Extractive industries. The specific impacts of extractive industries (for example mining of peatlands) on wetland habitats and the implications for migratory waterbirds was addressed in Resolution 5.14, which inter alia, “Encourages Contracting Parties to also apply the guidance on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) …, adapting the EIA guidance where appropriate in order to ensure that it adequately addresses direct and indirect impacts on wetlands of the exploration, development, operation, closure and post-closure phases of extractive industrial activities, and … to ensure that in applying the EIA guidance and other necessary measures, they adequately address the impacts on wetlands important for migratory waterbirds of the full spectrum of activities associated with extractive industries.” However, there has been no AEWA assessment of the extent of impact of extractive industries on wetlands, nor relevant trends in this. AEWA recognises harvesting as a legitimate form of use of migratory waterbirds. The Agreement also requires that any harvesting of waterbirds is sustainable, such that populations are maintained in a ‘favourable’ conservation status over their entire range. Due to the cross-border movements of most migratory waterbirds within the AEWA region, this requires Parties to cooperate in order to ensure that their hunting legislation, regulation and practices, both individually and collectively, implement the principle of sustainable use and that any harvest of waterbirds is based on the best available knowledge of their ecology, and an adequate flyway-wide assessment of their conservation status and the socio-economic systems within which they occur. The protection of huntable waterbirds, which was previously supported by the remoteness of breeding and/or wintering grounds, is now under increasing threat, as are their habitats, due to human development, climate change and other detrimental impacts. It is thus becoming more important than ever to address the long-standing challenge of developing internationally coordinated harvest management. Advances in knowledge of waterbird populations, modern information and communication technologies, and the development of harvest management strategies, such as adaptive management and interlinked social-ecological frameworks, mean that such co-ordinated management is now more achievable than ever before. The aim of AEWA’s sustainable harvesting guidelines is to provide guidance on ways of ensuring and managing sustainable waterbird harvests to the benefit of waterbirds and people, whilst acknowledging the enormous diversity across the region in the modes and motivations in harvest regimes, biological knowledge, institutional frameworks and capacity.
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Sources: Agreement on the Conservation of African Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds, Agreement on the Conservation of African Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds, Agreement on the Conservation of African Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds