Protecting Wetlands: Insights from the Northern Iberian Peninsula (Galicia, NW Spain)

Abstract

Wetlands are a key tool for environment conservation policy. They harbour important biodiversity values such as priority habitats and fragile species, reduce the impacts of floods, improve water quality, absorb pollutants, and protect shores from climate change effects, also acting as carbon reservoirs in the medium and long term. From an international point of view, those sites containing representative, rare or unique wetlands, are designated under Ramsar Convention, which was signed in 1971, being added to the Convention’s List of Wetlands of International Importance and become known as Ramsar sites. More than 50 years after the signing of Ramsar Convention, its degree of application is very uneven across the different territories. This paper analyses the situation from the Atlantic area of the Iberian Peninsula, and specifically from Galicia, a territory that has a large number of wetlands, both terrestrial, marine, underground and artificial, with sites of high value for biodiversity and natural heritage conservation, but where there is no adequate protection over them, documented by the presence of a large number of anthropic impacts that is leading to biodiversity deterioration, habitat destruction and species decline.