The Ramsar Convention’s flagship report, the Global Wetland Outlook: third edition (hereinafter GWO 3), was released on July 15, 2025. Developed by the Convention’s Scientific and Technical Review Panel, this special report presents a synthesis of scientific information on the values of the world’s wetlands, the costs to society due to wetland loss and degradation and the scale of investments needed to restore wetlands.
Putting a firm number on the global extent of wetlands is a daunting exercise, as datasets on several wetland types are incomplete. GWO3 places the extent of wetlands at 1,425 million ha, based on the coverage of nine wetland types for which reliable global datasets are available. Peatlands, inland marshes and swamps, and lakes form a majority of the current wetland regime, constituting 35 per cent, 32 per cent and 19 per cent of this area. However, this area is only a lower bound and would improve as coverage of global datasets becomes more complete.
What is concerning is that the current extent of wetlands is a fragment of what existed in the past. As much as 411 million ha of wetlands have been lost since 1970, which is a close equivalent to the area of the Gulf of Aden. Wetlands have been lost at the rate of 0.5 per cent annually, with the majority of the decline being in the extent of inland marshes and swamps (43 per cent) and lakes (30 per cent). During 2011-2021, within the National Reports submitted to the Ramsar Convention, the percentage of countries reporting deterioration in the state of wetlands increased from 32 per cent to 42 per cent, while those reporting improvement declined from 23 per cent to 14 per cent. However, these are more contemporary rates of decline and do not reflect the historical losses. In the United States and Europe, extensive wetland drainage and conversion took place in the 18th and 19th centuries in a bid to increase the area under the plough and settlements, and to fight diseases like malaria.
The total annual value of ecosystem services provided by wetlands has been projected to range between $7.9 and $ 39 trillion (equivalent to around 7.5 per cent to 36 per cent of global GDP). This wide range reflects the skewed distribution of ecosystem service valuation; not all wetland types and not all regions have well-distributed economic valuation studies. However, it is fair to suggest that these estimates are a lower bound, as the currently known wetland area is an underestimate, and the value of several wetland ecosystem services is yet to be comprehensively assessed. There is a considerable variation in the value of ecosystem services of different wetland types. These range from 1,864 International $ per ha for peatlands to 82,820 International $ per ha for inland marshes and swamps. However, one needs to exercise abundant caution when using these numbers to compare within wetland types and with other ecosystems, as these values reflect the valuation efforts applied, the methods used, and the broader socioeconomic contexts. By losing wetlands, humanity has lost nearly $5,140 billion worth of benefits. And the losses and the benefits from the remaining wetlands have been unequally distributed in society.
The report presents a summary of the costs of restoring wetlands, ranging from close to a thousand dollars per hectare for peatlands to over $70,000 for rivers and streams. In comparison, the costs for conserving these wetlands are a fraction of the restoration costs. While the data continues to accumulate, and the costs of restoration and conservation vary across different parts of the world, the general message is clear: conserving and preserving wetlands is a far more cost-effective option than allowing these ecosystems to degrade and then attempting to restore them.
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022, sets ambitious targets for the restoration of degraded ecosystems and conserving and effectively managing others. The scale of wetland conservation and restoration required to meet these ambitions is steep, and would need to cover around 550 million ha. This will require anywhere between $275 billion and $550 billion (or around 0.5 per cent of the GDP). Although the estimate appears to be a small fraction of the economic benefits wetlands provide, it would still stand to benefit multiple outcomes related to biodiversity, climate, and sustainable development. Yet, realising this level of investment for wetlands is going to be an uphill task. Even for the biodiversity ambitions, the current levels of spending are almost one-sixth of what is needed; that is, only one dollar is provided for every six that is needed. Nature-negative financial flows, such as environmentally harmful subsidies, overshadow nature-positive ones.
A business-as-usual approach would mean that the value-investment gap would continue to widen. Urgent actions are needed in two areas: first, to enhance the current level of investment in the conservation and restoration of wetlands, and second, to shift investment away from actions that degrade wetlands.
The first is to improve natural capital valuation and integration into decision-making. The current measures and indicators of economic progress consistently undervalue the role of natural capital, and this would need to change. Greater application of natural capital accounting would mean more information on the contribution of the stocks of natural capital and their flow of ecosystem services. However, accounting and valuing is only the first step. Action is needed to embed these values in decision-making at various levels, so that policy supports wetlands conservation, and prevents degradation, rather than first degrade and then restore. Increasing biodiversity-related international and domestic resources, leveraging private finance and promoting blended finance, and optimising synergies between finance targeting biodiversity and the climate crisis would elevate the level of current investments applied to wetlands conservation and restoration.
Moving finances away from environmentally degrading activities would require recognition of the material risks that nature degradation generates. For example, assessing, accounting and reporting for dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities related to wetlands within the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures framework can help the private sector make informed decisions. For the public sector, options include eliminating subsidies for activities that degrade and damage wetlands and redirecting and repurposing these flows into activities that enable conservation and wise use of these ecosystems.
Increasing investments in wetlands requires embedding their conservation and wise use in existing and innovative finance solutions for nature and people. Increasing biodiversity-related international and domestic resources, leveraging private finance and promoting blended finance, stimulating innovative schemes, optimising and co-financing and synergies of finance
targeting the biodiversity and climate crisis. Several innovative financial solutions for climate change and biodiversity can also work for wetland conservation and restoration. However, for these solutions to work, enabling policy environment and investment into capacity development at various levels is crucial.
Herman Daly, a prominent ecological economist, famously said, “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the reverse”. The developmental trajectory adopted till now has eroded the very base on which it stands, and as wetlands degrade, natural capital is eroded. In several ways, the messaging in GWO3 is neither new nor novel, but comes with updated statistics and renewed urgency for wetlands. Nearly a decade ago, Ramsar published a Water and Wetlands synthesis under the aegis of the TEEB initiative (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity), highlighting that the values of both coastal and inland wetland ecosystem services were typically higher than those of other ecosystem types, and that maintaining and restoring wetlands often led to cost savings compared to human-made infrastructure solutions. The GWO3 amplifies this message with more refinement.
Values help make informed choices. As the recently concluded IPBES values assessment points out, addressing the global biodiversity crisis relies on shifting away from values that over-emphasise short-term and individual material gains, to values that nurture sustainability. Undertaking valuation is just the first step; deeper change is possible when the values are embedded in decision-making, enabling policies and regulatory environments are fostered, and societal norms and goals are shifted towards nurturing sustainability-aligned values. For wetlands, this would mean that the finance needed for wetlands conservation and wise use is made available, and availability of finance does not become a bottleneck for a world seeking to ensure that wetlands are conserved for posterity. This would also be in alignment with the first global strategy to finance biodiversity, adopted by the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in February 2025, with an underlying commitment to scale up investments, reform subsidies, and strengthen financial mechanisms.
At the forthcoming 15th Conference of the Parties meeting of the Ramsar Convention, a key agenda item is to agree on the Strategic Plan for the coming decade. The draft at hand calls for transforming the approach to the wetlands-human relationship by bringing to focus multiple values of wetlands and embedding these in various levels of decision-making. GWO3 will enable the parties to put their fingers on the steps needed to achieve this change, and also vie for a resource mobilisation strategy to enable fulfilment of commitments made under the Convention.
Ritesh Kumar is Director of Wetlands International South Asia, and is a lead author of the Global Wetland Outlook 3 report.
Views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the organization or Down To Earth