MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

World experts discuss rapid wetlands disappearance

The Pantanal

Experts from all over the world are discussing in Brazil about the rapid disappearance of the world's wetlands and its potential effect on global warming. The event organized by United Nations and Brazil's Federal University of Matto Grosso are taking place in Matto Grosso, next to what is considered the world's largest wetlands in the heart of South America, the Pantanal.

The world's wetlands are believed to store as much carbon as that currently held in the atmosphere but continuing destruction by the advance of agriculture and other human activities "could cause them to exhale billows of greenhouse gases" according to the organizers. The prevailing consensus among climate scientists is that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses are trapping increasing amounts of heat in the atmosphere and are the main culprits behind climate change. The eighth International Wetlands Conference is intended to take stock of global wetlands, identify knowledge gaps and "offer plain-spoken policy prescriptions for decision makers with an appeal to adopt it with urgency," said Paulo Speller, a professor at the Brazilian university, located in the province where much of the Pantanal lies. Pantanal which also extends to Bolivia and Paraguay, includes more than 160,000 square kilometers of wetlands, rivers and swamps that are virtually under water during the rainy season. Wetlands such as peat bogs, swamps, river deltas, mangroves, tundra, lagoons and floodplains cover only 6% of the globe's surface yet store up to 20% of its terrestrial carbon, according to climate experts. But some 60% of the world's wetlands are estimated to have been lost in the last century. The slow decay of organic material, filter out pollutants and "act as sponges" and reservoirs, said Wolfgang Junk of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology. Australia and United States have led he world in restoring and preserving wetlands, the scientists said. But in Europe particularly in Greece and along the Mediterranean rim, up to 90% of wetlands have been lost to agriculture and urban development.