Integrated Management of wetlands (follow-up)

- Wetlands (lakes, lagoons, deltas, rivers and river plains, coastal areas, etc.) are the most sensitive and important ecosystems - because where water and land meet we find the cradle of thousands of different forms of life - and contemporarily - from the socio-political and managerial point of view - they are the most controversial and problematic natural spaces to be safeguarded and developed.
- In Europe, since the end of the the 19th century the extension of wetlands has been reduced by more than 50%. Land owners, farmers, hunters, water and forest management bodies, local communities fearing for inundations, among others, take stakes in wetland areas, which are normally against their safeguarding and natural development, but instead try to limit, reduce, control, embank, exploit and transform them for their interests.
- These stakeholders have to be get "on the boat" (or better: the Ark) for a balanced and sustainable development and a possibile coexistence of man and wetlands.