPS Journal ................................................................................................................................. 14 IMCG Membership fees................................................................................................................................................. 14 European Habitats Forum............................................................................................................................................... 15 Peat not allowed in EU Ecolabel: on peat extraction, ecolabelling and restoration........................................................ 16 Peat and the EU Ecolabel: reaction from and on EPAGMA .......................................................................................... 19 Dramatic decrease in global peatland area ..................................................................................................................... 20 Winter ............................................................................................................................................................................ 21 Regional News ............................................................................................................................................................... 22 New and recent Journals/Newsletters/Books/Reports .................................................................................................... 30 IMCG Main Board ......................................................................................................................................................... 33 UPCOMING EVENTS .................................................................................................................................................. 34 _____________________ The IMCG bank acount : IBAN Number : FR76 1670 6050 0750 5170 9901 686; Bic Number (=swift) : AGRIFRPP867; Name : Ass. International Mire Conservation Group; Address : 159 rue Sadi Carnot 59280 Armentières (France) ISSN 1682-1653 2 IMCG NEWSLETTER Peatlands at Ramsar CoP9 The 9th Meeting of the perspectives of further effective work for IMCG in Conference of the Parties to the Africa. Convention on Wetlands (COP 9) was held in Uganda, Kampala on So far the new brochure “Peatlands: do you care?” 8 - 15 November 2005. The theme has been distributed as follows: of the conference was “Wetlands - 1000 copies to Uganda (Ramsar) and water: supporting life, - 1000 copies to Montreal (UNFCC & CBD sbstta) sustaining livelihoods”. - 300 copies for IMCG (largely distributed during the In total, 793 registered IMCG Tierra del Fuego meeting) participants attended the meeting. - 250 copies for the Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Of them, 416 were Contracting Party Delegates Association (CSPMA) representing 141 countries. 214 participants - 250 copies to the International Peat Society (IPS) represented several international and national - 250 copies to the Ramsar Secretariat nongovernmental organizations. The number of - 250 copies to Wetlands International (WI) observers totalled 377 persons. - 150 copies to RSPO (Singapore) - 50 copies local distribution in Malaysia (GEC) In his report, the Secretary General of the Ramsar Convention, Peter Bridgewater, gave “six imperatives Side event for future action” for the Ramsar Convention: The side event of the Ramsar Coordinating 1. Understanding the new international institutional Committee on Global Action on Peatlands (CoCo- frameworks GAP) went very well, specifically thanks to Jan Sliva 2. Reinforcing and developing the science base and other IMCG members, who did a very good job 3. Managing the List of Wetlands of International in getting everything organised. Importance effectively The meeting was chaired by Nora Namakambo from 4. Promoting integrated management approaches the Uganda Wetlands Inspection Division, and co- 5. Developing a fully effective Communications, chaired by Tobias Salathé (Ramsar Bureau). The Education, and Public Awareness (CEPA) event was attended by about 130 participants. programme It was opened by a great performance of a traditional 6. Ensuring that the Convention has an effective Ugandan Kabira Music, Dance & Drama Group of management about 30 artists who created a festive atmosphere in the great Victoria Hall of the Speke Resort. The activities of the Coordinating Committee on the Simultaneously the motto of the side event Global Action on Peatlands (CoCoGAP) and IMCG “Peatlands, do you care?” was projected on the wall during the 9th Conference of Parties of the Ramsar behind the dancers. Convention in Kampala, Uganda (November 2005) After the opening of the side event by Nora raised the attention to peatlands considerably. In the Namakambo, Clayton Rubec (Canada) presented an official papers, peatlands suffered again from the overview of the history of the Ramsar Global Action Cinderella Syndrom, as Richard Lindsay had called it Plan for Peatlands, a history in which Clayton had at the first Ramsar meeting where IMCG was present played an important part. This was followed by a (Brisbane 1996): very important, but hardly visible, joint presentation from Jaakko Silpola (IPS) and and therefore not valued. Tatiana Minaeva (IMCG) on the cooperation between A whole row of events and products tried to correct IPS and IMCG. this: A presentation by Marcel Silvius (Wetlands - an IMCG excursion tot the peatlands of Uganda International) on the wise use of tropical peatlands before CoP9 was an eye opener for many of the participants in - a side event of CoCoGAP during CoP9 regard of the climate and poverty impacts of