Wetlands, Culture, Recreation and Education.

 


Cultural knowledge of wetlands constitutes a collective legacy for today's societies.

• Nearly all Ramsar Sites provide cultural ecosystem services (CES), and over half have spiritual and inspirational values. • A global systematic review of published papers found evidence of CES provided by wetlands in 175 countries and territories. Recreation/tourism was the most frequently reported CES (40%), followed by cultural identity/heritage (16%) and education/learning/knowledge (13%). • Across cultures, wetlands are seen as cultural landscapes embedded in identity, art and spirituality. Many communities consider wetlands sacred, home to ancestral spirits or ceremonial sites. Songs, dances, festivals and oral traditions often center on wetland life and cycles. • Wetlands often serve as informal classrooms where elders pass on ecological knowledge to younger generations. • The profound and rapid social and economic transformations that have taken place during recent decades have increasingly threatened the adequate preservation of the cultural heritage that is typical of wetlands in many parts of the world. 

INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS AND A MORE HOLISTIC UNDERSTANDING OF ECOSYSTEM CHANGE.

The Whangamarino Wetland, one of New Zealand’s seven Ramsar Sites, is of immense cultural significance to the Indigenous People of the area, the iwi (tribe) of Waikato and local communities. For the Waikato-Tainui, wetlands are living organs, keepers of genealogies, and a source of cultural identity and nourishment. They use environmental signs and seasonal knowledge derived from centuries of observation encoded in lunar calendars and seasonal changes to detect ecosystem change. 
For example, the first appearance of migrating eels (tuna heke) demonstrates wetland vitality and hydrology. In 2018, Waikato-Tainui elders (kaumatua) observed a three-week delay in eel migration due to disrupted hydrological cues, providing early warning of a significant water quality issue before changes were detected by technical experts conducting field monitoring.






“FROM PREHISTORIC TIMES, MANY HUNDREDS OF GENERATIONS OF PEOPLE HAVE SETTLED IN AND AROUND WETLANDS, OFTEN TRANSFORMING THEIR WETLANDS INTO CULTURAL LANDSCAPES IN WHICH NATURAL AND HUMAN-MADE ELEMENTS ARE UNIQUELY COMBINED. THESE LANDSCAPES ARE LIVING RECORDS OF HUMAN OCCUPATION AND REPRESENT AN INVALUABLE CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL HERITAGE. – Convention on Wetlands



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